Carl the Jumper
by AngorMike
Summary: The author avatar, Carl, finds himself on one of those Jump Chain Adventures. [In the world of Naruto currently]
1. BtVS 1

**[JUMP CHAIN.]**

"What?" Carl was quite startled to hear a voice out of nowhere talking in bold caps. It was just something in the timbre of the voice that made him sure that if it had been written down it would be all bold and in caps.

He suddenly realized he was floating in a void. The darkness pressed in on him from all sides, feeling quite oppressive. In front of him, one of those sheets from those Choose Your Own Adventures self insert stories appeared. It was the only point of light Carl could see in the void. This one appeared to be for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel world.

**[ENJOY YOUR TIME IN THIS WORLD. IF YOU WIN, YOU WILL RECEIVE MORE OPTIONS.]**

And that was it. No matter how many questions Carl threw out, begged, demanded, or pleaded, he received no more answers from the voice.

Sighing at not being given a choice in the matter, Carl did the only thing he could and began reading the information sheet.

"Well, at least I have a decent working knowledge of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer show." Carl sighed again at his predicament. He had a very distinct memory of dying in a car crash before coming here. He wasn't prepared to leave his world behind so abruptly, but he was dead and gone, and that was that.

"Okay, it looks like I'll be stuck in this world for 10 years. 'Anything you buy you will keep forever, even if you die before this 10 year trip is over'. Well, that's surprisingly generous. Although, mentioning death on the first page makes me think my second death is likely." Carl sighed again at thinking of his likely fate.

"Well, let's see, I get 1000 choice points, or CP. Is that generous, or stingy?" Carl wondered aloud as he hit next.

"Identity. 'A history in this world will be created for you when you choose from the backgrounds below.' The positives include gaining skills, abilities, and world knowledge based on the identity. The negatives include…new personalities? And they may change who I am? That's a pretty big negative." Carl snorted.

"Six choices of identity." He continued. "**Spare Key**,** White Hat**,** Watcher**,** Initiative Member**,** Wolfram & Hart Lawyer**,** and Demon**." Carl read through each description.

"If this wasn't my first world it might be entertaining to play a demon or lawyer. But screw that. I need powers, knowledge, and a stronger will power first before I go playing with such dangerous creatures. Surviving will be tough enough already without having demons and lawyers looking to enslave and torture me. In fact, the only option that doesn't mess with my mind is the Spare Key."

"And even though I'll be targeted by Glory later on, I should have a few years to prepare for that Big Bad. Hell, despite having difficulties defeating her, the group was able to pull out a win in the end. So I have at least a decent chance of winning."

Carl selected the **Spare Key** option, and then chose not to pay to choose his age.

"Let my age be up to chance."

When Carl selected the option to roll for age, a table appeared in front of him, with a single 8 sided die sitting on it. Carl picked up the dice and rolled. "A five. So I'll be 17 years old, one year older than the crew, if I remember right. They'll be sophomores when Buffy shows up, while I'll be a junior in high school. I can work with that."

The table disappeared from in front of Carl. A floating screen popped up in front of him with a message.

[You will be inserted randomly into one of the protagonist's families as a sibling. Your new family will have memories of you, while you will be flying blind. The choice of family will be a surprise for when you wake up in your new world.]

"Well, that's a thing." Carl commented, wondering who would become his new sibling. Shrugging since he couldn't do anything about it, he moved on.

Looking at the next page of the form, he saw that it was greyed out because he couldn't choose a Demonic Heritage. Carl moved on to the next page, Special Abilities.

There were 30 choices to choose from. Carl saw he could pick up **Just Plain Snarky** and **Fashion Chaser** for half off, based on his identity as a **Spare Key**. At 50 points each Carl figured he could make them work to his benefit to survive.

**Just Plain Snarky** would make sure he would always have a quip available, even if it ended up as a sexual innuendo at his own expense. But at least it would slightly distract enemies, giving him a chance to get the initiative in a fight, so that was a plus.

**Fashion Chaser** would give Carl knowledge about what is fashionable and "what to wear to catch the eyes of others". Carl figured he could use that knowledge to do the opposite if he wanted, and dress in such a way so he would pass unnoticed. That would be a great means of survival in a demon infested town like Sunnydale.

Looking at the prices for the various abilities, Carl soon determined that unless he took some hefty complications that would totally ruin his chances of survival, he would have to pick one specialty and stick to it. The complication points were capped at 600 additional points, and after the first two they only gave half the points. Completely not worth it in his opinion, because he was trying to survive for 10 years, not grab a bunch of abilities but still die.

Carl figured there were three paths he could realistically choose without going demon or picking crippling complications. A physical fighter, magic user, or scientist/researcher.

Because of the world being the way it is, if he wanted to become a non-demon physical fighter, he would have to swap his gender and pick up the slayer ability. Not happening. He needed a clear head to survive 10 years. Being distracted by his change of gender, sexual orientation, and very identity while hunting demons was a good way to end up dead.

Going the scientist/researcher route he could pick **Technopathy**, **Robotics Genius**, and **Brilliant** for 300 points each. **Technopathy** would allow him to communicate and command any electronic devices on the same network, but sentient machines could resist the commands.

"Actually, how many sentient machines were there? Wasn't it only Ted and that Moloch dude? Who was technically a demon, not a sentient machine. So aside from those two, I would be the hacker king of the world."

Carl briefly entertained day dreams of having the world's computer systems at his beck and call, before remembering it would be 1997 in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world. Being a hacker king in that world wasn't nearly as impressive as if he had the same perk in say, the Stargate universe.

**Robotics Genius** would allow him to build robots that could be useful as guards, sentries, or shock troops. It would definitely help the Scooby Gang. But the huge downside was he would be dependent on technology to be able to defend himself. And knowing the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he would probably end up in many near death situations, without his robots to protect him, waiting for the slayer to save him. No thanks.

Besides, he would be a poor High School student, and electronics cost money. Sure he could hack his way into some funds, but he was sure that would bring him to the attention of certain groups he would rather ignore his existence altogether.

**Brilliant** would make him incredible in numbers, quantum physics, science, and have a natural talent for inventing. As awesome as that would be, it wouldn't directly help him survive his time as demon bait. And this first world Carl was all about increasing his survivability.

With survival in mind, Carl chose to go the magic user route. His magic would always be with him. He couldn't be disarmed of his main weapon so easily, and it would be great for offense, defense, and general utility.

He first chose the ability **Sorcery Savant** ability for 600 points to gain a great natural ability to perform magic. "'The spells you perform will be on the same level or possibly above that of the greatest witches on earth once you gain more experience.' Well, if I'm only as good or better than the best, why bother?" Carl sarcastically quipped.

"Now does that skill level include Willow? Cause she was able to get close to destroying the world at one point. Or at least killing everyone in it. Even if I don't get that powerful by messing with dark magic, I'll still be plenty strong enough to protect myself." Carl decided.

Next he picked the ability **High Stakes Fighter** for 100 cp. It would give him a working knowledge of jujutsu and aikido. While he wasn't planning to physically fight demons, knowing how to redirect force, use holds and leverage, and generally survive physical confrontations would be instrumental in keeping him alive through ambushes until he could bring his magic cannons to bear on the enemy.

Carl next picked up **Cunning Linguist** for 100 points. He chose Ancient Greek and Latin. He figured being well versed in a couple ancient languages would save him a lot of time on his magic studies, as well as make him more useful for research. He could always spend more time learning more languages, but coming into the world already knowing two would help immensely.

Satisfied that he would be able to survive as a magic user, Carl moved on to the available equipment list. He immediately chose the **Book of Kelsor** for 100 cp as the single most useful item for him as a magic user.

"'This detailed tome describes nearly a thousand varieties of demons, and provides insight on how to properly combat them. This codex has been around for centuries and steadily updated, one of the most reliable sources for generic demonic knowledge.' The tips on how to fight should give me plenty of pointers on how to make my spells more effective. Knowledge is priceless!"

By this point Carl had spent all his points, but he hesitated when he saw one particular item he really wanted at 100 cp. He agonized about whether it was worth getting. Was it worth picking up a complication in order to afford the item?

Finally Carl decided it was completely worth it. He selected the **Root Beer Keg** for 100 cp. "Refreshing and foamy, you have a refilling keg of root beer that maintains the perfect temperature all the time." This would make his stay in Sunnyhell just a bit more bearable. To always have a perfect mug of root beer. Yummm…

Looking at the complications that would give him the needed 100 points, it was a choice between **Leporiphobia**, **Zeppo**, **Kleptomaniac**, and **Perfect Harmony**.

It was a choice between fearing bunnies, an "interesting times" curse with a side dash of people dismissing him, a tendency to steal things, and having Harmony Kendell interact with him on a regular basis.

Carl first strongly rejected the "interesting times" curse of the **Zeppo**. Anything that brought extra danger into his life would have to have a much bigger point bonus to get him to consider it. Besides, the idea that the group he associated with would dismiss his abilities and ignore his suggestions when he was planning to be a world class mage chapped his hide.

If it was only his enemies underestimating him, that would be fine. But he didn't think he could become close friends with people who summarily dismissed him on a regular basis. Acquaintance, maybe. Friends? No.

Next, he rejected **Kleptomaniac**. He didn't have anything against relieving the worthy (aka vampires) of their material goods, but he didn't want to be subject to such an involuntary compulsion. It would probably kick off at the most inopportune time, like when he would be trying to be stealthy, and directly lead to being caught. Pass.

It could just be because he hadn't seen the show for a long time, but Carl honestly thought having to interact with a good looking but shallow blonde girl couldn't be that bad. And if enemies found out about his fear of bunnies, they could use it at the worst possible time to gain an upper hand by distracting him.

So, Carl chose **Perfect Harmony** for 100 cp. At least he'll always have root beer. He could always use it to console himself if Harmony got too bad.

Once Carl clicked finish, the room dissolved into darkness.

* * *

Carl woke up in his bed in a mansion. The decorations and furnishing looks expensive. There was a bookshelf along the wall, a desk with a computer on it, one of those old CRT monitors. And posters on the wall of some of the hot actresses of the day.

Carl soon discovered that his computer had a dedicated phone line for internet. At least he won't have to fight with whoever his family was over the phone usage rights.

Looking around, he soon discovered a journal that started shedding light on his situation.

He was now one Carlisle Chase, the older brother of Cordelia Chase.

"Well, did not expect that. I was expecting to be a sibling to Willow or Xander. Somehow I can't be too disheartened to be a member of a rich family."

His parents wanted him to have a distinguished name, not some low brow name like Donald. "He's a duck, after all." But since he was being a teenager and rebelling against everything, he had everyone call him Carl just to annoy his parents.

As Carl read, he saw that he was given a suitable back story to explain his abilities. He had been enrolled in Jujutsu and Aikido for years. Carl continued to read about the people he knew from his time at the gym.

One of the diary entries explained how he gained his Book of Kelsor. One day while browsing a used book store, he found the Book of Kelsor just sitting alone on a shelf. Briefly reading the descriptions about demons and vampires, diary Carl had been entertained. He had purchased it, thinking it would be like a fantasy book.

But as he continued to read the book, it opened his eyes to the true nature of the world. He soon saw the lurking demons and vampires around Sunnydale. Deciding to learn as much as he could to protect himself, he started studying Greek and Latin because some of the entries in the book were written in those languages.

After learning about demons and magic from the book, he soon sought out more knowledge of magic.

He explored the local magic store, The Magic Box, and bought some basic magic primers to start training himself in magic.

He soon found he had an incredible gift for magic. He kept his ability secret from his family. He recognized that there was likely a magical field or something over the town that caused people to overlook and rationalize away the supernatural.

Unless his family chose to accept the reality of magic and demons, they would just think he was crazy if he started talking about it. So he chose to remain silent.

He did work on creating some magical items. And there were two magical items he had crafted that made him immensely proud of his talents in magic.

The first was a crucifix necklace that he wove many protections into. He gifted one of these necklaces to each of his family members to keep them safe. It was the best he could do to keep his family safe until they opened their eyes and mind to the supernatural.

From reading the diary, Carl found out he had a good relationship with his sister, although they were very snarky to each other. Carl found himself amused to read that his sister's friend, Harmony Kendell, had a huge crush on him, and so would spend hours around him if allowed to. Based on the anecdotes in the book, Harmony could be a sweet, if ditzy, girl. At least when she wasn't being driven to be a bitch by her parents or the other social leaches in the school.

Carl also learned that his father really wanted him to join him at the investment firm after he graduated. Carl shook his head. Based on his memories of the show, at this point his father in this world had already been evading paying taxes for 10 years. In two years the government would crack down on him, and send him to jail, while confiscating the family's money and leaving the rest of them destitute. Not something Carl wanted to happen.

He continued to read the rantings of the teenager Carlisle about the fights the father-son duo would get into. Because Carl's backstory teenager self had discovered his great talent for magic, he didn't want to go into the investment firm, but couldn't tell his father the reason why because his father refused to acknowledge the supernatural.

Diary Carl also found out about his father not paying taxes, and that too turned into a big argument, because his father refused to listen to Carl about paying back taxes. His father said he said he "had it covered".

"Huh. Looks like I have two years to lay a financial foundation that's not connected to dear old dad so that mom, sis, and I don't end up in the poor house." Carl muttered to himself as he began making plans.

Before getting ready for school, Carl ran through the magic exercises his diary talked about him doing. He found the telekinesis easy. He could even lift the weight of his bookshelf up. He split up his concentration and could individually lift 4 different items and control them separately.

He then found he could easily conjure softball sized fire, water, wind, and earth globes, and have them dance around the room under perfect control.

Banishing the globes, he worked solely on his fire control. First mashing down the softball sized fireball until it was the size of a golf ball. The more compact he made it, the hotter it burned. Good enough to immolate vampires. Now he just needed to work on his speed at conjuring the fireball.

He then worked on his delicate control, sculpting the fire to make different shapes. Square, donut, oval, and house shaped were just some of the exercises. That part was very difficult, and left him sweating.

Once he was finished with his exercises, Carl took a shower and got ready for school. "Back to High School." Carl laughed as he went downstairs and ate some breakfast their cook prepared for them.

"Thanks Rosalie, delicious as always." Carl called out as he exited the kitchen, so he didn't see the startled look of pleasure Rosalie had on her face for being complimented.

Carl knocked on his sister's door. "Hey, you ready in there? We leave in 20 minutes!"

"Sure, sure. Impatient much?" Asked his sister as she opened the door. By the looks of it, she was primped and ready for a day of socializing and solidifying her rule as the Queen Bee of Sunnydale high.

Cracking a grin, Carl just lazily waved. "I just didn't want to be lectured by dad for not giving you a ride, if you know what I mean." Carl froze. He did not just throw a sexual innuendo at his sister Cordelia on the first time they interacted because of a stupid Special Ability he purchased.

"Eww, much." Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Get your mind out of the gutter."

"Whatever. You're the one whose mind went there." Carl shot back with a grin. Oh well, if he's going to be doing that kind thing often, the only thing to do is to grow thicker skin. Be more shameless and no one can embarrass him!

"As if! Even if you weren't my brother, your looks are barely a 6. Not even worthy of gazing on the perfection that is me." Cordelia snarked as she passed Carl in the hall, pausing only long enough to slug his shoulder.

"She shoots, ahh, it's a hit." Carl melodramatically clutched his heart, pretending to swoon. "How will I go on?"

Cordelia's small snort of laughter as she descended the stairs let Carl know he'd won a small victory.

Carl smiled at their interaction. It was…fun having a sister. Maybe living here for 10 years wouldn't be all bad.

* * *

Because of his schedule, Carl didn't see much of the future Scooby Gang until lunch. He sat with his small group of friends off to the side as he watched them interact with each other. When his sister passed a message to Buffy, Carl watched with narrowed eyes from across the green as Jesse McNally drooled over his sister's ass as she walked away.

Strangely, for having just entered this world, Carl found himself very angered at the way the teenage boy was eying up his sister. He felt very protective of her. 'That boy better watch himself, or he'll find a fireball up his arse.' Carl darkly thought before Harmony wandered up to talk with him.

"Hi, Carl!" She perkily called out to him. "Do you like this blouse on me? It's one of a kind, designed by the famous…" Harmony continued droning on about innocuous things while Carl simply smiled and answered monotonously.

Carl found he was correct in his assumptions about the girl. In front of a boy she liked, Harmony acted sweet and nice. Still ditzy, but nice. With others, she might be a bitch, but for him she was kind of a dopey adorable kitten.

It looked like he won a small victory in his gamble of taking the Perfect Harmony complication due to being Cordelia's older brother. He could only assume if he had ended up as Willow, Xander, or Jesse's brother that Harmony would do her bitchy act with him instead. That would definitely been very aggravating for 10 years.

It would still have been worth it for the **Root Beer Keg**, though.

Now Carl just had to figure out how to get her unplugged from the social scene and her parents that were trying to turn her into a shrewish bully. How to let her be the best she could be, instead of striving for fleeting popularity by stepping on others?

Carl continued to chat with the blonde beauty through lunch. He soon determined that his fashion ability was a lifesaver. If he didn't have all that fashion knowledge in his head, talking with Harmony would have been excruciating. But because of his newfound knowledge it was, dare he say it, kinda fun to just turn his mind off and chit chat for an hour.

Maybe he could encourage Harmony to use her fashion knowledge to create a career in the fashion industry, instead of relying on her parents? Then she wouldn't feel obligated to act like they want her to. It was worth looking into.

Later that evening Carl accompanied Cordelia and her friends to the Bronze. He danced with a couple girls, including Harmony while keeping an eye out for vampires.

After about an hour, Carl spotted two vampires talking up Jesse and Willow. When the idiots followed the vamps to the exit, Carl excused himself from the girls and followed them. Buffy and Xander weren't around yet, so it was up to him to save at least Willow.

He wasn't still holding a grudge against McNally drooling over his sister, nope. Not him.

The vampire that convinced Willow to follow him stopped right outside the back door. He changed into his game face, ready to feed. Willow screamed when she saw the vampire's face.

Hearing his cue, Carl quickly sent a cutter of wind to slice the vampire's pants pocket to drop his wallet, before another wind cutter beheaded him, turning him to dust.

Carl was just picking up the vampire's wallet to loot it for money when Buffy and Xander charged out of the door, looking for Willow.

Seeing that Willow was alright, and there was a pile of dust on the ground from the vampire, along with Willow babbling about the monster, Buffy started demanding answers from Carl while Xander tried to calm Willow down.

Carl was a little impatient with Buffy's imperious questioning attitude. He was pretty sure she acted like that by instinct from the Slayer spirit, but he was having none of it.

"Instead of wasting time here, shouldn't we be finding their friend? You know, the one who wandered off with Darla, one of the Scourge of Europe, to provide her with a nightcap?" Carl pointedly asked to change the subject.

"Who?" Buffy blankly asked.

Carl sighed. At this point in time, Buffy was not at all gung ho about her Slayer duties. While she would never get to the point where she would sink large amount of time into research, at least later on she would take her slaying seriously.

She was just not research girl material. Not necessarily bad, since she could usually handle herself, but the lack of information did sometimes put her at a disadvantage.

"Let's talk as we walk." Carl stated, moving past them towards the entryway of the alley. The tracking spell that he'd tagged Jesse with let him know that it would be quicker to walk than to take his car.

Buffy hesitated for a moment, then told Xander and Willow to get somewhere safe. Xander naturally refused.

"Jesse is my friend, I've got to help him if he's in danger!"

Which led to Willow timidly joining the group, unwilling to be left alone.

"Darla was a young woman who worked as a prostitute in the 16th century. She contracted a fatal case of syphilis and, just before she died, was turned into a vampire." Carl explained what he'd read in his Book of Kelsor earlier about Darla as they made their way to the cemetery.

"150 some years later, she turned a twenty something year old man named Liam. Once the vampire woke up, he entered Liam's family home by an invitation from Liam's sister, who said he must be an angel, to have come back to them after his death. Shortly after that the vampire tortured and killed poor Liam's entire family."

At their exclamations of horror, Carl nodded grimly. "I know, tragic, right? Well, the vampire decided he liked the irony of being called an angel so much, he named himself Angelus. The blood demon had inhabited a fairly good looking man, so over the years he has lured in many young women with his dashing tall, dark, and broody look. Many of them he raped and tortured for days before allowing them to die as his food." Carl saw they were suitably horrified.

"I wonder if vampires are able to be carriers for STDs? I mean, if they are, he would be a carrier for the fatal case of syphilis that Darla had. Not to mention any other STDs he's acquired over the years of rape." Carl idly speculated.

"Can you please stop talking about that?" Xander impatiently asked with Willow nodding along. "And get to the relevant-y info please. Jesse is in danger from this bloodsucker. Less with the sexual crimes, and more with the how do we stop the vampires from draining the blood of our friend."

"Fine, fine." Carl muttered as he pulled out several stakes and crosses. "Here, take these. Chances are you won't get a chance to stake a vampire, unless they are an idiot newborn, or you get lucky. But better to have them just in case. Stake to the heart kills them. A cross will repel them a bit from attacking, unless they are really determined. And if you have holy water, splashing them burns them. Great for blinding the vampires while you either stake them or get away. Easy peasy." Carl stated.

"Any way, Darla, Angelus, and two other vampires made quite the name for themselves over in Europe for a few decades before Angelus pissed off the wrong people and got himself cursed."

"He got cursed and died?" Buffy hopefully asked.

"Nope, he got cursed with a soul." Carl realized he was rushing to tell them this information while they may be too distracted to soak it in. But one of the things he'd always hated about the show was when Angel lost his soul, Buffy never tried to gank him until it was literally the world or him. He'd already lost his soul, why couldn't she bring herself to stab a soulless vampire?

And sure, she did the right thing eventually, but if he could convince her not to let a freaking vampire into her heart in the first place, things should never get that bad. Hopefully.

"Anyway. The point is that the little blonde vampire Darla is about 390 years old. She likes to pull the sweet and innocent act on people to sucker them in. But she is very dangerous. So be extremely cautious of her. Dust her if you get half a chance, but be extremely careful."

Carl finished just as they arrived at the area his spell said Jesse was in. They soon saw a shadowy couple embracing each other next to a sarcophagus. Darla had already started to feed on Jesse. Not good.

Carl threw a little water bottle of holy water at the vampire, splashing over her back. She reacted by screeching and throwing Jesse aside and running away. Smart vampire, instead of facing unknown odds of people who got the drop on her with holy water, she decided to retreat and regroup.

Buffy started to chase her, before aborting the action to go help Jesse.

Carl, meanwhile, used his magic to throw wind blades at Darla's legs. He managed to slice her hamstrings, dropping her to the ground. He could tell she was already healing, so he ran towards her, throwing a couple of fireballs.

Darla swiftly rolled away from the impact splashes of the fire. Thinking she was safe, she turned her head to glare at him to memorize his face before she would then slither off behind a tomb.

Which was exactly when the wind blade that Carl sent to circle around behind her sliced into her neck, and damaged her spinal column. She lost control of her body, flopping to the ground.

"Huh, the other vampire got beheaded by that move. Maybe it's cause she's older and tougher?" Carl theorized.

The damage to her spinal column made it hard for Darla to move, the signals from her brain weren't getting to her limbs. It gave Carl enough time to summon another couple of fireballs and send them her way from the left and right.

This time, flanked by the fireballs and unable to move well, the fireballs hit. She went up in a flaming pyre of screaming immolation.

Carl wiped the sweat from his brow. That took a lot out of him. Not to mention it was nerve wracking. If Darla had the initiative in their encounter, especially if she was armed with handguns, this night would have gone vastly different.

Carl moved back over to check on how the rest were doing. Ignoring the wide eyed looks from seeing him cast spells, he asked Xander. "How is your buddy?"

"Not good, I think he lost a lot of blood." Xander worriedly said as he held some cloth to Jesse's neck.

"Better get him to the hospital then. If you can get him to the entrance of the graveyard, I'll see if I can't give you a ride. Unless you'd like me to call an ambulance instead?" Carl idly asked.

After seeing the way Jesse looked at his sister earlier, and how he kept trying to hit on her in the club despite being shot down, Carl didn't really care too much about him. He wouldn't go out of his way to hurt him unless Jesse crossed the line, but he wasn't about to get worried about his health, either.

They eventually got Jesse to the hospital. Since Carl was Cordelia's ride, he made sure to get her from the club before picking up the group. Cordelia rode shotgun, while Buffy, Willow, and Xander sat in the back with Jesse across their laps.

Once the gang unloaded at the hospital, and Carl and Cordelia were driving back home, Cordelia couldn't wait any longer.

"What was all that? And since when are you friends with those losers?" She demanded.

"Dumbass McNally accepted the invite of a vampire to go make out in a graveyard. We only just got there in time to stop him from being drained of all his blood." Carl stated baldly. He wasn't going to sugar coat the dark side for his bluntly honest sister. Maybe she would believe him? In the show she soon accepted the existence of the supernatural and even helped the Scooby Gang from time to time before moving to L.A. and becoming part of Angel's Crew.

"Vampires? You expect me to believe that?" Cordelia incredulously asked.

"Well, yeah." Carl laconically stated as he held one hand up and conjured a fireball. "Magic. Ta daa." He sarcastically stated. "Found a book a few years ago about vampires and demons and magic. Turns out I'm pretty gifted in magic."

After staring gape mouthed for a while at Carl, Cordelia sat back and thought. Carl just extinguished his fireball and went back to quietly driving, letting her order her thoughts. He thought it was a good sign that she wasn't immediately denying the evidence in front of her eyes.

"Is that why you and dad have been arguing a lot lately?" Cordelia finally asked.

"No. Well, not directly, no. You are the first person in the family I've told about magic and whatnot. No, there are two issues that dad and I fight about. You know he wants me to join him in the investment firm after I graduate, right?" At her nod, he continued. "He wants me to work there part time while going to college. I, on the other hand, don't feel that's the path for me. So, we butt heads about it." Carl stopped talking.

"And what's the other thing you fight about?" After a few moments, Cordelia asked.

"Taxes."

"Taxes?"

"Taxes." Carl nodded. "And about how he hasn't been paying them for the past decade. He says he's worked out some loopholes so he doesn't have to pay anything, and that everything is fine. But I'm of the opinion that it's shady and that the government is going to be coming after him one of these days. Since he's gotten away with it for a decade, he thinks they'll never catch on." Carl finished with a snort of disbelief at his father. "The IRS loves their money. They don't have to be on the ball all the time, because they have enough people that they'll eventually get around to you. And I think when they do catch up to him, they'll want to make an example out of dad. You know, to make sure everyone knows to pay their taxes, or else."

"Oh." Cordelia quietly said, thinking about the repercussions of that scenario to their lives.

"Yup."

"What'll we do if they do come after dad? They'll take everything, won't they?"

"Yeah, most likely. Earlier today I finally decided I'd had enough of living on the edge, always waiting for the hammer to drop. I'm going to start squirreling away some money, and put it in accounts that aren't connected to him. Maybe drop by a lawyer and figure out how we can keep a decent portion safe so if the worst does happen, we aren't left destitute."

"I'll help. If it will make things easier and so we don't end up poor, I'll help." Cordelia offered, not wanting to lose her privileged life. Carl didn't want to end up poor either, so he couldn't blame her.

"Sounds good, sis." Carl looked at her from the corner of his eye. "How you doing with the big magic and vampires reveal?"

"Scared. I don't really want to think about it." Cordelia shivered.

"Yeah." Carl nodded. "The big thing to remember is to not invite people in after dark. Just kind of stand to the side of the door. If they can't come in without an invitation, they are bad mojo that you don't want in. Be sure that you wear that necklace I gave you, it's got protections on it. Holy water is easy to carry with you everywhere, and splashing them in the face should blind them enough for you to make an escape." He gave some advice to her.

Cordelia looked down at the necklace she was wearing, and felt some comfort. At least he was looking out for her.

They arrived home shortly and split up to their rooms to get some rest.


	2. BtVS 2

The next evening the Scooby Gang found out about the Harvest that the big vampire Luke was holding at The Bronze. Luke was planning on draining lots of the teens partying there so he could use some kind of sympathetic magic link to feed The Master, giving him enough power to break out of his containment.

"Who is the real master, this vampire, or the one in Doctor Who?" Carl joked. No one got the reference. 'Looks like I should lay off the jokes. I didn't take the pop culture ability so I'm always going to be behind and slightly off with the references.' Carl grumbled to himself.

Carl drove the gang from the library to The Bronze, where they found the doors chained up to keep the victims inside. Carl pulled out bolt cutters from his trunk, and opened the way for them to get the bystanders out. Carl saw that Cordelia was there, and he got really mad at the vampires for threatening his sister. If they didn't come in time, she might have been drained along with everyone else.

"Buffy, I've got the small fry. You take the big dude out." Carl snapped as he formed some hot fireballs, and started flinging them at vampires. His anger must have helped his casting, cause each fire ball were golf ball sized and super hot. His fireballs burned right through the vampire's chests, and out their back, dusting them.

Buffy stared for a moment, before coming out of her daze at watching him kill 5 vampires in as many seconds. "Right, I got the big guy." She said, as she firmed up her determination while glaring at Luke.

Meanwhile, Giles, Xander, and Willow were herding the civilians out and running interference with the vampires by using their crosses, holy water, and crossbows.

Carl kept one eye on Buffy's fight. She was poetry in motion in a fight, never standing still, and hitting way above her weight class. Carl vaguely remembered from the show that she had to trick Luke at some point in order to win. But here, with no minions to fight to wear her down, she took the big vampire down legitimately. Good on her.

"Hey, Cordelia, Harmony, how are you two?" Carl asked when the vampires were all gone and the place finally quieted down. He spotted the two hanging around the door, making sure that he was all right.

"Carl, what, who, why?" Harmony cried out, before throwing herself in his arms, crying from the fear of the monsters almost killing her.

Carl wryly looked at Cordelia, who looked sardonically amused at his plight. She had long known about Harmony's crush on him. Apparently she wasn't too bothered by the idea of him and Harmony hooking up.

"There, there. You're safe now." Carl spoke to Harmony, rubbing her back in comfort, while looking at his sister to convey the same message to her. She just snorted at his attempt to comfort her by proxy and rolled her eyes. His sister was a hard ass at times, and she just couldn't admit to any weakness in public. It would be detrimental to her image and popularity.

Carl just shrugged and smiled. Each person had different priorities in life, and she had her goals and firmly pursued them. Popularity wasn't an end for her, but a means to get where she wanted to go. Since Carl understood that, he wouldn't try too hard to change her attitude. If her goals in life changed, she would naturally change the means of attaining the goals. And he was her brother, not her parole officer. It really wasn't his place to harp on her for her behavior.

"Anyone want to relax with a mug of Root Beer? I've got a cold keg at home. It's just waiting to be drunk." Carl offered everyone. That was his second invention that his dairy told him he was proud of. An ever-full Root Beer Keg. At least according to his diary Carl made it. He knew he really got it from his jump chain purchase, but whatever.

For some reason, no one wanted to enjoy his root beer with him. Philistines. Just as everyone was going to break up for the night, Carl saw Angel hiding in the alley shadows, watching them.

"Liam!" Carl cried out, startling everyone. They turned to look at who Carl was talking to. "Or is it Angelus? Angel? Bob? What _are_ you calling yourself these days, old man?" Carl continued on. Everyone had spotted him at this point.

Looking out of the corner of his eye, Carl could tell that Buffy and Angel had already met. The awkward silence lasted for a few moments before Angel came out of the alley.

"I go by Angel these days." He quietly stated while giving soulful eyes at Buffy.

"Ah, Angel, the vampire with a soul. These are Giles, Xander, Willow, Buffy, who I'm sure you've met, Cordelia, Harmony, and I am Carl." He introduced the group to each other.

Carl just let the chaotic sounds of everyone talking and asking questions at the same time wash over him. Smiling like he didn't have a care in the world, he waited for everyone to get it out of their system.

When everyone settled down, and the consensus seemed to be for someone to explain, specifically him, Carl began the tale of Angelus who raped and ate a gypsy he shouldn't have, and how he was cursed with a soul until he had a moment of "perfect happiness".

"Read it in a book. It was very descriptive of your curse and how it has a clause that would get rid of your soul. I don't know exactly how they scale that 'perfect happiness' though. I mean, some people might get a moment of perfect happiness on a beautiful quiet morning while drinking a perfect cup of coffee. Others might get their perfect moment of happiness by having sex with a 17 year old underage girl." He suggestively said. "Just saying!" Carl exclaimed, backing up, when the girls of the group glared at him.

Hopefully he'd done enough to derail the crazy train that was the Buffy x Angel relationship.

The group eventually decided everything was over, and to head home. Carl drove Cordelia, Harmony, Willow, and Xander home, while Giles, Buffy, and Angel went their own ways.

The shock must have been great for Harmony, because she even forgot to be mean to Willow and Xander. He thought she was making great progress at being a decent person though.

* * *

With that explosive start to his days in Sunnydale, Carl soon settled into a routine. First thing in the morning he would run a few miles, and lift weights to improve his strength, then practice his martial arts skills.

He wasn't under the foolish notion that he could mold himself into a melee demon fighter, but every little bit of advantage would be needed to keep himself alive. If he was ambushed, being fit and able to dodge would keep him alive long enough to use his magic to end the threat.

And after a few months he got into the habit of using his magic to lift weights at the same time he physically lifted. It took a lot out of him at first, but it greatly improved his multitasking, concentration, and metaphysical muscles while he maintained his fitness.

He would then go to school while making sure he got good grades. Carl figured if he didn't get good grades on his second run through high school, he would be a hopeless case. It wasn't even all that hard.

More often than not, he would spend his lunches with Cordelia and Harmony. For some reason his mere presence allowed the two girls the leeway to temporarily pause their popularity driven behavior, and just act like themselves. He wasn't sure how that worked, but he saw it in action, so he knew it was so.

He would be listening to their talk as he approached their table, and the moment they saw him, they would pause, shift mental gears, and suddenly start talking about completely different, non-bitchy things. Carl resolved that he would spend plenty of time with them, to give them that precious leeway, if that's what they needed.

More than a few times while spending time with the girls, his **Just Plain Snarky **ability kicked in and caused him to make some sexual innuendos that left the girls red faced. He decided to just enjoy the craziness. He couldn't escape it, so why not have fun with it?

After school Carl would spend his time in a few different ways, depending on his schedule and time. He would either be working with a privately hired lawyer and Cordelia to make a financial safety net for themselves that wouldn't be confiscated by the government, studying Giles' books and going on patrol with the gang, or studying and practicing magic.

He didn't feel like he was fully one of the Scooby Gang. He was determined not to turn into some kind of foot soldier for Buffy or the Watchers Council, but he made himself available to help them. Helping them would help him keep himself and his girls safe.

Now if he could just convince Jesse to stop drooling over his sister without having to resort to breaking his teeth, Carl would be relatively happy.

A week or so after Buffy's big intro to Sunnydale, Carl heard that one of the cheerleaders had spontaneously combusted. He'd forgotten about that issue until he heard the news. He remembered that Amy Madison's mom had switched bodies with her to relive her "glory days" of high school.

Carl started working on figuring out just where the Madisons lived. Before he could make it there, he heard that Cordelia had suddenly gone blind. He switched destinations when he heard the news, and went to reassure Cordelia that he would take care of it. Just wait an hour or so.

He drove to the address he'd gotten from the administration office for the Madisons. Busting in, he found Amy in her Mother's body. He froze her where she stood. He loved magic.

"Now, I've come into information that I would like confirmation of before I do anything. Are you Amy, or Catherine?" Carl asked the frozen woman. He could see the desperate hope bloom in her face that someone knew what was happening to her, and might be able to help.

"Amy! I'm Amy. My mother did something to me. I don't know-" She sobbed for a moment. "I'm so afraid! Why would she do this to me? To her own daughter?"

Sighing, Carl unfroze her, and hugged her to comfort her. "I can help you get back to your body, if you help me." Carl offered. At her nod, Carl had her direct him to where her mother's spell casting circle was set up. After looking at the situation, Carl had a plan.

"First, I'm going to need to tie you up." At her frantic look, Carl explained further. "I'm going to reverse the spell. You'll go back to your body. But your mother will return to her body, here. And she's dangerous. I don't want her free to attack me when that happens, so I'll need to tie you up in a chair for now, okay?"

At her agreement, Carl tied her up. He then worked his mojo on Catherine's magic spells, reversing them. Hearing the loud curses from the tied up woman in the next room, Carl realized he'd succeeded.

Moving to the next room, Carl was subject to the curses, hisses, and spitting of the furious woman. Getting tired of listening to her diatribe, Carl started casting a spell that he'd decided was particularly appropriate to use on her. He turned her into a rat. She would be limited in intelligence, and unable to use magic in this form. Carl scooped her up and put her into a box for transport.

After packing up all of Catherine's magic books and supplies, he exited the house, where he saw Amy standing there in a cheerleading uniform, nervously debating if she wanted to enter or not. She was afraid her mother was still free and would do something to her. Seeing him exit, Amy seemed to feel a rush of hope.

"Is…Is it safe?" The cute teenager asked.

"She's no longer a threat to anyone." Carl reassured her.

"Did you kill her? I mean, if you had to I understand." Amy babbled in nervousness. "She was dangerous and crazy. She was still my mom, but she was scary." She finally trailed off awkwardly.

"No, I just turned her into a form that won't be a threat anymore." Carl showed her the rat in the box. "I'm going to put her in a cage and put protections on it to keep her safe, and let her live out her life like this, so she can't hurt anyone else."

"Oh, that's…good." Amy quietly stated. "I mean, I wanted her stopped, but she was still my mom. So I didn't really want her dead. But, like this, this is good too." Amy babbled.

Reaching over, Carl hugged her with one arm. "It's okay now Amy. It's okay to feel relief. It's okay to feel safe again. She won't hurt you anymore." He reassured her. After a few moments, when he felt her pull back, he let go. "If, in the future, you want to learn magic so you can protect yourself from anything like this happening again, let me know. I'm pretty decent at it, and it would be nice to have more people to practice with."

"I'll think about it. Maybe later. Just not right now." Amy quietly stated.

Carl nodded and smiled comfortingly. "Okay. I've got to get going and check up on my sister now. Make sure she's okay."

"Okay. Thanks again, Carl."

"Anytime, Amy. See you around." Carl casually waved as he got in his car.

Carl soon arrived at school and tracked down Cordelia. He was relieved that the reversal spell worked so well, and her sight was restored. He explained what happened, and what he did, showing her the Catherine rat. She felt vindictively gleeful at the fate of the witch who cursed her. Carl couldn't blame her. He felt the same way.

A few days later Amy came to Carl and asked if he would teach her magic so she could defend herself and feel safe again. Carl naturally agreed. After talking to a couple more people, Carl's afternoons were filled with magic study sessions with Amy, Willow, and Jenny Calendar.

Jenny Calendar was the alias of the gypsy techno pagan witch Jana of the Kalderash gypsies. Her clan had some strange convoluted plans and revenge schemes. For some reason they had sent her to watch over and monitor the curse they had placed on the vampire Angelus. Stupidly, they never explained to her just what could break the curse, or provide her protection in the case the curse was broken and she was left vulnerable to the predations of Angelus. Whatever, not his problem.

But with her help, he started tutoring Amy and Willow in magic. They made sure to stress the dangers of moving too fast, channeling too much magic, magic addiction, and the dangers of playing with the dark stuff.

That's not to say they couldn't study topics at their own pace, or research what interested them. But the casting practices were strict and held daily to start working their metaphysical muscles and prepare them to be able to lift "heavier" loads. So in the future when they cast the big magic, it wouldn't warp them into a hopeless magic addict.

After the sophomore class went on a trip to the zoo, Carl noticed the change in behavior of Xander and a few students.

Carl wondered just why sophomores were going on a zoo trip in the first place. Wasn't that elementary school stuff? Was that from the influence of the Mayor, who wanted innocent students to wander into just such a situation? Maybe part of the ritual the mayor was planning needed a certain aura of fear around town, or a certain number of yearly sacrifices for him to check all the items on his 'Turn into a Demon' list?

Either way, Carl moved into action. From his studies he'd found a particular method to take care of this issue. Since he was prepared, Carl soon captured the Hyena possessed teens using his magic before they could eat the school mascot, let alone the principal. No sense in letting Snyder the troll be in charge of the school. Now that would be truly irritating.

That evening Carl brought the tied up students back to the zoo. He quickly subdued the witch doctor dude that started the whole thing, and set up his own ritual. Channeling magic, his ritual soon sucked out the primal spirit from everyone there, and channeled it into a necklace totem that he'd prepared.

He made the hard decision to toss the zoo keeper witch doctor into the hyena pit to end his life as Hyena chow. He didn't want to put up with the crazy man hanging around and trying to get revenge. Chances are he would hurt someone Carl cared for. Then Carl would regret not ending him as a threat. Better safe than sorry.

He then let the other kids go when they all woke up, but kept Xander tied up for the moment.

"Xander, are you an idiot?" Carl bluntly asked.

"What?" Xander was confused. Why didn't Carl release him already? Why was he calling him an idiot?

"I asked if you were an idiot, or a monumental idiot?"

"Sometimes." Xander warily said, unsure of just where Carl was going with this. "Why don't you explain to me what you mean and I'll tell you if I've been an idiot?" Xander asked reasonably.

"Okay. Here's the thing. You've been mooning all over Buffy ever since she got here. But there is someone who has feelings for you, and you have been stomping all over her heart. Every time you complain to her about Buffy not being interested in you, it hurts her a little more that you don't even see her as a girl, let alone that she has feelings for you. Now you tell me, are you an idiot, or a monumental idiot?" Carl sarcastically finished.

"Willow? But…She never said. She's been my best bud since forever. Really? Are you sure?" Xander asked.

"She's been good at hiding it from you, but everyone else can see it. Everyone else is an idiot too for not straight up telling you these facts of life. But you're an idiot for not seeing just how beautiful and desirable that girl is and will become."

Carl paused a moment to let his words sink into Xander's head.

"Now, I'm not telling you this to try to strong arm you into dating Willow giving up on Buffy or whatever. It's not for me to make that decision, that's all on you. But I am telling you this so that you can get your head out of your ass. Stomping on Willow's heart every time you complain about Buffy, or act like a lovesick fool in front of her, has been painful to watch. I'm just sorry I didn't say anything earlier."

And with that, Carl released Xander and drove him home. The talkative, jokester teen was unusually quiet as he thought about what he'd learned that night.

* * *

Shortly after Carl started spending so much time in the afternoon with Jenny, Amy, and Willow studying magic, he also got some additions to his morning exercise time. Harmony started joining him on his morning runs. A couple days later, Cordelia also joined them.

When he asked why they joined him, they simply said they had to stay in shape for cheerleading. Carl suspected Harmony, at least, was jealous of the time he spent in the afternoon with the magic girls, and wanted to stake out her own time to be with him. He guessed Cordelia was chaperoning them?

Who knows, Carl certainly didn't.

Because of the afternoon magic class, Carl, Jenny, and Amy were present when Willow got the bright idea to start scanning the magic books into the computer. They were able to put a halt to that until they checked them for curses, magic, and possessions.

Willow went very red faced in embarrassment when she learned just how close she came to uploading a demon to the internet. Carl suggests that if they want a database of all the books they follow a couple rules. First, the computer can't be hooked up to the internet. No one can hack it if it's not connected.

Second, they make several backups to their database. He would get one that he would put in a secure storage, in case anything happened to their computer.

Third, they check for curses before even reading the books, let alone scanning them.

Carl also suggests that there are a couple guys that they could hire to help with the project, since their time is more valuable and better spent either in studying, researching, or practicing magic.

So they hire as helpers and research assistants Jonathon Levinson and Andrew Wells. Carl hoped that by getting to the two young men early he can keep them from falling under the sway of Warren Mears.

To impress on the two young men the importance of respecting the supernatural knowledge, keeping it safe, and not abusing it, he and Buffy brought them along with them on patrol so they could see how dangerous the hidden supernatural world is.

A secondary message was that they, Carl and Buffy, are infinitely more scary. "Don't cross us" was the basic message Carl wanted them to understand.

They seemed to get the message.

* * *

Several weeks later everyone around town was suffering from crazy nightmares. Recognizing it as a psychic attack, Carl tracked the source to a 10 year old boy in the hospital in a coma. His name was Billie, and he was in the coma because someone beat him severely enough to leave him comatose.

Carl entered the boy's nightmare ridden mind, and worked hard to soothe him. He finally got the boy to calm down, and figured out what happened. The boy's little league coach had cornered him after their game. Billie had made a mistake that lost the team the game, and the coach had beaten Billie almost until death.

Carl helped Billie heal a bit, and wake up. He called the cops and got them to arrest the coach.

Carl then decided he would keep in contact with the young 10 year old. If the boy at 10 was projecting psychic nightmares to such a large area, he had to have potential in the mystic arts. It would be better for him if Carl helped train him to at least have enough skill to control his abilities. Who knew when his psychic ability would attract the wrong attention from some supernatural predator?

From then on, on the weekends, Carl spent several hours with Carl teaching him how to gain control as well as working on his ethics so he wouldn't abuse his gifts.

* * *

Carl didn't find out about the invisible girl running around school until she tried to kidnap Cordelia. The protection amulet he had made knocked Marcie right out, and tagged her with a tracking charm.

After Cordelia found him, and Carl finally parsed just what she was saying, he followed the tracking charm to where Marcie was still laying unconscious. Hefting her body to his shoulder, with Cordelia following him, he made his way to their pool house for a private area to cast some spells.

Setting the girl down on the bed, Carl consulted his Book of Keslor. He soon found some charms to reverse a wide range of invisibility methods. Casting the spell, he soon had a naked visible girl on his bed.

Carl whistled. "You don't see that everyday." Carl commented cheekily at the sight of the attractive nude teenaged girl.

Snorting at his piggishness, Cordelia flipped the blanket over the girl's body.

Marcie soon woke up, and found that she was visible again. Carl explained about the Hellmouth, and how the mystical energies had interacted with her feelings of invisibility to make it happen. He offered her a simple totem to make sure it didn't happen again, if she didn't want it to. As well as training in how to control her ability.

Carl soon had a visible naked girl hugging him tightly, with his sister sardonically looking at him with one eyebrow raised.

Carl just shrugged and comforted the distraught girl in his arms, refusing to be embarrassed. Until she realized she was naked and in his arms, got embarrassed, and dove for the covers again.

"Well, shall I leave this to you to help the attractive naked Marcie, sister dear? I think I'd better make myself scarce." Carl commented as he moved towards the door. "Oh, and Marcie?" She peeked out of the covers with one eye. "It's good to see you doing better." Carl said with a smile

Marcie squeaked again and buried herself in the covers once more.

Less than a week later, Marcie was back in school. She started joining them in their extracurricular mystical studies. She finally found some people that would give her attention, and Carl figured if she could subconsciously turn herself invisible, she probably had some potential in magic, so she joined the group of budding witches.

Around this time Xander finally made up his mind, and asked Willow if she'd like to go on a date. She squeaked and couldn't hardly talk, only furiously nodding yes while blushing deep red. Carl hoped it worked out for them.

* * *

Carl was officially pissed off.

Over the past weeks, Angel had been assisting them in their patrols, making the streets safer. He didn't have a problem with that. He was happy Liam was taking his whole redemption thing seriously and was making the effort.

No, the thing that pissed him off was that one night while Angel and Giles were talking about some prophecy they read about Buffy dying at the Master's hand, Buffy overheard them. The little blonde idiot had somehow gotten it into her head that she had to go alone into the master's lair to prove herself. Or that she had no choice in the matter of prophecy and fighting vampires because she was the chosen one?

Carl really had no idea what she was thinking.

Carl was furious that she would just charge ahead solo, after all the time the group had spent helping her, letting her know she wasn't alone in the fight. He was also going to have to have words with Giles and get him to lay off on the "Sacred Duty" spiel and focus on the fact that they are a team.

Currently Carl, Xander, and Angel were racing to the Master's lair.

They found the blonde Slayer, slightly bleeding from the neck, lying in a pool of water. Not breathing and no pulse.

Carl and Xander immediately pulled Buffy out of the water and started CPR, alternating breathing and heart palpitations.

Their efforts were shortly rewarded by Buffy gasping awake.

Before Buffy could even get up, Carl forced a blood replenishing potion down her throat. He'd found the recipe in his Book of Kelsor. Bloody useful thing, he was glad he'd bought that book.

Then he gave her a monster and a bag of donuts for energy.

"Have we learned our lesson on not going solo to dangerous master's lairs, Buffy?" Carl asked acidly when it looked like she was tracking. "People care about you Buffy. You can't just run off into danger alone like that."

Xander nodded solemnly in agreement. "We're in this fight with you Buffy. We may not be as strong as you and Captain Forehead over there, but we can help you if you let us."

"Thank you." Buffy quietly said, feeling a little uncertain. Her solo charge and failure had seriously dented her confidence.

"Good. Now let's go get this bastard. We'll hold off the minions so they don't wear you down, and you can get your groove back by taking this jerk down." Carl said, handing Buffy a sword that he'd brought along.

Seeing her smile, and regain confidence as she gripped the sword and got to her feet, Carl couldn't help but smile along with her. It was always better to see the girls being strong and confident, rather than scared and timid.

What followed was the biggest fight Carl had been in yet. There were vampires everywhere around the school library, since the Hellmouth was directly under it. The master was standing on top of the school building, channeling energies to open the Hellmouth.

When they arrived, Carl saw Giles, Jenny, Willow, Amy, Jesse, Marcie, Jonathan, Andrew, Cordelia, and Harmony fighting the vampires as a group. They were using the tactics that Carl had thought up for them. Some of them were sitting in the back row, supersoakers with holy water spraying the eyes of the vampires. The front row had short spears or stakes to stab the vampires in the heart when they were blinded by the holy water.

"Get the Master, we'll finish off the small fry." Carl yelled as he summoned fireballs to clear the way for her.

Buffy threw herself forward, running at a speed normal humans couldn't match, through the dust of the vampires Carl had killed. She was so swift in parkour running up the wall to the roof, it almost looked liked she flew up.

This second fight with the master, where she had a proper weapon, wasn't mobbed by cannon fodder, and was confident she would win, went vastly different from the previous one.

Within a minute, she had slashed up the Master, tore him apart, and cast him down from the roof onto a large wooden pillar on the ground that acted as a stake, dusting him. He was such an old vampire though, that his skeleton remained behind.

The Master was dusted at around the same time everyone else finished off the final minion. Everyone's relief at being alive and winning was palpable.

"Okay, who is up for a little pizza party to celebrate?" Carl asked to cheers from his fellow teens. "I'll go pick some up, if you guys and gals want to go get cleaned up and meet back up in like, an hour or so?"

After everyone else dispersed, Carl quickly gathered the master's bones. He would grind them up and mix them with holy water before dumping them in the ocean in a couple days. No way was he leaving the bones behind for some kind of necromancy.

The relaxed atmosphere of the party later that night was enjoyable. Although Carl couldn't quite decide what to do about the underlying tension between Amy, Marcie, and Harmony. How does a guy handle three women competing for his attention without hurting any of the girl's feelings? Especially how does a guy handle his sister's snide comments?

This guy sure didn't know.

So Carl just paid them equal attention for now, wondering if his actions would come back to haunt him later. He knew the détente could only last so long, but he wasn't sure how to make sure nobody was hurt in the aftermath.

The next couple of days Carl accomplished his self appointed tasks. The Master's skeleton was ground up, purified, and spread in the ocean. He'd never be coming back.

Carl also tracked down the little Anointed One. The little shit was a whiney bitch, but he dusted just like any other vampire. It turned out he had quite the large cache of gold and money that he got from the Master. Maybe Carl should start taking out nests more often, if he could get big paydays like that? It would help build up the principle that he and Cordelia had to keep them from being broke.

* * *

The school year ended without any more big apocalypse fights. The summer came on, and everyone kept doing their thing. Carl kept up his exercise and magic studies with his groups. It wouldn't do to get complacent.

Carl saw that Xander was good and stable in his relationship with Willow. He hadn't wanted to gift him the primal totem he'd made from the primal spirit before, because Carl had been afraid Xander would try to use it to impress Buffy. But now he felt that the young man could handle it. That he wouldn't try to abuse his gift for the wrong reason.

After Carl cleansed the energies and spirit in the Hyena Totem that he created, the effect was quite good. It would greatly enhance the speed, strength, toughness, and senses of the person wearing it. So he gifted it to Xander, since he was throwing himself with wild abandon into the fights anyway. At least this way Xander would not get hurt so easily, and would be more useful.

Carl definitely didn't think Jesse deserved it, the freaking perv, after he kept slobbering over Cordelia. One of these days…

Cordelia, Carl, and their parents spent two weeks in Europe on vacation. It was quite enjoyable. He'd never been to Europe before. It reminded him that he had to start studying more languages. He already had Ancient Greek and Latin. Next he would start working on Sumerian. That seemed like an important one when dealing with the supernatural.

Eventually the summer ended, and Carl's Senior Year began. Only a few weeks into the new school year, and the school had Parent Teacher night.

Vice Principal Snyder was in charge, lovely fellow. For a surly little troll, he was a lovely fellow, anyway.

The conference got interrupted by Spike, of all vampires, party crashing. Carl got a quick tracking spell onto him which he followed the next morning before school.

Carl, Buffy, and Xander with the Hyena Totem made their way to the location the tracker pointed at, and broke in. While the other two were fighting the minions as a distraction, Carl sneakily sent two small fireballs around and got Drusilla and Spike in the back.

Carl was honestly surprised that worked. He expected the two to be harder to kill.

It certainly wasn't playing fair by any means, but that was fine with him. Blood demons didn't have honor, so why would he be upright with them? Especially the Spike & Drusilla duo were tricky. Carl was just relieved they were gone.

He knew that in another timeline all kinds of convoluted things would have happened that led to the redemption of Spike. But this is a different world, and Carl was already here with the butterfly wings of change. So letting Spike live to maybe, possibly, kinda, sorta, have a chance at redemption, while ignoring all the people Spike would kill in the mean time didn't sit well with him.

Besides, as dangerous as the two vampires were, Carl wasn't too keen of the idea of Spike ambushing him one night. Or Spike hiring the Taraka order to send assassins. Or letting Spike work for the mayor. Or any other number of horrifying things that could happen if they were floating around.

So, dust to dust, and ashes to ashes, and all that.


	3. BtVS 3

Halloween was coming soon, and Carl had a choice to make. Should he try to take advantage of the spell that Ethan Rayne was going to use to turn everyone into their costumes? Should he get everyone dressed in a costume designed to give them more knowledge and powers? Or should he avoid playing with the chaos magic, as there may be some negative repercussions if things went awry.

After thinking about it for some time, Carl decided that the reward to risk ratio was just too tempting. He decided to go ahead and try to use the Halloween spell to get everyone upgraded. Up to now, he's been playing it as safe as he could in this world that sits right next to hell. But the world was inherently unsafe.

And despite the changes he'd already made, and the people he'd added to their group for research and magic support, he was worried that it wouldn't be enough to see them through some of the troubles coming. The future wasn't static, and the big bads might add more enemies to the mix now that they had more people in the group to fight against.

He decided he was going to take a chance on the Halloween spell being more helpful than hindering, and hope for the best.

After some more brain storming, he came up with costumes for everyone. He invited everyone to a little party at the Chase place, and forced Cordelia to go, instead of whatever party she was thinking of going to.

He was able to keep everyone from being forced to escort trick or treaters through careful application of magic to Vice Principle Snyder's head. Just because the prick wasn't the principle didn't mean he wasn't trying to make everyone's lives difficult.

As the guests arrived, he handed out a box with their costume and a little gift to open when he told them they could, but not before. If it went well, the consciousnesses that would possess everyone would see they held a gift box and open it up.

Inside each gift box was a big chocolate shaped like a ghost, to hopefully put them in a nice mood. Who doesn't like chocolate?There was also a paper with a little information brief for each of the individuals that would be possessing his friends that night, so they would know what was going on and how to end the spell early if they so chose.

For Giles, he picked Forge because Carl thought it would be funny to make the almost technophobic man gain powers over technology. And having their research and support man able to offer a wider range of help would be nice.

Jenny got a Zatanna costume because it was so similar to herself, both being magic user. It would likely give a boost to her power and knowledge, which would always be useful.

Joyce Summers was in imminent danger of having a brain tumor, so Carl got her an X-23 costume so the mutant healing ability would keep her healthy. Plus it would give her some insight into what being an actual weapon from a young age was like so she could maybe identify more with her daughter and help her. Carl also planned to reveal the supernatural to her, so she wasn't kept in the dark about the dangers in Sunnydale. This would be one hell of a reveal.

For Buffy he got a Lara Croft costume. She was an older woman, who was very experienced and knowledgeable in her field. He hoped the mature, intelligent perspective could help her handle her calling better. And maybe the wider perspective could help her handle being pressed into service as the Slayer better.

Willow was given a Scarlet Witch costume this Halloween, and not allowed to dress as a ghost. Her powers and knowledge should hopefully temper the redheads desire to outpace her magical studies. And as a redhead, it was just amusing to Carl to have her dressed as the punny Scarlet Witch, which is exactly what she already was.

Xander drew the lucky straw and would dress up as Spiderman. As a fellow Animal Totem chosen one, Xander should get some interesting and useful abilities and perspective from Spiderman.

Carl chose Wonder Woman for his sister, Cordelia. The forthright and bluntly honest personality fit the warrior woman. Some fighting skills and strength would help Cordelia stay safe.

For Harmony Carl chose Carol Danvers. Carl hoped that Carol, as a fellow blonde to Harmony, would gift some of her powers and intelligence. Over the past several months Harmony already proved that she had a certain amount of bravery, having joined the group in action a few times. Most notably when the master was trying to open the Hellmouth. So Carl already knew that Harmony possessed potential to be greater. He hoped that this would be the key to unlock that in her.

Amy would dress as Barbara Gordon. Her intelligence, skills, and sheer awesomeness should help Amy in her life. Having memories of a mentor like the Batman should also put her relationship with her parents into perspective, hopefully. And adding the abilities of Barbara with the magical abilities of Amy would create a very dangerous young woman indeed.

Carl dressed Marcie up as Susan Storm, the invisible girl. Hopefully Susan Storm would give Marcie control over her powers of invisibility and forcefields. And the confidence boost from a personality like Sue Storm couldn't hurt. Even after all this time of being accepted by the group, Carl could tell that Marcie had a part of her inside that believed they would one day forget about her, and she would go back to being the social reject invisible girl. Carl hoped this confidence boost would get her past that wriggling doubt.

Carl chose Iceman Bobby Drake for Jesse semi randomly. He hoped the memories of Iceman's dealings with the wide array of individuals would mature the young man in a hurry. That way Jesse could grow up and stop trying to date his sister, when she had made it clear that not even on a cold day in hell would she date him.

He chose Iron Man for Jonathan, because he'd found that Jonathan had a small gift in the understandings of electronics. He was hoping Stark could boost that gift, and give their support group more tech support.

Andrew got to dress up as Luke Skywalker, just because the goofy nerd was such a huge Star Wars geek. Carl almost picked a Star Trek costume instead, just to tweak him, but he didn't want to deal with an angry pouting Andrew for the rest of all time. If Andrew gained even a fraction of Force Potential, he would be able to help so much more.

Carl was going to dress as Dr. Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme. He figured he had already chosen to be a mage in this world, so he was going all in. The added knowledge and power would give him more options for dealing with threats.

And finally Carl put in one of his rooms a manikin with the nametag [Dawn "The Key" Summers] dressed up as Illyana Rasputin. He was hoping to get Dawn here early through the chaos of the spell. And Illyana, or Magik as her code name was, was a mutant who had power over portals. Carl hope that the more sympathetic the connections, the greater chance of getting Dawn here early.

Carl had even invited Angel and got him a costume that would have a good chance of turning the souled vampire human. Unfortunately the broody vampire with a soul chose to be anti-social that night, so there wasn't anything Carl could do about it.

When Carl figured the spell was about to go off, he had everyone present pick up their present. The intelligence brief inside would give them a brief idea of what happened to them and how to end the spell. Some generic advice to the characters was given based on the research Carl did into the characters.

The spell washed over the group.

* * *

The next thing Carl knew, he was standing over the remnants of a stone bust of Janus. Looking around the room, he saw fifteen individuals in superhero costumes, standing in a daze.

Someone screamed, and Carl twirled around to see what was happening. Harmony was looking at something on the floor, at a corpse.

One of the individuals possessing the group had killed Ethan Rayne.

Carl gulped. He hadn't meant for that to happen. But he guessed that's what happens when 15 powered individuals get pointed at the chaos mage responsible for their predicament.

Carl reached out and hugged Harmony, turning her so she didn't have to look at the body. Two more girls, Amy and Marcie, hugged Carl. Without thinking about it, he raised his sling ring and opened a portal under to body to drop it in the woods outside of town.

When the portal vanished, Carl looked dumbfoundedly at his ring. That worked?

Carl searched his mind, and found the new memories of Stephen Strange. He remembered becoming the foremost brain surgeon in the world and working in the hospital. He remembered Stephen's crash, and the physical damage that stopped him from practicing his craft. Hitting rock bottom when he couldn't find a cure. Searching for and finding Kamar Taj, learning sorcery. Being healed. And his life as the Sorcerer Supreme.

What a wealth of knowledge. Carl was happy it worked.

After everyone organized themselves, and understood what was happening, the group tested out their new powers. Everyone retained only a fraction of the powers of the person they dressed up as. But it was enough to be a game changer.

Marcie's force fields, for example, may have only been the size of a garbage can lid, but they could still block attacks or decapitate vampires.

And best of all, Dawn stood there among the rest of them, as if she had always been there. Carl was secretly gleeful that it worked, and he brought her here early.

After everyone calmed down, and was reassured that they weren't the ones who killed Ethan, they had a little show and tell for Buffy and Dawn's mother. She couldn't very well dispute the existence of the supernatural now that she had two bone spikes that came out of her hands and healed in a matter of minutes.

They broke apart into smaller groups to relax and work on accepting the new abilities and memories they now had.

It was only a week later that Carl found out a huge result of gifting some of the girl's those powers, memories, and confidence, when Amy, Harmony, and Marcie informed him in no uncertain terms that they were all dating him. They were okay with sharing him. And no, he didn't get a say in the matter.

Carl was strangely okay with it. Maybe a bit of Strange's desire to avoid messy human feelings rubbed off on him, because he just found himself happy they didn't make any more of a fuss or drama. And three hot girls agreeing to get along in a fourway relationship with him? Can he get any luckier?

It was only several weeks after that revelation that Carl found out another unexpected result of Halloween. Apparently the Iceman, Bobby Drake, was gay. And now Jesse was too. Jesse had suddenly stopped paying attention to Cordelia altogether. Carl couldn't say he was displeased with the results. And it was pretty funny to Carl when he caught Jesse and Larry eyeing each other in the halls of school. Who knew sexual attraction was the way to overcome bullies?

On another note, Dawn and Willow, after seeing how Amy, Harmony, and Marcie handled themselves, agreed to share Xander between them. Dawn was a bit older here than she would have been in the original universe, so she was only several months younger than Xander and Willow, rather than several years. Carl couldn't say he was displeased that the love was spreading around the group without major drama. A less stressed and more relaxed and happy group was a more effective group.

Joyce didn't exactly have the same reaction of being happy for her daughter being in a three way relationship so young. Until Dawn caught Joyce with Jenny and Rupert. Then Joyce didn't really have any room to back up her reservations concerning Dawn's three way relationship.

Carl was just happy to watch that drama from afar with some popcorn.

"Seriously, what is up with that? This kind of multi-pairing doesn't happen in real life, does it? Is it because of the universe? Kinda like how in the original story Buffy still fell for Angel, even though she was the Vampire Slayer, and he was a Vampire. Is love drama, or sudden unconditional love, or whatever, more prevalent in this universe? Is it in the water?" Carl questioned empty air one day while thinking on it.

Shrugging at not being able to get answers, Carl just got on with life with his three girlfriends. Good thing he was still squirreling money away and making more from killing vampire nests. With his magic, he was able to get away with taking down nests solo. But now he had the girls joining him, now that they had some powers.

Cordelia was swift and absolutely deadly with a sword. Amy was great in combat, with magic being only one of her tools, and she was brilliant at finding out where nests were with her detective skills. Marcie's force fields relieved many a leach of their head. And Harmony had an energy blast that went right through the heart, and poof, no more Vampire. She could also fly as fast as she could run, which she absolutely loved.

Carl noticed that everyone was so much more lighthearted now that they had powers to protect themselves from most dangers. And to think, he almost didn't go through the Halloween plan just because he was afraid something nightmarish might have happened.

* * *

Shortly after Halloween, Carl used his portal powers in the middle of the night to purloin a sniper rifle and ammo from the military. He started spending some time each weekend practicing his aim. At the same time he was studying certain rituals, hoping to find what he wanted. If he couldn't find anything, he would have to build it up himself. And that would be time consuming. But it was something he would do if necessary.

Eventually, much to everyone's surprise, Kendra the Vampire Slayer showed up one day in Sunnydale. Giles went to the next room to call the council to verify the information. Carl could hear his cursing from the next room. He could sympathize with Giles. They almost had a slayer on slayer killing on their hands, because the stupid council couldn't share intel. Bloody wankers.

Kendra stuck around for a while, but the threat that she was worried about never manifested. Carl secretly knew it never manifested because he hadn't allowed certain vampires to roam around. But he wasn't going to tell anyone that.

Eventually Kendra got orders from the council to move on and hunt threats elsewhere, and she left Sunnydale. She never really got close to anyone from Sunnydale. She seemed to have really gone through the brainwashing of the council, and didn't even understand the need for a life other than duty.

It was an attitude that Carl could somewhat understand and respect, but he couldn't live that way himself.

He didn't think so highly of the council that raised young girls so brainwashed, though. But unless Kendra herself chose to live a different kind of life, there was really nothing he could do to help her. She was happy, or at least fulfilled, with her life of duty so far.

If that changed, and she needed help getting out from under the council's thumb, he would be happy to help. But until she asked for help, trying to force her to see life differently would just get him labeled as an enemy. And he knew how stubborn Slayers could be.

* * *

One weekend everyone got a surprise when Joyce called them all in to take care of a mess. Apparently the Ted robot tried to put the moves on her. In this life, she wasn't fooled into thinking he was human because of her advanced senses she got from X-23 from Halloween.

When Joyce met him, he didn't smell human. She wasn't going to do anything about him at first, because she didn't know what he was. So when the Ted bot tried to ask her on a date, she rejected him. She was already in a relationship anyway. Even if he was human he didn't have a chance.

Upon being rejected, the Ted bot tried to go all overbearing patriarch on her and lecture her into acceding to his dating demands. His attempts to dominate her failed miserably when she put a bone spike through his head when he pissed her off just a little too much. The fact that Joyce knew he wasn't human may have played a part in how violent she allowed herself to get.

The group arrived at the Summers home to find a disabled robot. Jonathan and Giles took the lead, assisted by Willow and Jenny, on investigating and studying the robot.

Looking in Ted's wallet, the group soon arrived at the residence of record, and found some grisly details. Four previous woman, dead from poisoning, all buried in the basement. They also found a server that was the brains of the robot that was in the midst of building itself a new body.

Not willing to allow murderous artificial intelligences to run amok, the technology savvy members of the group locked up the artificial intelligence's freedom, and continued to study it. They had the idea to apply what they learned to some hardware and software patents that the group would be funded by in the future. Buying books, training supplies, and weapons was not exactly inexpensive.

Carl and Cordelia invested in the project, sure that they would make some money from it. A few years later, when they were rolling in the millions, they were happy they made the decision to invest that day. That project alone would have kept them from being destitute when their father lost everything, even if they hadn't been squirreling away as much money as they could get away with.

* * *

One full moon the group found a werewolf roaming the town at night. They subdued him and locked him up until the morning, when he changed back.

Carl was impressed at the man's equilibrium. He wakes up naked in a cage, and he doesn't even blink. Just looks at them all and says " 'sup."

"You're a werewolf." Cordelia bluntly told him, seeing no reason to beat around the bush.

"Huh." Oz said. "Okay, then. What do I need to know?"

The man was a rock. A cool, laidback rock.

After getting a change of clothes for Oz, Giles gave him a lecture about the nature of werewolves and what he'd have to do to not be a danger around people.

Oz just thanked them before Carl drove him home. Not much was said, but Oz just sort of drifted into the group from then on, when he wasn't playing in his band. He was a good help, having access to a van and willing to drive some of their car-less members around.

A few weeks later, Carl saw his girls carrying some eggs around. Suddenly remembering from the show that they weren't chicken eggs, Carl called the gang to the library and asked them what was up with the eggs.

After some tests they determined they were Bezoar eggs. It didn't take too long to track down the mama egg, and dispose of it. It was a dirty, messy, corpse. Fire was of course the answer to cleaning up the mess, which Carl happily provided.

* * *

The group had a celebration for Buffy's 17th birthday party. Carl could tell she was touched, but she seemed to not be too enthused to be there.

The next day she still seemed frazzled to Carl, but unwilling to talk about what was bothering her. Carl dropped the matter, not wanting to intrude too much.

It wasn't until Willow got a visit from Angelus that the clues clicked into place. Buffy and Angel had slept together and Angel lost his soul.

'After all the hints I gave them, they still screwed it up by screwing each other!' Carl growled to himself.

When the group confronted Buffy, they found that she had been feeling left out because all the other people were in relationships, but she didn't have anyone, and she just couldn't get Angel out of her mind.

Carl just wondered if this was more evidence of a screwed up universe, or if Buffy's feelings were manipulated by the Powers That Be. He had no answers to that, so he could only let it be.

"Buffy. We're here for you. We'll take care of it so you don't have to. No one should have to stake a vampire that wears the face of someone they care for." Carl said while laying a hand on her shoulder in comfort.

Buffy knew it had to be done, but she couldn't be the one to do it. It would tear her apart.

Carl brought his squad of deadly girls with him when he tracked down Angelus. He'd always kept a tracker on the vampire for emergencies. Like if they needed a heavy hitter for something, or if he lost his soul kind of emergency. Carl was glad he had.

They cornered him in an underground crypt and made short work of him. They found three girls' corpses in the crypt with him. All three were petite blondes, which said…something about Angelus.

Making sure they wouldn't be coming back as vampires, they brought the corpses out of the crypt. They would leave the bodies where they could be found by the authorities and buried to give their families closure.

Carl made sure Buffy saw the three corpses that had a resemblance to her. It may have been very harsh, but he thought she deserved the wake up call. She had continued to be romantically involved with a vampire, despite all the warnings and knowledge of what would break Angel's curse. It was only right she saw what the results of her actions were.

Over the past couple of years he felt like the group had all become closer, and he didn't like being cruel to her. It wasn't fun to rub the reality of the consequences of her actions in her face. But she needed to see to believe. He hoped she could survive this.

Only time would tell.

* * *

Buffy wasn't coping well by the end of the school year despite everything her friends tried to do for her. She left Sunnydale to stay in L.A. with her father to try to get distance from the issue and gain perspective. Carl hoped she'd come back after the summer in one piece again.

Two weeks after Carl graduated from high school, he was up in the low mountains outside Sunnydale. He just finished setting up his ritual circle. Every element was placed carefully and quadruple checked.

Once he was satisfied that everything was in place and wouldn't be disturbed, Carl sat at his seat at the table. Settling himself into his sitting stance, he looked through the scope. Adjusting the scope, a golf course came into focus in front of his vision.

Calmly controlling his breathing, not letting the nervousness he felt affect his stability, he scanned the course.

Several minutes later he spotted his target.

Carl took a moment to double check the wind speed and direction based on the flags he had discretely placed last week. He made a couple of adjustments.

One last check on the wind.

He steadily breathed in.

He breathed out.

In the pause before breathing in again, he gently squeezed the trigger.

The report, when it came, almost startled him.

Looking through the scope, he saw that his bullet had been accurate. The round had entered through the Mayor's right temple, almost exploding his head as it exited.

With confirmation of the kill, Carl swiftly packed up his rifle, but didn't leave his ritual circle yet.

Moments later, he was proven correct in his assumptions. A massive attack of dark magic was rushing his way. Carl sensed that if that attack hit him, it would take his life and give it to make the Mayor live once more.

Carl didn't panic or run. He calmly sat at the table he had shot the Mayor from, waiting for his ritual circle of protection to do its thing.

What looked like a giant cloud of Evil arrived, flying there from the mayor's position. The cloud swirled around him, trying to envelop him. Screeching, gibbering, and yowling voices came from the cloud. Carl wondered just how many people the mayor had sacrificed to power that retaliatory strike.

His ritual circle was shining brighter and brighter, the harder it fought against the death cloud. Eventually, the standoff is ended. His ritual circle starts sucking in the black cloud, processing the energy, and channeling it into seven large quartz stones.

When the black cloud is gone, the seven quartz stones had turned midnight black, and they felt full of foul energy. Carl swiftly packed them into a special arcane protection case, to keep them from leaking. He broke the circle, and moved away from it.

The last thing he did before leaving via portal was to toss some incendiaries onto the circle. The incendiary burst into flames hot enough to melt metal from the accelerant he'd left. He had purloined the supplies from halfway around the world via his sling ring so that it wouldn't connect to him.

Seeing that the fire was furiously burning all the evidence left behind, Carl closed the portal behind him.

"Well, that went well." Carl sighed in relief. He knew his math on the ritual and the number of crystals needed had been spot on, but it had still been theory vs real life. Real life was rarely as clean as the theory. But everything had worked out properly. And the mayor was no longer a threat.

Packing away his sniper rifle, he took a shower to wash off the smell of gunpowder, and cleaned up his clothes with magic. Then he joined his family for breakfast on their vacation in Hawaii.

* * *

After the summer was over, Carl started College while the rest of the gang was starting their senior year. Buffy finally returned just before school started. Everyone had been worrying over her, even if they thought she was an idiot for getting involved with a vampire.

It looked like the time away had done her good. Let her sort her issues out. She was back to being the chipper girl she usually was. She had a story about finding a pocket dimension where time ran differently and demons were using human as slaves there. Buffy killed the demons and saved the humans. They expected nothing else from their slayer.

Carl still spent his afternoons with the magic studies girls, practicing and learning, occasionally building items for defense or attack. Mostly enjoying the time he spent with his friends.

After several weeks, Giles got word that Kendra died when she was trying to solo kill a very old vampire, by the name of Kakistos. Kakistos was so old that his limbs had been twisted to be more demon-like than human.

A couple of days later, Faith and her watcher rolled into town looking like they'd been in a nasty fight. Diana was missing her left arm from the elbow down, and Faith was bruised all over. Considering how quickly Slayers usually heal, she must have been on the edge of death before healing up to where she was at now.

Carl and Cordelia found a decent house with a thresh hold for Faith and Diana to stay at. When Kakistos arrived in town, the whole gang, including Faith and Diana, turned out for the big fight. Carl and the rest of the non-slayers worked on taking out the minions while Buffy backed up Faith in beating the snot out of Kakistos before staking him with a beam, leaving just his skeleton behind.

Even master vampires were not a big competition to Slayers if the vampire didn't have a horde of minions to tire the Slayer out before hand. That thought really made Carl wonder about the stupidity of the watchers council that let the Slayer wander around alone with no backup.

When the fight was obviously going against Kakistos, Carl saw a black vampire by the name of Mr. Trick try to escape by slipping away through the shadows.

"Nuh-uh, you nasty STD. You're not spreading anymore holiday cheer!" Carl yelled out, causing Mr. Trick to pause for a fatal second in shock before Carl's fireball hit the vampire, immolating him. Carl remembered that that particular vampire was quite the annoyance in the show. He wasn't about to let the leach have anymore chances to annoy them.

Another month passed before the gang found out that Angel was back in the world, in the vampire flesh and freshly re-souled.

"Like a worn shoe. Cause you know, they too have souls." Xander riffed when he heard the news, leading to Buffy scowling at him.

Carl was really annoyed at the Powers That Be there to meddle with their lives. They obviously severely bend if not outright break the non-interference policy they were supposed to operate under. And Carl didn't believe their B.S. claims of helping good either.

They support balance, which meant that if good was getting too far ahead, they would slap down the good side to restore the supposed balance.

Which meant that Carl didn't believe for a second they were trustworthy. Especially when they had plans to use his sister Cordelia as a host to birth one of the Powers That Be into the world so they can interfere more overtly and become the ruler of the world.

So yeah, looks like Carl found his next research project.

Out of respect for Buffy, Carl and the gang didn't simply kill Angel when they found out he was back. Angel at least looked sorry for the trouble he caused previously, so that was something. But Carl still couldn't figure out what Angel was still doing in town except making his and Buffy's inevitable separation that much more difficult.

Carl seriously considered staking him again to make it easier for Buffy to get over him. Only the fact that she would never forgive him stayed his hand.

A couple of weeks later, a certain Gwendolyn Post grandly swung into town, trying to railroad the group into being her little gophers in finding the Glove of Myhnegon. She kept badgering them and shifting topics so quick, Carl could see that the group might eventually give in to her demands, if only to shut her up. And they still thought she was a legit watcher here on official business.

But Carl was having none of that. He used his magic to tie her up and shut her up.

"Giles, Diana. Why don't one of you call the council and verify Ms. Post's story."At her panicked look, everyone was more than a bit suspicious of her. "I don't believe one word of her story except that she wants that glove. So let's see if we can't shine a bit of light on this situation before listening to anymore of her badgering b.s."

After a call they found out that she had been kicked out of the Watcher's Council. There was no real crimes in her past that would warrant extreme action for now. And the council didn't care about her as long as she stayed out of their business. So, after politely asking her what her goals were, and telling her that if they agreed they might help, they listened to what she had to say.

Which was more badgering nonsense with nothing substantive, except that they needed to help her find the glove.

So they let her go with a warning to stay away from them.

"Giles, I get the feeling that you need to lock up your resources when you're not here. Maybe even move them to more secure accommodations. Otherwise a certain ex-watcher type might be tempted to develop sticky fingers." Carl mentioned.

"Yes, quite." Giles replied while wiping his glasses. "However, I have installed some quite good technological and magical defenses in the library here. She won't be stealing any of my books, I guarantee you."

"Well, if you're sure, then that's fine."

But they didn't have to worry for long. Ms. Post had been out where she shouldn't have been at night and gotten herself eaten by vampires. It did require them to sit outside her grave a couple nights later to make sure Ms. Post didn't rise again.

Carl realized that with Buffy's 18th birthday approaching, the Watchers Council was ordering Giles to perform the Cruciamentum on her. Carl didn't want to see distrust and betrayal bloom in his group, so he approached Giles with a plan to make the council think he'd followed their orders without actually weakening Buffy.

Once the two had a plan, they laid it out for the rest of the gang.

By this point, Diana, Faith's watcher, was thoroughly disillusioned with the council. They didn't provide funds for housing, medical, or security backup when they were in such a tight spot during Kakistos' attack. She didn't want anything to happen to the two Slayers, especially Faith, that she had been working with for several months. She was enthusiastically on board with the plan.

Using a bit of illusion magic and acting skills, the group was all set to fool the watcher council's observers, when the plans went off the rails. The very dangerous vampire the council brought in for the test slipped its leash and killed the council members. It almost made it to the Summers household where it would have been killed by Joyce or Dawn, before the group caught up and beheaded it swiftly.

Rupert and Diana were able to turn the fiasco into ammunition to use against Travers, the current head of the council. It wasn't enough to get him kicked out of the council head position, but it did alienate him from many of the more progressive members of the council.


	4. BtVS 4

Several weeks later a group of demons called the Sisterhood of Jhe were about to attack the school, trying to open the Hellmouth. Carl and Cordelia's dad's luck finally ran out around the same time. The government arrested their dad and confiscated anything that had his name on it.

Carl and Cordelia's mother ran off with her boyfriend, abandoning the two of them. The two were pretty annoyed. They were prepared to help their mother in this difficult time when she went and betrayed them. And that was in the midst of a major apocalypse threat, adding to the stress of the whole incident.

"Good thing we didn't include her in our financial planning, then." Carl commented to Cordelia about their mother when they found out she had skipped town with her boyfriend and any remaining assets the government hadn't taken.

"The no good bitch probably had something to do with bringing dad to the IRS's attention in the first place."

"I wouldn't be surprised." Shrugged Carl.

Later that night, right before the Sisterhood attacked, Xander finally made it to the library, to much ribbing at his lateness.

"Yeah, well, if it wasn't for the zombies setting a bomb in the basement, I would have been here a while go." Xander stated matter of factly.

"Zombies?"

"Bomb?"

"Yeah, it's a thing. I'll tell you later, when these blue bitches aren't around!" Xander yelled as the library was flooded with demons.

What followed was a mad melee of hack and slash, with many a fireball and energy bolt thrown in for good measure. Giles defenses were very nice and helped keep them from being overrun.

There were a few cuts and bruises among the people on their side, but surprisingly they got off with few injuries. Their group tactics and better fighters easily held the day against the unorganized frenzy of the demons fighting.

"Well, get cleaned up and a pizza party?" Carl asked with a smirk to resounding nos.

"I don't even want to think about eating after this gory mess." Was the general consensus.

"Fine, fine. Ruin my fun." Carl muttered.

The rest of the year nothing much happened. Thanks to one sniper round to the mayor's head, all the drama and danger from the show just never manifested. It was all just routine patrols, and occasionally putting down a demon trying to fill the void the mayor left.

Graduation still happened during an eclipse, but despite looking around nervously, no demons or vampires came out of the woodwork. Without the mayor organizing the shindig, they had no reason to come out during the day. Most vampires had better things to do than pay attention to when an eclipse would happen.

The gang almost couldn't wrap their heads around it. Nothing happened. What should they do with themselves now?

As the summer started, Angel finally left for L.A. so he and Buffy could move on with their lives (or unlives) instead of being in some weird holding pattern.

Aside from everyone hanging out, the usual training, and patrols, nothing much happened during the summer.

The rest of the gang joined Carl at UC Sunnydale at the end of summer. Even Xander and Harmony joined them in college. Ever since the Halloween spell, everyone had been more confident, intelligent, and hopeful for the future.

Harmony would never be a rocket scientist, and she would always be obsessed with fashion, but now she was determined to make something of herself. She was going through the School of Business so when she got into the fashion industry she could run her own business and not get ripped off.

Cordelia was joining Harmony in a degree in Business. Amy was getting a degree in Criminal Justice, and Marcie was going for Mechanical Engineering. Carl was studying history and languages.

In the original story, Faith had no authority figures she trusted, and just dropped out of school. In this world, Diana had saved her at the cost of her arm. So when Diana asked her to give school a try, Faith sucked it up and went to school. She was a year behind the rest of the group, the same year as Dawn. Dawn and Faith got along surprisingly well, since Dawn wasn't like her sister Buffy.

Faith and Buffy just didn't ever quite see eye to eye. And unlike in a different world, this difference didn't end up causing irreconcilable differences. In this world, they just weren't great friends.

But Dawn and Diana especially, and the rest of the gang as well, had been working over the past year with Faith to get her acclimated to school. In such a strongly supportive environment, that Faith was still unused to after a whole year, she had actually been blooming and pulling good grades.

If she kept it up, she could actually, possibly, join them the next year at UC Sunnydale if she was so inclined.

The start of Carl's second year was entertaining for Carl on many levels. Seeing how Buffy didn't get along with her roommate entertained him immensely. Having his girls close by during the day was enjoyable too. They didn't share classes, but just knowing that they were nearby and he could enjoy time with them during lunch and breaks made his day.

Carl also saw what he knew to be the soldiers of the Initiative. Carl was really debating with himself about what to do with them. On the one hand, the soldiers were just doing their job and trying to protect their country. On the other hand, Dr. Walsh was a mad scientist that was creating an abomination.

After thinking about it for a while, Carl eventually decided to do nothing, for now. He setup some spells to monitor the Initiative's activity. He wanted to monitor who or what they kidnap, what they did with the people or demons they kidnap, etc.

If they end up kidnapping someone like Tara, he was going to have to do something about them. But until then, he would let it play out. Nothing like getting burned on a top secret black books project to keep the Government from repeating the failure, Carl hoped.

Speaking of Tara, Carl joined Willow and Amy in checking out the Wicca club, to see if there were any actual magic users around, when they saw her.

Amy and Willow had advanced greatly in the arts, while still remaining firmly in control. Carl was quite proud of both of them. Marcie still couldn't seem to develop any skills other than her invisibility and force fields, but she was gradually increasing the size of her shields as she got stronger.

Because the three of them had developed their skills greatly, all three could tell that the only magic user in the group was Tara. After sharing some telepathic thoughts with eachother, they shared that they all had a good vibe about Tara. She just felt so kind and down to earth to Carl.

Carl suggested that Amy and Willow should approach Tara and get her to agree to join them in the afternoon at their study house. Due to his knowledge of her abusive past, he wanted to let the two girls do the initial meet and invite.

The patents the group had based off of what they learned from the Ted Bot, and their memories from Halloween, had given the group a very large and growing budget. So they purchased a large property midway between Sunnydale High and UC Sunnydale to be their base of operations. It was a much more secure place to hold the majority of their weapons and books than in the high school library, while also giving the group a place to meet regularly for training and socializing.

Giles agreed that he would stay at the library for one more year until Dawn and Faith graduated, then he would tender his resignation and join Diana at the base they set up.

So in the afternoon when the group congregated at their base for training and study, Tara joined them. At first Tara seemed overwhelmed by the hectic and chaotic nature of the whole group together. But she soon acclimated and started relaxing when she felt the good vibes in the air.

When Carl saw his opportunity, he slipped into the seat next to Tara, startling her when she noticed him there.

"You're not a demon, you know." Carl quietly stated.

"What?" Tara whispered.

"Whoever told you that you were a demon lied to you. You're just a human girl with a magic talent. Not a demon." Carl reaffirmed.

"H-how did you know?" Tara seemed afraid of the answer.

"How did I know you were told you were a demon? Or how did I know you weren't one?"

"Both." Tara whispered back. "You could be a demon lying to me right now."

"But I'm not." Carl just whispered kindly. "I too have a magic talent. Everyone here has some kind of mystical talent, but we're all human here."

"Even…?" Tara asked, pointing over at where the two slayers were sparring with blistering speed and strength.

"Yup. Before they were called as Vampire slayers, they were even more normal than you or me. They didn't have our magic talent. But when the previous slayer died, and they got called, they gained large boosts to their physical abilities." Carl paused to let her think about that for a moment.

"I'm not expecting anything from you Tara, except maybe hoping for some friendship. With my talent I heard your mind practically shout out that you don't deserve anything good because you thought you were a demon. I just wanted you to know that you are not some kind of fallen, dirty thing. You're a beautiful person, inside and out. And even if you were a demon, if I compare you to those who lied to you, well…who were the ones actually acting like demons? Who were the ones who were being inhuman? I can tell it wasn't you. And you didn't deserve to be treated like that."

Carl paused for a bit to let what he said sink into her head and heart.

"You can be yourself here, among us. You can explore your magical talents or not as you please. You don't have to worry about us being afraid of you. You don't have to be afraid of us. I just wanted to let you know that, Tara."

Then Carl shut up. He'd said what he wanted to. What he felt he needed to. Now it was up to Tara as to when she would take the next step, if she did.

He could tell she was having a hard time accepting everything he'd said. It might take her a while to really truly believe it.

But they had time.

* * *

Carl laughed and laughed when it turned out that Buffy's roommate was a demon who had snuck out of her dad's house (dimension) to come slum it up with the humans. But her dad came and got her and took her home with no casualties or injuries, so Carl didn't feel bad about laughing at her.

It was good to be reminded that not all supernatural creatures were inherently evil. A powerful demon dad that just came to earth to drag his rebellious daughter home, but didn't hurt anyone in the process, was just too funny.

Several weeks later Carl heard some news that the people who went to a particular bar ended up being transformed into cavemen. The transformation lasted for 24 hours, then went away. By the time he investigated, the demon in charge of the bar was long gone. Carl shrugged, and put him on a list to be watchful for if they ever came back. That kind of incident might be nothing more than an accident, or it might be a test for future mischief.

A few weeks later, there was evidence of a werewolf attacking and killing people on campus. They knew it wasn't Oz, he was too careful and they'd long since given him a more secure cage than the one in the library at Sunnydale High.

They spent the last day of the lunar cycle out tracking the wolf, and finally caught it. When it transformed back to a human the next day, it was some girl named Veruca. She had the hots for Oz, and they had been dating, but she was of the opinion that they should let their wolves run free. She didn't care what her wolf did during the transformation.

That kind of irresponsible attitude could not be allowed. People would be killed. Werewolf hunters would come into their territory, looking to hunt all werewolves, even the innocent ones that kept themselves locked up.

So they gave Veruca and Oz a few options to choose from. She could go to a group of Tibetan monks that could help her learn to retain control of her wolf while she changed. Oz could go with her. The gang would fund their travel.

She could agree to being locked up during the full moon so she wasn't a danger to others and she would be safe from being hunted by werewolf hunters.

Or she could agree to be magically bonded to Oz. It would be a mix between a marriage bond and pack. She would be subservient to Oz and have to obey him.

If she refused one of those three options, then more drastic measures would be taken. Magical lobotomy or death may or may not have been mentioned.

When she saw the seriousness of the group, and that she really didn't have a choice, she started to take them seriously. Especially when she was easily toyed around with by Buffy and Faith, who were faster and stronger than she would ever be. And then Carl showed her just how easily they could take her head off with a wind blade.

She wasn't laughing and enjoying being such a wild animal anymore after that demonstration and the realization that werewolves weren't the highest animal on the food chain.

In the end, Oz and Veruca decided to go to Tibet to learn how to be in control. Even more than letting her wolf run free, Veruca liked the idea of being the wolf. And it would get her far, far away from the scary group.

So they sent them off with well wishes.

* * *

Several weeks later silence descended on Sunnydale. Everyone lost their voices. There were news reports saying it was a widespread case of laryngitis. Riiiiight.

The floating fatman, the Baron- er.. the Gentlemen had arrived in Sunnydale to harvest seven human hearts. Their only weakness was apparently the human voice, so they cast a spell to keep everyone from being able to speak.

The Gentlemen also had a group of straight jacket wearing zombie-like footmen to do their bidding. When the gang realized something supernatural was going down in town, they rendezvoused at the house. Giles gave a quick presentation on what they were facing.

Originally, they would have all split up and searched around town to look for the Gentlemen's base. But thanks to some technology aid and super sleuthing from Amy, they narrowed down the Gentlemen's headquarters. Carl didn't pay as much attention to the specifics as he should, but it had something to do with a program that collated social media and blog posts and distilled the reported sightings down to a location.

They soon arrived at the likely base, and found the Gentlemen getting ready to kill another girl the footmen kidnapped. Without wasting time, Carl and the rest of the magic users sent a wave of fireballs and wind cutters, slicing and burning up three footmen. Buffy, Faith, and a totem wielding Xander then rushed the rest of the footmen, tearing through them with swords.

The footmen were easy to take out, but the Gentlemen were immune to weaponry. It was an exercise in frustration. They were able to keep the Gentlemen from killing the girl whose heart they wanted, but they couldn't kill them. And it was getting tough to keep them from just floating away.

Finally, in the middle of the fight, Buffy saw a box that she had a dream about, so she smashed it. They soon realized their voices were restored. The whole group vindictively yelled and screamed, which caused all the Gentlemen to pop like green colored custard filled balloons.

The Gentlemen's ending was funny.

The cleanup was annoying.

But after the fight where Tara saw what a real demon looked like and what kind of things they do, it made her realize that she really wasn't a demon, like Carl had tried to tell her.

So many years of indoctrination and negative feedback was a bit difficult to overcome from just a few words from a virtual stranger. But actions, especially Tara's own actions, made a huge difference in her personal paradigm, in how she saw herself and her place in the world.

She firmed her resolve to join them, and to live her life. She decided she wouldn't be held back anymore by her past. That she would live as she wanted to.

* * *

Toward the end of the academic year, Carl discovered that Professor Walsh had somehow discovered that Tara was a magic user, and had plans to kidnap Tara to experiment on her.

As Tara was part of the gang and a friend, this information and plan of Dr. Walsh's was unacceptable to Carl. It was finally time to do something about the Initiative.

But just how to go about dealing with the situation? If he just takes them out, the military will never stop looking for the responsible party. They wouldn't be able to let such a challenge to their authority stand.

But if the project was destroyed from within? By their own experiment? And records of an illegal military lab on a college campus was leaked to the media? And records of the inhumane torture and illegal drug testing on the troops was included in that leak?

Well, the Government would cover that up faster than greased lightning and deny, deny, deny. They would be too busy denying their own mistakes to realize a third party had been responsible. Probably.

Carl decided it was worth the risk to end the threat to his people. Tara was such a sweet girl, and getting kidnapped by military types and experimented on might ruin any progress she had made.

Carl started enacting his plan. First he snuck into the base under an invisibility spell, following the soldiers as they entered. He worked his way down to Walsh's office and made copies of the more sensitive papers. Plugging in a flash drive to her computer, the hacking software that his group made had soon broken in, and made a copy of everything logged.

Carl then went to inspect the cells. He found several types of demons that looked inhuman but were just trying to live peacefully. And there were even more that should just be killed immediately. Carl sighed at the arrogance and ignorance of Walsh.

He made plans to free the peaceful demons, then set up a remote activated spell that would activate Adam, the human/demon/cyborg, and cause him to rampage around the base. Carl then spirited away the peaceful demons, and saw that they got home. Illusions were so helpful.

He monitored the base, and when Walsh was next inside, talking to her abomination, he activated his spells remotely. Adam first killed Walsh, then went on a rampage, killing everything in his sight. He broke into the cells and destroyed the demons that are just parasites.

Carl nodded in approval. One less thing for him to take care of.

At the same time, he released a carefully edited version of the bases records to the media. One that didn't include any records of the supernatural. The illegal nature of the Initiative, the black books funding, and the medical torture and experimentation caused a giant fuss that the government worked hard to simultaneously crack down on, and scapegoat certain individuals.

Meanwhile, when Adam the abomination made its way to the entrance, Carl unplugged it from its power source, and killed the spells that were temporarily animating it, causing it to fall apart and "die".

Carl levitated the heavy creature to a wagon, covered it up, and carted it off for the rest of the gang to see what the military was working on under their campus.

Later on, Giles got the Watcher Council to work through the chain of politics to provide pressure from Britain to the U.S. to make sure such an abomination never happens again. Hopefully the Watchers Council might actually prove useful.

Faith and Dawn graduated high school that year, and everyone was ready for summer break. With the funds the patents hold, the group was very rich. As a group they headed out on a two week cruise in the Bahamas for vacation that was entirely enjoyable. It was good to get out and relax for a time.

Somehow during the cruise Tara and Faith joined Willow and Dawn in their relationship with Xander. Well, it was more like Tara dated Faith and Willow while enjoying the company of Dawn and Xander. Xander dated Willow and Dawn, while also having sex with Faith and enjoyed watching Tara, who wasn't ready to have sex with a male yet, have sex with the others. Willow dated Xander, Tara, and Dawn, while having sex with Faith. Dawn dated Xander and Willow and egged on Faith and encouraged Tara to let Xander have sex with her. While Faith just had fun fucking them all. She wasn't one for the mushy scene, but she put up with it for the sex.

They were complicated. And amusing as hell for Carl to watch.

Buffy just hung around the edges watching everyone but her have lots of sex. She still was unwilling to commit to either Carl or Xander's group of sex friends, though she admitted she was tempted to join Carl, if only to scratch that itch.

Cordelia readily admitted she was too selfish to want to share her man with anyone else, which is why she never tried to join the Xander harem. Besides, he was too much of a dork. She would find someone in the future. She had plenty of time.

* * *

After an enjoyable summer, the gang started up college again. Faith decided she would rather gain some mechanic skills and work on hot rods and motorcycles, so she joined a trade school instead of college. But she still joined everyone in the afternoon for training and socializing.

A strangely powerful vampire breezed into town, hypnotized Buffy, drank some of her blood, and just as smoothly waltzed out of town before they could get a lock on him. They found out later that it was Dracula, who had a plethora of unusual powers. Powers that made it so Buff couldn't even force herself to resist him.

Buffy had been so close to joining Carl in bed, and now she was freaked out and wasn't ready to join him until she regained her equilibrium. Carl vowed at that point that he would end that bloodsucker someday, the cockblocker.

A few months into the semester and Carl noticed that there were reports of people losing their minds. There was no attributable cause to why they became unhinged.

Glory had arrived in town looking for the key.

Carl had been preparing for this since the day he arrived in this world. Due to the method of his entry as a Spare Key, he knew Glory would do anything to get her hands on him or Dawn. And that if she was allowed to use the key, it would rip apart their world and reality.

And he wasn't about to let that happen.

Carl had done his research, and he knew where Ben Wilkinson worked and lived. Previously he'd known Glory's host had been named Ben, but until Glory's minions showed up and kept track of him when Glory wasn't making use of her meat puppet, he wasn't sure just which Ben it was. But now, with Glory's minions having provided the target, Carl was informed and prepared.

He had ramped up the ritual he'd used to kill and drain the power from the mayor. With the mayor, he'd only used 7 stones as the base of the ritual to enable the ritual to fight the mayor's magic and to store the power.

For this ritual, he was using the 7 stones that stored the Mayors power, after they had been cleansed and purified, as the catalyst to power the spell. Then he would use 7 times the amount of stones, and the stones would be twice as large as the ones used to store the mayor's power. Glorificus was after all a demon Goddess, while the mayor had only been a powerful 100 something year old magic user.

Carl carefully set up the ritual. This would be the shot that would determine how easy or painfully difficult the next five years in this world would be.

After everything was perfect, Carl set up the shot for when Ben would leave his apartment in the morning. He knew Ben was only an unwilling host, but that didn't stop Glory from using him. And if she was allowed to keep coming after him or Dawn, no other weapon they had could really do any damage to her.

They had never run into Anya the vengeance demon, so they couldn't get the troll hammer from her ex. And the scythe was...somewhere. Carl had no idea where at the moment. So this ritual was the only thing that would stop Glory.

And even if it didn't permanently kill her, it will kill her host and prevent her from coming back for who knows how long. So either way, he wins today.

Ben stepped out of his apartment.

Carl squeezed the trigger.

Ben died.

The ritual created a link to the Hellgoddess Glorificus, and began draining her power into the stones. Her power like a tidal wave smashed towards him, trying to destroy whatever insect dared to suck her power.

Carl nervously watched the attack get closer, then envelop him. A moment later, he sighed in relief. He was still alive. The jump didn't end abruptly with his death.

Carl sat there and waited for the ritual to end. And waited.

"Damn, how much power does this bitch have? In the show they could barely hold their own in a fight against her when she was severely weakened by working through a host body. If she was there in her full power, there'd be no way to stop her." Carl realized.

Finally, after what seems like hours, the power drain was complete. The 49 football sized stones were glowing with a malevolent power. Carl carefully packed them away in mystically reinforced boxes, so they wouldn't leak power and attract the wrong kind of attention. He then stored them in a heavily secured facility with as powerful protections on it as he can make it. He would cleanse the stones at a later time.

Carl finally allowed himself to relax and enjoy the success. But only for a morning.

Now that Carl didn't have to worry about Glory coming after him or Dawn, he had some time to work on some other messes that need cleaning up.

Carl searched for and found Rack, who was a warlock that would hook people on dark magic and addictive magical highs. It would get them more and more addicted to his brand of magic, which would lead them to do whatever he wanted them to, in order to get their junkie magic fix. Basically he was a mystical drug dealer.

It took a few days to map out Racks defensive spells and create some magical lockpicks to overcome them. Early morning, when business was over for the night for Rack, Carl slipped in through the defenses with his crafted magical lockpicks.

Since Carl had nothing to say to such a scum man who in another world had hooked both Amy and Willow on his brand of dark magics, Carl simply slit his throat. Carl watched carefully, poised to act.

When Rack's throat was slit, he woke up, and tried to talk or scream, but couldn't due to the damage to his throat. He flailed around on the bed, his blood fountaining out. Carl briefly thought he looked a little pathetic, but squashed any hint of pity he felt for such scum that destroyed so many lives. Rack would have been happy to get Amy and Willow addicted and ruin their lives too. He deserved no pity.

The moment Rack began gathering magic, Carl acted, slapping Racks magic down with his own, then keeping him suppressed. There was no way he would let Rack escape. All the way until Rack died, Carl made sure the man couldn't gather any magic. He then burnt the body to ashes.

Before leaving, Carl looting any money in the place, as well as magic books. Carl would go through the books and determine what to do with them. He wasn't a fan of destroying books to prevent knowledge of dark magics from getting out. Because one never knew if there wasn't a second book like it out there. And if you couldn't do research to learn what spell one was up against, there would be no way to defeat whoever would use such foul magic.

Now that the dangerous and distasteful jobs were done for the moment, Carl enjoyed the rest of the year in peace. Or as much peace as living on the Hellmouth can give you. With four girls gracing him with their attention, how could he not enjoy life?

That's right, Buffy finally couldn't resist scratching that itch, and joined Carl in bed. He had long since done a medical scan on her, and determined that her time with the undead Angel hadn't infected her with anything. So Carl was happy to share time with the beautiful and athletic woman. She was very…enthusiastic.

They definitely weren't boyfriend and girlfriend, like he was with Amy, Marcie, and Harmony. They were simply friends with benefits for now. Very nice benefits.

Everyone in the relationship was aware of the circumstances and consented. So no one was being taken advantage of. Unless they wanted to be. Giggity.


	5. BtVS 5

Before starting up the new school year, which would be Carl's final year of college, he decided it was time to check up on a name that made a huge nuisance of himself in the show. Warren Mears. The man who almost kickstarted an apocalypse by killing Tara, driving Willow to almost end the world because of her grief.

When Carl investigated Warren, he found that Warren had recently been escalating his violence. His ex had broke up with him because she was afraid for her life. In Warren's apartment, found books on magic, as well as plans written down and scribbled on whiteboard. Plans to get revenge on his ex. Plans to enslave Buffy. Plans to make himself powerful and torture anyone who got in his way.

Carl didn't even know how Warren focused on Buffy or why. It didn't matter really, anyway, since Warren was a lunatic, a rabid dog. Carl wasn't going to give him a chance to bite those Carl cared for.

When Warren arrived at his apartment that night, what he found was his apartment stripped of anything valuable.

Before Warren could even get up a good rant about being robbed, a bullet met his head from behind. Carl didn't want to monologue. He didn't want to give the dog a chance. He simply wanted to end a threat.

After grabbing anything of value on Warren's body, he closed the door and then broke the lock and door in, making it look like a robbery that Warren walked in on and got killed.

Carl cast a spell to make sure he didn't leave any forensic evidence behind, and portaled out of there.

The mysteries of life, where in one world a soulless demon can work hard to overcome his instincts and eventually win himself a soul. But in the same world a human with a soul worked so hard to become a monster.

Carl shrugged. Such was life.

* * *

Now that Glorificus was taken care of, and Buffy wasn't resurrected by her friends, leading to some kind of "imbalance" that the First Evil could take advantage of, Carl felt that things in Sunnydale were pretty stable.

They had two slayers, a totem user that was nearly slayer strong, various techies, and a whole slew of magic users. They even had a young up and comer, the 15 year old Billie (although he preferred Bill now) who had caused the nightmares everyone suffered from during his first year here.

Carl had kept up the practice of spending several hours each weekend dedicated to Bill's training. Bill had even convinced his parents to let him spend time with the group after school during the week days, so Bill was exposed to the whole gang, knew who they were, and really looked up to them.

Bill started following their example and began gathering people he thought were good to join his own age group, and started training them. Bill had even been paying attention to the younger students, protecting them and seeing who were possible candidates for joining the Defense League, as they took to calling it.

Carl suspected he had started a tradition that would be passed down in Sunnydale High for years. Defenders of the Realm, a group of people that would put themselves between the enemy and their people, to protect their lives. He wouldn't always be here, so it was uplifting to see that the place wouldn't fall to shit after he was gone.

So now that Carl felt that Sunnydale was pretty steady, during his final year at College he started making trips to L.A. He introduced himself to the group of people Angel had recruited, and started scouting out the major opposition, the demonic law firm, Wolfram & Hart.

The three senior partners of that particular firm were three Old Ones demons, the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart. Any employees of the firm unknowingly signed away their souls and rights of freedom, basically making them slaves. They did the same for clients who weren't in the know. They arranged for evil to flourish as the senior partners tried to make their way back into the world so they could turn it into their personal fiefdom.

Carl's next self appointed task was to investigate the firm and find ways to hurt its operations, and to eventually shut it down.

* * *

Several weeks into the new school year, Carl arrived at Angel Investigations headquarters, the Hyperion Hotel, to find it mostly deserted, except for someone shouting upstairs.

Carl made his way up, to see what was going on. There he found Wesley, an ex-watcher, screaming misogynistic rants at a closed door as he tried to bust it down with an axe.

Wesley had been an up and comer watcher for the council that the council sent to Sunnydale to replace Diana after they learned about her disability of losing her left hand. Suffice it to say, at the time, Wesley was a prideful stuck up jerk, and he didn't mesh well with the group. Things happened, Wesley was kicked from the Watchers Council, he somehow joined Angel Investigations, and had managed over the past couple of years to become a decent person that Carl could tolerate.

So when Carl saw Wesley acting completely out of character with some woman hating bile spewing from his lips, Carl didn't immediately kill him, just knocked him out. From what he gathered before he knocked Wesley out, Fred was behind the door.

"Fred? Wesley is knocked out. Do you have any idea what was controlling him to make him act that way?" Carl called out to the locked door.

"Carl?" Came Fred's tremulous reply. "Is it safe now?"

"Yeah, Wesley is knocked out and tied up until we can turn him back to his usual self. Any idea what caused it?"

Fred cracked open the door, and Carl could see one eye looking out, taking in the situation, as she was prepared to close and lock the door in a moment's notice. Carl kept his distance to reassure her he wasn't going to do anything.

"There was some guy named Billy that seems suspect. He always had a knowing grin when we saw some random guys start acting like Wesley was. Angel went after him, to stop him, but I'm afraid that he'll fall victim to the same thing. I don't want to see a scary Angel." Fred whimpered the last bit.

"Things will work out, it'll be fine. I'm going to put Wesley into another room for now, and go help Angel. You should stay there for now."

"But what if he gets you too?" Fred asked/whimpered.

Carl knew that Fred was still suffering from her time in the Hell dimension Pylea that her old professor tricked her into because he felt threatened that Fred's absolute brilliance would overshadow him. She had been having a difficult time overcoming the fear.

"Well, there's never a 100% guarantee that thing will work out. That's just the way life is. But I believe that with our hard work and effort, and a strong will, we will prevail. They won't keep us down, you know why?"

"Why?"

"Because we're like the gristle between the teeth of fate." At Fred's blank look, Carl continued explaining. "We're just too tough to chew up. No matter what fate does, we're still here. We're tough, and we will win in the end. Fate will just have to resign herself to spitting us out, because we refuse to give up. Right, Fred? I know you are one tough gristle. And you can overcome anything you set your beautiful mind to. You know that, right?"

"Yeah." Fred stated, seeming to take strength from Carl's statements. "Carl?"

"Yeah, Fred?"

"You suck at metaphors." She stated.

Carl laughed, nodding. "Yup. But, hey, you got the gist, right?"

Fred smiled back at him. "Yup. Gristle heroes, that's us."

Carl smiled back at her, then teleported Wesley to another room, and teleported in a tazer, mace, and a tranq rifle, leaving them on the floor in front of the door for Fred.

"It's dangerous to go alone, take these, Fred." Carl laughed as he left. "Be back in a bit with a totally normal for Angel, Angel."

Carl felt for the tracker he left on Angel. Just because he got his soul back, doesn't mean he couldn't lose it again. No sense taking chances.

When Carl portaled in a decent distance from Angel so he wasn't in the middle of the actions, he saw Angel confronting a young cocky man at an Airport. Carl could feel the young man, Billy, reaching out with his power, like tentacles trying to pry Angel's head open, trying to subvert Angel to his way of thinking.

A brief scan of Billy's uppermost thoughts let Carl know he was set in his ways. There was no redeeming him. So he pulled out his AR15, aimed, and shot the little bastard in the head.

Angel was surprised, to say the least.

"Carl." Angel greeted him tersely. "What brings you around?"

"Oh, just dropping by for a visit." Carl laconically answered. "Saw some whackiness afoot, thought I'd lend a hand." Pause for a beat. He then started clapping sarcastically.

Angel barely smirked, but smirk he did. There was a soul with humor in there somewhere!

"Well, thanks then. Didn't really need the help, I had it handled, but thanks anyway."

Carl shrugged at Angel's face saving. He knew the man code just as well.

"You looked like you had it handled, I just got impatient." Carl shrugged. "Comes from having portals. I can no longer stand waiting in line. I get all jittery when I'm forced to."

"Ahh, the impatience of youth." Angel still had that smirk on.

"You got that right, old man." Carl snarked back. "Well, unless you feel like carrying a body around the Airport, I'll take care of cleanup." Carl used a portal to transport the body away for later disposal. "Need a ride back via portal?"

"Nah, I brought my car. Airport parking is expensive, so I'd better move it now."

"True. See ya back at the hotel."

Carl portaled back, leaving Angel standing there alone.

"Wish I had portals." Angel whispered as he started jogging towards his car.

Carl arrived back at the hotel, and informed Fred that Billy was gone, and everything should go back to normal. He then started cleaning up the mess, and Fred came out to help. Even though she kept her tazer and mace on her, she seemed to be coming out of her cave and facing the world again.

When Wesley finally woke up and remembered what he'd done, Carl could see the shame and guilt flooding his face. When he started to shut himself off from the others, Carl decided to head off this mope fest before it got started.

Carl hustled Wesley off to a different room to have some private words.

"Aright, what's the deal? Why are you feeling guilty?" Carl demanded of Wesley.

"I was so full hate towards Fred. How can she stand to look at me after what I said? I can't stay here, she's so fragile right now, how can she break out of her fear if I'm around to remind her?"

Since Wesley didn't look like he was getting off his guilt filled obsession anytime soon, Carl simply slapped him. Pow! Right in the kisser. The shock and stinging pain focused Wesley on something other than his guilt.

Holding his hand to the cheek Carl had slapped, Wesley glared at him. "What was that for?"

"You awake yet?"

"Huh?"

"I asked if you were awake yet? You're so set on blaming yourself for being mind whammied, you weren't looking around you at what was really going on. Now come here and tell me what you see." Carl opened the door and gestured for Wesley to look out.

"Fred is cleaning up." Wesley blankly said.

"Yup. She's moving out of her cave. She's being brave, and facing the world. She knows that it wasn't you in control. She knows you don't believe any of those things you said while you were mind whammied. But if you don't get over yourself and your need to feel guilty, you'll basically be saying that you don't trust her to be able to figure these things out herself. That you don't believe in her or her intelligence. Now _that_ is the kind of behavior that will undermine her." Carl emphasized.

"So you need to get over yourself, stop the pity party, and act and behave normal around her. For her sake, if for no other reason. I mean, aside from the fact that you weren't in control. Or do you still believe the things you said while mind whammied?"

Wesley sputtered for a moment. "What? NO! Of course I don't!"

Carl simply nodded, smiling. "Good to hear it. So, can you do that for her? Fake it till you make it, so she knows you believe in her, in her intelligence, and so you don't undermine her growing confidence?"

Carl could see the moment Wesley made his decision. His shoulders squared up, his back straightened, and his facial features set in a mask of determination. He nodded firmly.

"Good man." Carl clapped him on the shoulder. "Now get out there and help your girl clean up."

Carl simply laughed as Wesley sputtered denials, moving to join Fred and Gunn in cleaning up.

At about that time, Angel made his entrance. Fred took one look at him, and stated loudly with a straight face. "Hail, hail, the gristle hero returns!"

"What?" Angel blankly stared at Fred, totally discombobulated.

Carl couldn't help it after looking at his face, he burst out laughing. "The look on your face." He wheezed between his laughter as everyone looked at him askance, except Fred. She knew exactly what she'd done.

Wesley and Gunn then looked at Angel's face for a moment, before they too started chuckling.

"You got to admit, dawg, your face was funny." Gunn commented with a grin.

Angel just sighed "no respect" with a small grin as he enjoyed watching his friends have a lighthearted moment, even if it was at his expense. Turning back to look at Fred, "Gristle hero?" Angel queried.

So Fred launched into a long, involved explanation of why they were Gristle Heroes, that not even fate could chew them up.

Carl simply smiled.

* * *

Several weeks later when Carl was again visiting Angel's crew, he was surprised to almost get shot on arriving via portal.

"Whoa, what's going on?"

"Darla's pregnant and Wolfram & Hart and some vampire cult are coming for her and the baby." Was his answer from Fred.

"Run that by me again? You mean, like Angelus' sire, Darla?" Carl was a little shocked at the suddenness of it all.

"Yeah, Darla came back as a human. Drusilla turned her into a vampire."

"Wait, Drusilla is back too?" Carl asked. Were all his vampire kills going to be coming back? Angelus, Darla, and Drusilla. Would the next one be Spike?

"Yeah, Wolfram & Hart have been busy." Gunn commented.

"I'll say." Carl muttered.

"Yeah, so Angel and Darla had sex. After Angel had done some trials to save Darla that didn't work because she'd already been brought back once. But it allowed her to get pregnant. She's sharing a soul with the child, so she's good at the moment. But everyone seems to want the baby because of some prophecy. So we have to prepare to defend against a vampire cult and human mercenaries sent by Wolfram & Hart, and just random demons after the bounty."

"My head is spinning. Okay, I guess that's what I get for not showing up for a couple weeks. Right, first things first: the fight. I'll be right back with more help. Would it kill you people to pick up a phone and call for backup once in a while?" Carl grumbled.

He portaled back to Sunnydale and quickly gathered the gang. He made with the explainy. Everyone was onboard with helping Angel's Crew, so they loaded up on equipment, and Carl portaled them all to the hotel to help Angel's group protect the baby.

While everyone and their dog was focused on the action at the hotel, Carl felt it was the perfect time to take advantage of low security at all the Wolfram & Hart properties he had scouted over the past few months. He had had a lot of time to scout out the defenses and prepare items to overcome their security spells.

Property after property he broke into, looting everything of value, installing viruses that would infect their systems and steal their data and online accounts. Libraries, items of power, even employee contracts.

Wolfram & Hart as an organization was going to be _crippled_ after this.

Meanwhile, with two and a half slayers, an army of mages, and high tech weaponry, the battle at the hotel was almost a cake walk. What would have been a close, nearly losing, battle, turned into an absolute rout of the bad guys.

In the end, to save her child, Darla staked herself. Carl didn't know what to think about that act of self sacrifice. But he wasn't going to second guess his choices to stake vampires. Yes, under special circumstances some of the vampires can rise to the occasion and become better than they were. But they need special circumstances. Leaving them to run free and murder people is not the environment they need to be capable of bettering themselves.

Angel named his son Connor. Carl could tell how taken he was with the boy.

Angel was a complicated man that had gone through many trials in life. Most of those times were downs, rather than ups. He has lived for hundreds of years with a blood demon in his head. As a vampire he knew with a certainty that he would never have a chance to have the simple joys in life that humans take for granted. Like fatherhood. Like love. True love.

And now, he has a chance at a bit of that human experience. Something he long thought denied him. This opportunity, in a way, was an even bigger chance at having a piece of being human than falling in love with Buffy was.

Anything that endangered his son, or his chance at being a father, would be met with a towering rage that would eclipse anything the vampire Angelus had ever been capable of feeling.

Which is why when, a few weeks later, Carl caught a snippet of thought from Wesley about sending Connor away to a different dimension, he had to act to prevent monumental mistakes from being done.

Carl grabbled Wesley, and teleported them away. After interrogating Wesley for a bit, who didn't want to tell him what was up, he finally loosened up and explained. Wesley had already been caught, if he could get Carl on his side, his mission would get easier.

"There is a prophecy about Connor. I finished translating it, and it said _'The father will kill the son'_. I care a great deal for both Angel and Connor. It would destroy Angel if he did anything to his son. So to protect them both, I need to send Connor away." Wesley explained, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Carl just sighed at Wesley's stupidity. Carl then glared at Wesley. "Are you an idiot? You must be. Have you ever heard of the story of Oedipus? His biological father was the king. The Delphi Oracle told him that any son he bore would end up killing him. So he gave his son to a servant to leave the boy on the mountain side to die of exposure."

"Instead of doing so, the servant gave the boy to a shepherd, who passed the child to another and another, until he ended up in the hands of the neighboring country's king and queen, who couldn't have children. After growing up, Oedipus heard from the Delphi Oracle that he was destined to kill his father and sleep with his mother. Thinking that the oracle meant his adoptive parents, he left his adoptive parents behind, going far away. After some convoluted story happened, Oedipus ends up killing his biological father and sleeping with his biological mother. Self fulfilling prophecy confirmed. The Delphi Oracle puts another checkpoint on her tally of successful prophecy."

"Is this story perhaps sounding familiar to you? Certain individuals up high want certain plans and stories to happen. They need people to act a certain way, but they are restricted by rules they have to follow, so they leave an 'ancient prophecy' lying around so the targeted schmuck, in this case you, freaks out and acts in such a way so their convoluted plans can go forward. I guarantee you, if you successfully send Connor away, he'll come back as an adult and for whatever reason will be trying to kill Angel. Angel won't have any clue that this adult is his long lost son, and will defend himself, killing his son. All because you danced to the tune of self-fulfilling prophecy."

"So I ask you again, are you an idiot, or what?" Carl angrily glared at Wesley, who was looking sick at what he almost did.

"R-right. I think I'm going to be sick." Wesley collapsed to the ground.

After some time Wesley finally got himself back together. Looking at him, Carl gave some final advice.

"Just forget the whole prophecy. Despite thinking it, you never actually acted on it, so just enjoy your life. Take Fred out on a date or something. Enjoy watching Angel be the best dad ever. And just…live."

Carl teleported them back. For Wesley the matter was dropped. But not for Carl. He knew this was part of Jasmine's plan to get born. If Connor had been sent away, he would have grown up in an instant in a time dilated dimension, come back, and gotten into Cordelia's pants, making her pregnant with Jasmine's new body.

Carl was beyond sick of this Jasmine bitch's plans. He only needed a couple more things before he could counterattack. He redoubled his efforts to procure the needed items.

* * *

Carl looked at the demon trapped in his ritual circle. It had taken a lot of time and effort to get the items needed for the ritual that he'd designed. It had taken just as much effort to get Skip, servant of Jasmine, trapped in there. But now his efforts were going to pay off.

Carl started the ritual. Mystic energies started swirling around the trapped demon. Carl just ignored all of Skip's babble about being a servant of the Powers That Be and they won't let him get away with it. It was just so much hot air, as far as he was concerned.

He had defenses in place. The defenses, the current ritual, and the one following it were all powered by the energy he had siphoned off of Glorificus. So there wasn't much Jasmine could do to stop it, at this point.

The mystical energies in the circle started tearing Skip apart, rendering him down to his constituent elements and energies. Including magical energies. Including the link between Skip and Jasmine.

"Gotcha." Carl exclaimed with a grin when he saw he had the link contained in a crystal. He continued to watch as Skip was rendered for every erg of energy or matter he had, torn apart into nothing.

Once the ritual had completed, Carl moved to enact the next ritual. He set everything up just so, and then placed the crystal containing the link to Jasmine in its place. Using the energy form Glorificus, he started the attack/drain spell. He felt when the spell hooked Jasmine like a fish.

Once the spell was hooked into the higher being, nothing they did could stop it, short of tearing themselves apart to get rid of the hook.

Carl grinned as he watched the energy pour in. He could faintly hear screams of terror from Jasmine as her energy, her very being, was being siphoned away. She didn't even have any defenses set up to retaliate in case of dying. She never thought she would be killed by a mere mortal.

Eventually the last bit of Jasmine was sucked into the prepared crystals. Carl was feeling pretty good about himself right about now.

"Shouldn't have messed with my family, bitch."

* * *

Carl graduated with a History degree. Ever since he chose to be a magic user in this world, he had never looked back. Everything was geared towards making him the best magic user he could be. Exercise was to ensure he stayed alive long enough to learn magic, and because he learned that the more fit he was, the more magic he could channel.

He studied ancient and obscure languages so he could learn more perspectives on magic, more spells, more knowledge, so he could be more efficient in casting, harder hitting, and faster casting.

He organized groups to learn, because he knew only with excellent peers forcing him to up his own game would he grow. And it also helped to keep everyone alive. And he liked them. His decisions weren't all cold blooded benefits. But everything was geared towards being the best mage he could be.

And the history degree allowed him to study more knowledge that was beneficial to his magic studies. Even little nuggets of hidden or hinted knowledge among non-magical history accounts gave him ideas and hints on what else magic can be stretched to accomplish.

Because magic is the ultimate multitool. If he can contort his mind to understand a concept, or think in a certain way, he can make his magic do miracles. If he can understand the underlying mystical principles, he can design rituals to kill gods, or bless a generation with prosperity. Magic will do nearly anything. The user just has to figure out how to bend magic the right way.

* * *

Over the next year Carl continued his attacks on Wolfram & Hart. Every time they showed their ugly mug, he would follow the thread back and take more of their resources, and destroy more of their operations.

Meanwhile he continued to train and spend time with the gang and Angel's crew. He was really enjoying watching everyone. They were so much happier than they had been in the show. Angst drama was almost nil. The threats they faced were negligible with their powers. Carl also got to see the other side of Angel. The human side. Angel was finally coming out from under the shadows of being a vampire. He was becoming a real boy! Carl laughed to himself at his own joke.

Another notable happening was that Carl and Fred had grown much closer during that time. Apparently she had been beyond frustrated at how the rest of Angel's crew treated her with kid gloves. The two possible love interests on Angel's crew for Fred, Gunn and Wesley, had taken too long beating around the bush. So Fred took things into her own hands, and decided to join Carl's group, ambushing them on their bed one evening. The resultant games and her enthusiasm had solidified her place among Harmony, Amy, and Marcie as Carl's girls. Buffy still joined them, but he could tell she wasn't emotionally invested.

When Cordelia found out he had yet another girl in his bed, she couldn't stop making sarcastic comments to him for two weeks. Carl just snarked back at her, waiting for her to get it out of her system. He could almost believe she was jealous of the other girls? Nah, probably not. He was still her brother at the end of the day.

After months of work at stomping on Wolfram & Hart, Carl finally found the links to the three Elder Demons he needed. At this point his ritual to attack and drain power from higher beings was almost routine.

The only surprise for him was that halfway through the power drain of the Hart, the Hart tore himself apart, rather than die whimpering from being drained of power. With his essence being scattered to the winds, there was nothing substantial to hook into, and the ritual wound down. But it was still a success. If the Hart ever pulled himself back together, it would be millennia from now. He was no longer a threat.

Looking at the combined energy he had of a Hellgoddess, a Power Thats Been, and two and a half Old Ones, Carl began planning his next ritual. A few items were definitely needed before hand. Couldn't do the ritual with some of the people as they currently were.

* * *

Carl was in a happy mood. He had just acquired the last item needed to do the ritual he was planning. He just arrived at the Hotel that Angel's crew stayed at when he saw Fred reaching out to touch a sarcophagus full of something that just felt _wrong_.

Desperate to keep her from touching that nastiness, Carl dove for her, tackling her to the ground away from the bad thing.

"Carl? What are you doing?" Fred asked as she lay on top of him.

"Well, Fred. I like you the way you are. Not all hollowed out and lived in by whatever nastiness is in that sarcophagus." Carl replied.

"Oh. Well, thank you for that."

"Anytime."

Their moment was interrupted by a cough at the door.

"Am I interrupting anything?" Wesley asked with a hint of jealousy. It was his own fault he had been too timid to ask her out. He lost his chance.

"Just making sure Fred stays Fred." Carl stated as the two of them got up. He eyed the sarcophagus before portaling it away for now. "There, that's better. That thing is _nasty_."

"So, what brings you here?" Wesley asked.

"Right. Invitations." Carl stated, handing a stack of invitations to Fred. "Everyone is invited. Attendance is mandatory. Tell Angel that just like the Halloween invitation a few years ago, he will forever regret it if he doesn't attend. And he is to bring Connor too. The meeting is about a good thing. A very, very good thing. That no one is allowed to miss. I can't emphasize that enough."

"Right. I'll make sure everyone gets their invite." Fred stated with a bemused smile on her face.

"Thanks. Well, I'm off to make more preparations. Thanks, Fred." Carl gave her a hug and a deep kiss before leaving just to tweak Wesley. And because Fred was gorgeous, flirting with her was never a chore.

* * *

Carl looked at the sarcophagus that was a link to the old one demon Illyria. "You should never have tried to eat Fred. That was your last mistake." Carl said, even though Illyria couldn't hear him.

Once more Carl enacted his tried and true ritual to hook and drain creatures of great power. After some time, he once more had a load of demon energy.

He worked on purifying all the demonic energy. It wouldn't do to use it in its current form for his next ritual.

* * *

Carl welcomed the last of his "guests" to his "party". Turning to look at everyone as they sat at the dinner tables, Carl was happy at the numbers.

From the Sunnydale gang was Rupert, Jenny, Joyce, Buffy, Dawn, Faith, Diana, Willow, Xander, Cordelia, Harmony, Amy, Marcie, Tara, Jonathan, Andrew, Jesse, Bill and his seven recruits, Oz, and Veruca, and Sophronia and Lavinia Fairweather, Giles' aunts.

From Angels crew was Angel, Connor, Gunn, Lorne, Fred, Wesley, Doyle, the Groosalugg, Kate Lockley, Desdemona, Laura Kay Weathermill, and Nina Ash.

After everyone had eaten, Carl stood, getting everyone's attention.

"Everyone is here because I like you guys." Carl smiled through the jeers and catcalls. "You're good people. You fight the good fight. Often outnumbered, sometimes outgunned."

"That's not true, there's only one real Gunn!" Some ham in the audience yelled. Carl barked a laugh.

"I have recently acquired the necessary materials for a blessing ritual. I want everyone here to receive the blessing and protection. Like I said, you're good people and you deserve the blessing."

Naturally the magic users in the crowd had to understand the ritual before they participated. It would be the height of folly to jump blindly into something like an unknown ritual.

Carl showed them his documentation while the non magicians in the crown entertained themselves.

After some time spent studying the ritual and running the numbers, the magicians came together to present their findings. Lavinia was chosen as the spokesperson.

"Your numbers for the ritual are spot on, and it would do what you say it would. Only, there's no way to power it. It would require more power than our group could provide." Was the group's conclusion.

"Ahh, well, don't worry. I've got the power angle covered. If you would follow me down to the ritual room." It took a bit to get such a large group moving in the same direction. Seriously, if it was a battle the entire crowd would suddenly turn into a single unit and demolish the enemy. In such a laid back situation though, it was like herding cats.

The group finally arrived at the prepared ritual room. Every magic user, once they entered the protection wards, went wide eyed at the power radiating off the numerous quartz stones that held the power of three and a half old ones, a Hell Goddess, and a Power That's Been.

"Where did you get so much energy? How?"

"Oh, some interfering busybodies and some old ones volunteered. I've sent the energy through quite a few purification rituals so they won't have a negative effect here. Please, double check my work though. This isn't a ritual that we want to make a mistake on." Carl stated, then let them analyze to their hearts content.

Eventually the consensus of the group was: The ritual would work!

"Now, before we kick this ritual off, there's something that needs to take place first. Angel, front and center!" At Angel's sarcastic look while not moving, Carl sighed. "Fine, be that way. Catch." Carl tossed a vial to Angel. "In there is Mohra's Blood. It'll turn you human. Yes, you'll lose your vampiric strength, but if you are still a vampire, you'll get your ass fried sitting in on this ritual. So take it, get the damn blessing, and enjoy a long life as a human."

After Carl said that, he could see Buffy and Angel eyeing each other across the room. 'Well, if they both still feel that way about each other after all this time, it must really be love.' Carl sighed a little bitterly. He'd enjoyed partaking in the bedroom games with Buffy for the past couple of years, but he'd been fully aware that he didn't have her heart. That it was just to scratch that itch. So if those two could end up with their happy ever after, who was he to stand in their way?

Angel downed the vial and went through the painful process of turning human. Carl may or may not have felt some schadenfreude from watching the process. When that was done, everyone took their places in the circle. Carl started the blessing ritual.

Carl had long pondered about what he could do for the people of this planet after he left when the 10 years was up. Too often the fighters who kept the rest of mankind safe were isolated and overwhelmed by numbers. A slayer can easily kill half a dozen vampires at a time. But what if they were facing a dozen? Two dozen? Three? More slayers die from being outnumbered and worn down by cannon fodder than anything else.

He eventually came up with the idea of this ritual. It would bless everyone here, and the blessing would be passed to their children, and their children's children and so on. They would gain increased stamina, speed, and strength. It wouldn't be anywhere near a slayers speed. But with the ritual a "normal human" would be maybe half as strong as a vampire, instead of only one fifth as strong. That was a decent boost that would help keep them alive.

The ritual would also protect everyone from a vampires bite. If a vampire bit them, the vampire would immediately start to burn. They could no longer be turned by the undead.

Then there was the luck aspect. Luck was one of the more ephemeral aspects of life. It could come and go at the drop of a hat. But with this ritual, there was one aspect of luck that would more often than not turn in their favor. If they were to be faced by overwhelming odds that would likely kill them, chance would turn in their favor and backup help would feel the urge to come to their assistance.

It wasn't a 100% chance. Like Carl told Fred before, there is no 100% guarantee. But it was so much more likely to happen that everyone had a good chance of surviving ambushes and overwhelming odds.

Eventually the ritual ran its course. Everyone was exclaiming in happiness at the feeling of the blessing energy and extra strength. Carl was pleased at everyone's reactions. He even managed a smile when he saw Angel arrange a baby sitter for Connor so he and Buffy could sneak out to renew their relationship.

Carl really couldn't complain about them getting back together. Would have been nice if she'd talked to him first though. But at least he had a few very enthusiastic women in his bed later that night to thank him for what he'd done for them, and taking his mind off the blonde slayer.

* * *

Several weeks later, Carl got word from Giles that the Watchers Council had been killed to the last man. Giles' aunts survived, they were visiting him at the time, so they were nowhere near the slaughter. They also received reports that someone was killing the potential slayers.

After some help from Amy, they tracked down the culprit. Caleb was on his way to Sunnydale. He was a defrocked priest and serial killer. And now he was acting on behalf of the First Evil.

Carl wasn't having any of that. Not after he worked so hard to keep everyone safe.

Once he found out where Caleb was staying, Carl enacted his plan. It was a simple plan. Trap Caleb, check. Use a ritual to tear Caleb apart and isolate the energy signal that was his link to the First Evil, check. Use the link to hook and drain the First Evil, check.

At this point, once Carl got a link to one of these Big Bads the ending was a foregone conclusion. It was almost anticlimactic. But that was the kind of fight that Carl liked.

The only difference was that Carl used 81, o stones, instead of 49. He wanted to be sure he got every last erg of energy from the First Evil.

With the Watchers Council destroyed, the First Evil dead or as good as, and Carl had three more years in this world, he decided he would help with rebuilding a better council. One that would always have the Slayers back and help her, rather than try to control her.

The group first traveled to England and looted the remains of the old council to the bedrock. They took over the financials of the old council. Added on to the money they had made on their patents and software, they were sitting pretty. They kept all the property the old council had as outposts. They then purchased a large parcel of land in California outside the Hellmouth to serve as their new headquarters.

They designed the facilities with everything they could think of for current training and future expansions. It was almost like a college campus itself. They had huge areas for libraries for the occult, technology, and every other aspect of human life. Who knows when some tidbit would be useful, or be considered by society as a whole as lost knowledge?

They had facilities for training magic users, for training Slayers, for training military style support and guards. They had facilities to continue building up their technology base. They even had plots of land dedicated to growing food and magical reagents.

And when the land was purchased, and the first building finished right in the middle of the land, when Carl only had one year left in the world, he set up the magical defenses. He used the purified energy from the First Evil to power the wards that would cover the entire parcel of land.

Any vampires or uninvited demons stepping foot on the land would soon regret it. But only long enough to wait in agony for the security teams to get to them and either kill them or escort them off the land, depending on the situation.

The protection would then continue to feed off the energy of the ley lines to keep the defenses sustained and strong for years and years to come.

Carl thought it was a beautiful start of a grand legacy he could leave behind in this world that he could be proud of.

* * *

Just as Carl was thinking of hunting down Dracula in his last year, he got word through the grapevine that Dracula was dead. Apparently Dracula remembered fondly his drink from Buffy's neck previously. He decided he would go back for another bite. However the blessing of protection had kicked in and burned him to a crisp the moment he sunk his teeth in Buffy's neck.

"Well, in a roundabout way, I did kill him." Carl said to himself with a smile.

Carl spent the rest of the year savoring his time as he followed his routine.

In the morning he would run between one and three miles. He would lift weights physically as well as with his magic.

During the day he would help organize the new Council, and run classes and training for anyone who was part of their organization.

In the evenings he would spend time with his girls, run patrols to keep their communities safe, and spend time in bed with the girls.

* * *

March 9th, 2007 Carl finally broke his long time routine. After the morning exercise, he called off his classes and training. He was just wandering around Sunnydale, looking at the places he'd made memories at for the past 10 years. The Bronze, the School, the College. The battles. The desperate times. The fun times.

He had really lived here.

Eventually he arrived at the old Chase mansion. It had been confiscated by the government, but never sold off. Neither he nor Cordelia bothered to buy it yet. So it just stood empty now.

Carl stood at the gates for a while, looking in at the place it all started for him in this world. Tomorrow was 10 years and his exit date.

He heard footsteps approaching from behind, but since he recognized the owner, he didn't turn around.

"What are you doing here? Everybody has been telling me you've been acting weird the past week or so. So? What's the story?" Cordelia asked.

Carl looked over at his sister in this life and smiled faintly.

"You got time for a story?" Carl asked.

"I already asked, didn't I?" Cordelia said.

"Let's go sit then. This could take a while." Carl commented, as he opened a portal to his place. They sat on the sofa. "Where to start?" Carl asked himself as he thought of his story. "Almost 10 years ago, on March 10, 1997 was my first day in this world. I wasn't always your brother, Cordelia. Let me tell you about a thing called a Jump Chain, The Key, and how I came to be your brother…"

And Carl talked for a while. He explained the jump chain, how he chose to be a Spare Key in this world. How it was happenstance that he was her brother and not one of the other Scooby Gang's sibling. How the memories of their time growing up was implanted.

He explained the general gist of how the world would have gone if he hadn't entered their world. Each of the person's difficulties and endings. How much drama they would have had to endure. And how tragic some of their endings would have been.

To say that Cordelia was a bit overwhelmed by her possible shitty fate was an understatement. To say she was savagely gleeful when she found out what he had done to those who had planned that shitty fate was also an understatement.

And finally he explained that tomorrow his 10 years was up and he would probably be leaving the world behind the next day.

"I haven't actually talked to the person behind putting me in this situation. I'm not totally positive I will be leaving, but it's likely." Carl finished talking. He just silently waited for Cordelia's judgement.

"I can see why you haven't told your girls." Cordelia stated with a sardonic smirk. "Don't want your last day ruined with all the tears and crying?"

Carl laughed for a bit in relief that she was taking it so well. "You know me so well."

Cordelia looked at him for a moment, debating about whether to say what she was thinking. "You know, I've always felt that there was something not quite there about our 'sibling' relationship. Like, if I wasn't firmly convinced you were my brother, I would have jumped your bones long since."

"Cordelia, blunt as always. That's actually one of the things I love about you, you know."

"Don't go writing checks with your mouth you can't cash." Cordelia warned. "No matter what, I will not be in that kind of relationship with my brother." After Carl felt a sinking feeling, she turned gave him some hope. "But if, say, you do leave the world, and can come back one day as my not-brother, then I'll consider it." She said with a smirk.

Carl just smiled back at her. That wasn't a flat out no.

"Well, what do you want to do on my last day here?" Carl asked.

"Hmm. Last day, huh. Well, then you're taking me shopping." Cordelia stated.

"What?" Carl spluttered.

"Don't think I didn't notice over the last ten years how often you avoided going shopping with us. You always had an excuse. Always some class, or training, or emergency that saved you at the last moment. Well, not this time, buster. You're taking me shopping, and that's final."

Carl smiled wryly. He was well and truly caught.

"Fine." He pouted. "I'll take you shopping. Anywhere in particular?"

"You speak as if we're just going to one place." Cordelia sealed his doom.


	6. The Warehouse 1

Carl woke up to an empty warehouse with a single book and a keg sitting next to him. There were lights on, but the empty concrete floor and the echoing sound in the empty warehouse freaked him out a bit. Good thing there wasn't dripping water somewhere. Now that would really be spooky. Looking at the book sitting next to him, he saw it was the Book of Kelsor that he purchased before entering the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world, and the keg was his Root Beer keg.

"Well, looks like I did end up leaving on time." Carl spoke to the empty warehouse. "I wonder how the girls are taking it?"

Looking around to see if he could find anything to explain his current situation, Carl soon found a terminal against one of the walls with a touch screen. He moved in front of it, and pressed on the screen, lighting it up with text.

Reading the brief explanation on screen, Carl soon learned that the empty warehouse was his Dimensional Warehouse. It was a place for him to store his gear and take it along with him as he jumped from world to world.

The informational screen informed him that as long as he was on his jump chain journey, the worlds he left behind would be frozen in time until he returned to visit or stay, or until he ended his journey.

"Well, that's good. That implies I'll have the opportunity to go back for the girls at some point." Carl smiled. He would miss them while jumping worlds, but he figured at some point they would have a reunion.

Turning his attention back to the information presented, he learned that this 200ft x 200ft warehouse was his to do with as he wanted, aside from a few rules governing how he could utilize it.

Anything that he would bring into the warehouse he would get to keep through the jumps to different worlds. If he died in a jump world, then he would be returned to his original world with everything he had earned from jumping.

"So…I have the possibility to return to my original world, then, even though I died in a car accident there. I guess nothing is really impossible for whoever set this thing up, after all. And death isn't the end for me, but it would be the end of my jump chain. And if I died before figuring out how to get the girls in on my jump chain, then I'll never see them again."

Despite having the safety net of death in a jump world not being the end of him, Carl decided that he would go into each jump world with the mentality that death was not an option. Death would forever separate him from his girls. He would survive by any means, and have his happy reunion one day.

Turning back to the screen after making that promise to himself, Carl read that any gear that he purchases for a jump would automatically follow him to his warehouse at the end of the jump.

"Thankfully I didn't lose my root beer." Carl commented with a smile.

Additionally there was a key that will return to him if lost, that when put into any door will open a portal to the warehouse. He was the only one who can take the key out of the lock, and the gate will be open as long as the key is in the lock.

"Well, that's a nice feature, being able to access the warehouse from any jump world. Too bad I didn't have this warehouse set up before I left my library, weapons, goods, and money in the last world." Carl sighed. It had been a really pleasant surprise to have money to work with when he first got into the world. It totally made up for his lack of memories starting out.

Carl, of course, realized that being rich doesn't solve every problem in life, but it sure helped make a lot of problems just go away. Just ask Batman, who had the superpower of Being Rich. He was able to fully fund his spandex hobby due to Being Rich.

Once more returning his attention to the terminal, Carl read the rules.

"The doorway can't be closed when I'm in the warehouse? Damn, anyone can get in. I'm gonna have to do something about that. A few misdirection spells at the very least to keep people from noticing the doorway." Carl trailed off in thought. He already felt very possessive of his warehouse, and wouldn't tolerate just anyone coming in to waltz off with his stuff. Stuff that only amounted to one book and a keg so far, but hey, it's his castle.

"Living people can't be stored in the warehouse?" Carl chuckled. "Hey Bob, where do we keep the stackable sidekicks? Aisle 13, left hand side." Carl laughed a bit at his joke, then looked around at the empty warehouse. With no one around to enjoy his jokes, or at least tell him his jokes were dumb, the delivery fell a bit flat.

Shrugging, Carl continued. "Other people can enter the Cosmic Warehouse, but they leave when I do. I guess that's one way to end the party and kick everyone out."

"When the door to the warehouse closes, time stops inside it. Hmm, there are some cheating possibilities with that one. Food won't spoil. Timers won't count down. Not that I plan to use my warehouse to temporarily disarm a bomb. What happens if it blows up my stuff? But at least the option is there."

"Only one door can be opened at a time. Hmm, I can see how that could be abused if I could open as many doors as I wanted. I could totally set up a kickass shipping company on one of these worlds using my warehouse as a nexus for shipping. It would totally kill the competition." Carl imagined, before moving on to the last rule on the list.

"The gateway to the warehouse is only as big as the door that created it. It sounds restrictive at first, but just off the top of my head there are a number of ways around that rule. Rolling warehouse doors and hangar doors come to mind. They would just take a lot more effort to close than normal doors, but I could store some big stuff in my warehouse using those oversized doors. Heck, I could even custom build a big door for that purpose."

"And it looks like I'll have 150 cp to work with to redecorate my Warehouse. That's not a lot, based off the cp I had available when I was going into the Buffy world. Well, let's see what's available." Carl said as he hit the next button.

**[JUMPCHAIN SUPPLEMENT: COSMIC WAREHOUSE]**

On the screen in front of him were three sections. Utilities, Structures, and Miscellaneous. Everything was priced 10, 20, or 30 cp.

"Well, at least 150 points should get me a decent amount of stuff at those prices." Carl commented as he looked at his options.

In his first scan through what was available in the Miscellaneous section, he saw that there was an option to return to any world he has spent time in before for 10 more years for 20 cp.

"Well, at least I _can_ go back to get the girls. But it looks like I can't take them with me unless I have enough Stasis Pods. Just going back for 10 years and 5 pods for Cordelia, Harmony, Amy, Marcie, and Fred would be 120 cp. I would also like the option to take the rest of the Scooby Gang or Angel's crew with me, though. That will get damned expensive."

"And I need to get this place set up first." Carl commented while looking around at his empty Warehouse. "Cordelia would kill me if I grabbed them and had nothing but an empty warehouse for them to stay in." Carl commented wryly. "Besides which, time is paused on that world. It doesn't really matter to them how long it takes me to make a decent setup for them for when they join me. Okay, as long as I keep jumping, I can gather more cp and be able to go grab them at some point."

First things first, he needed to start setting up the Warehouse. Turning his attention back to the options, Carl started picking out what he would purchase for now.

"Okay, **Electricity** 10 cp and **Plumbing** 10 cp are a must." Carl commented. "If any of the future worlds I'm going to are abysmal, I'll at least always have the basics of running water, sewer pipes, and electricity."

"**Heat / A.C.** is nice, but not a necessity. I can always bring in portable AC units, or bundle up. Even having a fire pit isn't impossible. I would have to clean up the ashes, but not a big deal."

"**Local Net** 30cp adds a secure link to the current universe's internet, if it exists. On the one hand, not completely needed, but having a safe place to retreat to and being able to continue communicating and researching is very nice. Fine, I'll take it."

"Ooh, **Force Wall** 20 cp adds a force field to the gateway that seals behind me. Perfect. Oh, a footnote. Might not keep all threats out, like lasers could possibly still be shot in? Well, better than nothing. As long as it will keep people from entering, it's worth it. And once I get some materials to work with on the next world I'll work on putting up some magical alarms and defenses."

"**Gravity Link** 10 cp will lower or turn off the gravity for easier lifting." Carl looked at his empty warehouse and then looked at the single book and keg by his side. "Well. Zero g would be hella fun, but I'll save the points for something else for now."

"Moving on, free** Shelving**, yoink." Carl set up the shelves in one corner of the warehouse, and placed his Book of Kelsor and Root Beer Keg on it in a satisfied manner before moving back to the terminal.

"Okay, next I'm getting that **Medbay** 20 cp, since it can 'fix up anything that still has a pulse'. That can save my life, at least. Hopefully."

"All the options in Structures look nice, but unneeded at this time. **Terminal** 10 cp to keep track of items stored in the warehouse." Carl looked sarcastically at his only items sitting lonely on the shelves. "**Robots** 20 cp as a storing and retrieving service. Yeah, not needed for now."

"**Housing** 20 cp, a fully furnished home. Hmm, I'll probably get some housing. But for now I'll see what else is there. I'll come back to you if I still got points." Carl said to the **Housing** option.

"**Workshop** 10 cp, full of tools and parts. Still have nothing to fix for now, maybe later."

Carl moved down to the Miscellaneous section, and then immediately purchased **Portal** 30 cp. "Since **Portal** replaces the key, and portals can be opened on any surface, I'm taking that. No more door restrictions for me, thank you very much. Plus, if there are any threats in the future that I can't handle and need to run from, I don't want to play out the stereotypical horror scene of fumbling my key at the door while the enemy is about to kill me, dropping the key several times, and only barely getting to safety at the last moment." Carl sarcastically smiled at the imaginary scenario he was thinking of.

"Okay, I've got 30 points left. I'll take the **Food Supply** for 10 cp. What good is a safe place if I starve to death?" Carl rhetorically asked.

"20 points left. Getting a single **Stasis Pod** for 20 cp now would let me bring someone in on my future jumps to help out. Tempting. But the set up is still lacking. I'm better off building a decent Warehouse and saving up points to go get the girls first. If they found out I brought someone else in before them, I would be in the doghouse for sure."

Carl shivered in fear. The girls' retribution when they learned he had done something boneheaded had been legendary. It had involved Nair, hair dye, and many other torture devices invented by women for the torture of men. He still shivered in remembered pain at what they'd done to his toenails.

"Yeah, let's make sure to bring them in before anyone else." Carl firmly decided.

"**Loft** 10 cp allows me to stack structures on top of each other. Well, when I start gathering more stuff that will be nice."

"**Hardsuit** 10 cp is basically like that exoskeleton loader that Ripley used in the Aliens movie. Don't need it for now."

Carl looked back over the list to see what he could spend his final 20 cp on.

"I'll choose the housing. That way if I do need to take refuge in here, I will have all the amenities." Carl nodded in affirmation and finalized his selections.

**[JUMPCHAIN SUPPLEMENTAL: BODY MOD]**

[Want to look different? With this Body Mod, you can change your "default" appearance and body's performance for all future Jump Worlds. Note that your choices scale with age, so muscle definition, strength, and body build may not be as prominent or developed when you are only 10 years old, as compared to when you are 20 years old. If any Jump World causes you to change into a different species, you will appear as that species' equivalent body type. Have fun with it!]

"Creating a default body, huh. How many people would kill to get the opportunity to change their appearance without plastic surgery? Another thing available in the jump chain that if bottled or packaged in technology would make me absolutely filthy, stinking, rich." Carl laughed.

"Okay, they gave me a budget of 600 cp. Let's see what choices they provide me with."

"First, I got to choose between a build: **Light**, **Medium**, or **Heavy**." Carl looked at his options. "I'll go with what I got now, **Medium** for 0 cp." Carl nodded. Since this would be a permanent thing, he didn't really want to drastically change himself. "Don't want to make myself unrecognizable to the girls."

"Okay, next choice is a body type. **Bodybuilder **100 cp is focused on strength and endurance. It adds tier 2 **Strength**, tier 2 **Endurance**, and the **Height** 1 perk."

"**Athlete** 100 cp focuses on mobility, agility, and flexibility. Gives tier 2 **Speed**, Tier 2 **Dexterity**, and the **Flexibility** 1 perk."

"Next is **Charmer** 100 cp. They aren't as physically adept because they focus on appearance. It gives tier 2 in **Appeal**, tier 2 in **Shape**, and the **Endowed** perk. Mostly form over function, I'll pass on this one.."

"**Bestial** 150 cp is a furry form. I'll pass."

"I spent 10 years in the last world using magic and hit and run tactics. As awesome as it would be to make my default body slayer strong, I much prefer to be speedy and avoid danger while blasting it at range." Carl picked the **Athlete** body type.

On the next page Carl was faced with choosing Stats and Perks. Aside from Speed and Agility due to his body type purchase, all other stats were tier 0. Each of the Stat tiers cost 50 cp.

Looking at some footnotes, he discovered that not buying tiers in a stat wouldn't decrease his physical fitness from what it was now, it would just add to it if he purchased a tier.

When Carl read the description of the **Strength** tiers, he was very glad he hadn't chosen the **Bodybuilder** body type.

"Tier 4 only gives me strength to lift three times my own weight easily, and I would have 'Rippling muscles'? Thank goodness I didn't pick that. Through exercise I can already match tier 2 by being able to bench press over 250 lbs. Tier 4 wouldn't even really get me up to Slayer strength. Relying on speed is definitely the better option." Carl concluded.

The tier 4 **Speed** stat caught his eye, and as he read the tier description, a smile slowly grew on his face.

"Do you want to be Usain Bolt fast?" Carl questioned himself in his best salesperson voice.

"Yeah!" He answered himself in a normal voice.

"Do you want to be Usain Bolt on a motorcycle fast?" Salesman voice.

"Hell, yeah!" He answered more enthusiastically.

"Then buy tier 4 **Speed** today!"

"Okay!" Carl cheered before busting up laughing.

After Carl calmed down, he resumed going over the purchase his body mods.

"Okay, buying one more tier of **Speed** for 50 cp, to get to tier 3, added on to my native speed should get me close to Usain Bolt on a motorcycle. Not there, but close."

"One more tier of **Dexterity** for 50 cp to get to tier 3 should get me close to 'Mirror's Edge skills, wall running, zipline, rolling from falls, etc.' Sounds exciting." Carl purchased them with a big grin on his face. "I can now run around the city yelling Hardcore Parkour!"

"Having a good exercise regime in the last world so I didn't end up a vampire's snack had unexpected gains. I can already bench 250 and run a 5k like it was nothing, so I'll pass on purchasing **Strength** and **Endurance** tiers. Let this be a lesson for myself: hard work is never not rewarded."

Carl paused for a second to make sure his double negative statement actually made sense. Nodding to himself that it did, in fact, make sense, Carl moved on.

Looking at the **Sense** stat, that included Situational Awareness, Sight, Smell, and Hearing, Carl bought tier 4 that let him hear and see outside the normal spectrum. "Can't defend against what I can't detect. And there's no exercise that can increase my senses. This way I'll always have tier 4 as a baseline." Carl commented to himself happily.

Because Carl was a typical dude, in addition to his exercising to not be vampire chow, he didn't worry too much about the shape he was in. He was already excellent shape, so he decided not to buy any tiers of the **Shape** stat.

But he did spend 50 cp for tier 1 in **Appeal** so he'd never have acne again. Ever. Even typical dudes didn't like getting pimples.

Carl then bought the **Metavore** perk for 100 cp. He liked the idea that he wouldn't have to worry about his fitness due to either overeating or not eating a balanced meal. If he ended up in a Jump World with famine, for example, or just really bad food he wouldn't lose his physical fitness edge.

"And the last 50 cp goes to **Endowed** for those extra 2 inches down there. I wasn't really ashamed of my size before, but it wasn't anything to be super proud of either. But now. Heh heh. The girls will have a nice surprise when we finally meat again. I meant, meet again." Carl laughed.

If only he could bottle that **Endowed** perk and sell it in any of these worlds. The amount of money he could make for a male enhancement that _actually _worked was astronomical. "Ah, well. It's probably for the best. I'd never get any peace or quiet with the number of people that would try to steal that particular secret so they could get in on the money making. Or just so they could use it themselves and brag."

The moment Carl hit the finish button, he blacked out.

* * *

When Carl came to, he found himself on a bed. A very comfortable bed. It was just about the best bed he'd ever slept on. He almost didn't want to get up.

He suddenly remembered the last thing he had been doing before blacking out, and immediately sat up.

He looked around the room that he found himself in. It looked like the master room of the housing he'd purchased for his warehouse. It had been fun to design the 8 bed, 8 bath, house that came complete with a fully stocked kitchen with a walk in freezer, a dining room, an entertainment room with a nice theatre movie setup, and an office with a sweet Mahogany executive desk and shelves for his personal library.

He didn't really _need_ the office. There wasn't any paperwork or anything here in his Warehouse. But he liked having one. It just made the house feel…complete.

"Well, that was nice of whoever it was to put me in my bed, instead of leaving me on the concrete outside." Carl idly commented. He didn't know if his jump chain was automated or not. Aside from that voice at the very beginning, he'd never directly talked with whoever was in charge. And that voice could have been a system or A.I. voice for all he knew.

But Carl went with the assumption that he was being watched by higher powers. It wouldn't change his actions, because he assumed they just wanted to watch and be entertained by what he would do.

Looking around the room, Carl marveled at his new senses. He could see miniscule things across the room clearly. More than perfect vision was amazing. He could even see the warmth surrounding the lights in the room. He could even trace the wiring in the walls from the electricity running through it.

It was all very distracting. "Is that how Clark Kent's vision was? With the added embarrassment of seeing through people's clothes, skin, muscle and bone?" Carl laughed at himself for comparing himself with Superman. He was nowhere near that guys league yet.

"I'll just have to work on adjusting to this new sight. Maybe even practice ignoring a bit of the input unless I focus on it. But having it and not needing it is so much better than not having the ability in the first place."

Focusing on his hearing, Carl tossed a pillow behind his back. He easily located exactly where it landed from the sound alone. The sound of a _pillow_ landing let him track it. "Totally Badass!"

And once he'd seen the room, he almost had a 3d spatial map in his head, keeping track of exactly how close or far everything was that he'd seen. It wasn't exactly a map, more of an instinctive feeling of where everything was, but the map analogy was the closest he could come to describing it.

Carl got out of bed and took a shower while humming some songs. He was quite happy with his physical improvements so far, and he hadn't even tested out his speed or agility yet.

Getting dressed once more, Carl toured his new house in satisfaction at having a comfortable property. It was…security. Peace of mind. No matter how crazy the jumps would get, he would always have this warehouse and this house to be a place he could retreat to and relax.

Now he just needed to fill it with books, movies, music, and games so he wouldn't get too bored.

Carl left the house, and saw that the terminal, which was situated near his door, had a countdown to the next jump. He had 5 more days to relax before the next world.

Carl relaxedly stretched, looking around to cement the spatial dimensions in his mind.

Now that Carl had more space outside of his house, he began testing his new body.

In the last world, because he had decided on taking a magic route, his focus had been on learning and practicing his magic. He still worked out, lifting and running to keep fit, but he knew he'd never be strong enough physically to handle demons. Working out was just a means to keep himself fit enough to survive until he could zap something with his magic.

But now, his speed and agility were really impressive. He was running around his warehouse, having a blast at how fast he could go. "Nearly Usain Bolt on a motorcycle indeed!"

Looking over at his two story house, he ran directly at it, then wall ran to the top. He grabbed the edge of the roof and did a flip onto the roof. Then he started jumping from his house to the shelves nearby, and from shelf to shelf. Finally he jumped from a shelf to the warehouse wall, slid down the wall, and rolled to his feet once more, standing still. He wasn't even breathing hard.

"Awesome." Carl breathed with a huge grin on his face. "Absolutely brilliant."

Well satisfied with his new base body, Carl entered his house and went to his kitchen to make some food. He saw his Root Beer keg already on its stand, like it was just waiting and hoping to be able pour him a frosty mug. Obligingly, he grabbed a glass mug from the freezer and poured himself a cold one.

He fondly patted his Keg on its imaginary head in approval. "Best root beer ever, Creg the Keg. That shall be your name from now on." He anointed the keg with a name.

Maybe he was a bit obsessed with root beer?

"Nah." Carl decided. "You can never have enough good root beer. Best use of cp, ever."

He continued sipping from the blessed mug of divine root beer while he fixed a simple breakfast.

After eating a filling breakfast omelet, Carl looked around his house. He saw his lone book, the Book of Kelsor, sitting forlornly on the bookshelves in his office.

He moved outside his house and looked around his Warehouse. His quiet Warehouse. His very quiet, boring Warehouse.

"It's too quiet." Carl muttered to himself. "No music. No movies. Only one book. No games. This is going to be a long five days." He muttered in dissatisfaction. "Wonder if I can jump early?"

Carl moved to the terminal that had the countdown timer and pressed the screen. A pop up showed up, asking if he was sure he wanted to jump early.

He once more looked around his empty Warehouse. He thought about his girls in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world. They were frozen in time, so they weren't waiting. But their reunion wasn't getting any closer for waiting here in his empty Warehouse.

He decisively clicked yes.

The next screen that showed up said he was going to jump to a Pokemon world.

"Well, let's get started." He hit accept.


	7. Pokemon 1

When Carl saw that he was going to a Pokemon world, he had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it was bound to be less stressful than dealing with vampires and demons in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world he'd last been in.

On the other hand, he was one of the few people who had never played Pokemon. He'd only watched a few episodes of the show when his brothers had been watching it. So he had zero working knowledge other than that Pikachu was cute and electric.

"Oh well, just a bit of a disadvantage there. It's not like I won't learn as I go. And at least I'll have magic and my upgraded default body as well as any perks I purchase here, so surviving shouldn't be a problem. Just a matter of how much I can get out of this world, really."

After reading the introduction, he learned that he would again have 1000 cp to spend. He also got some starting gear, so that was nice.

He had a Bag that was bigger on the inside. "Hold the Tardis jokes, please."

A Pokegear. "Whatever that is."

An already filled Pokedex. "Is that like an index of Pokemon?"

Five Pokeballs. "Wonder how expensive these are? If I enter the world with no money I might need to hawk some of them until I figure out how to make more money."

Three healing Potions. "Well, that should help keep me and my pets alive until I can get more."

And a hat. "It's just a hat? It does nothing other than keep the sun out of my eyes? Like, it doesn't attract or repel pokemon, right?" But with nothing to give him answers, Carl could only move on.

Since Carl didn't have any idea of the benefits or demerits of one place or another, he decided he would roll the dice for free to determine his starting region. Once he selected the roll option from the form, the table and an eight sided die once more popped up in front of him. Picking up the dice, he rolled a 6.

He would be starting in Baguette Land, Kalos. "A place of culture, the arts, and snobby connoisseurs. Sounds expensive."

Carl didn't want to spend cp on something trivial like age, so he rolled the dice. "I'm gonna be the most dangerous 12 year old around!" Carl laughed when he rolled a 3.

Looking at the choices of identity Carl immediately eliminated **Drop In**. As much as he liked picking the free choices for more cp to spend, he knew nothing about the Pokemon world. He decided spending some cp first so he could gain some working knowledge of the pokemon world was necessary this time around.

Additionally, since the pokemon games weren't horror fests or filled with demons, and this pokemon world likely followed suit, Carl felt reasonably safe using this jump world as a test to determine just how much inserting himself with a background would affect him. He would only have the memories of a 12 year old, so he felt like it likely wouldn't destabilize his mind that had already lived for four decades.

Next he eliminated the **City Life** choice. The bonus for that identity was to be very acrobatic and adept in parkour. With his default body, he already had that ability, so he decided to choose something else.

The **Small Town** identity said he would be physically fit and have a small group of close friends. Thinking about it for a moment, Carl crossed it off the list. He was already default fit, and he would rather make friends himself after waking up in the world, rather than letting the automated whatever do it for him.

Additionally, Carl had just come from a 10 year trip in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world where he made many friends and even had several lovers. He was still far away from being able to bring them into his jump, let alone a batch of new friends. And the idea of replacing his lovers and friends with a bunch of strangers that he wouldn't even be able to choose for himself made him reject that identity.

Looking at the **Hermit** option, he liked the idea of knowing about wilderness survival and knowledge of pokemon, but the negative of not being able to interact with people well and being nervous in cities turned him off.

Besides, he saw the **Moneybags** option that said he would get a good education, lots of money, and access to top of the line gear most trainers will never get, and he was sold. He figured he could always learn more about pokemon in the 10 years he'd be there, or buy it as an ability with cp, but having extra money and gear was never a bad choice, in Carl's opinion.

He spent 100 cp to choose **Moneybags**.

The next page Carl got to choose his starter Pokemon. He chose a free starter fox looking Pokemon that he learned was called a Fennekin. When he picked it, a status page showed up, letting him know what it was.

"Sweet, a fire one. Wait, it even eats twigs? Hahaha, that's funny. It's like she's an actual fox made from fire. Feed it wood and it burns." Carl laughed. "I was about to call her Fifi, because of her being a Fire Fox, but I think I'll go with Fiona instead. I can call her Fi as a nickname."

Going to the next page, Carl started looking at the Skills & Abilities available to him.

"Hmm, I'm already fit and good at parkour, so I don't need **Physical Fitness** or **Free Running**. I'll have a good education and money, so whatever I can't do myself, I can hire someone do to it for me, so **Mechanic** and **Technician** are out."

"I'll probably spend a lot of time in the wild, so I'll take **Survival Training** for 100 cp so I can spend more time hunting, training, and practicing. I've learned and practiced Jujutsu and Aikido a lot in my last world, so **Combat training** is out. The tracking skills of **Ranger** seem nice, but I figure I can learn as I go, and that's 300 cp. I don't care about blending in, although it would probably be very useful if I had enemies after me."

"Pokemon already understand English, right? So they won't have any problems understanding me. I figure I can use my magic to link minds with and understand what the Pokemon are saying, so I'll pass on **Pokeglot.**"

"The effects of **Aura** and **Psionics** are replicable with my magic, no sense getting those when I've already got the abilities available."

"**Savant** for 600 cp will enhance me with perfect memory, calculator-like mental math, and better spatial awareness, so how can I not pick it? That will help me learn faster and improve all my future jumps. I also get amazing aim with firearms. Sweet."

"Finally, **Champ In The Making** does sound like it's important for team building, but it is 300 cp and would put me in the hole, forcing me to take flaws, which I want to avoid. And I haven't even looked at the gear yet. Well, it's only really an enhancement. I can probably make the team successful with hard work and fluffy feels." Carl finally decided not to buy it.

"Now to pick gear. I get **HM Collection** for free. Don't know if it's useful, but it's free, so yoink. **Bicycle** is free, get. **Laptop** is free, I'll have two or three of them. Nah, just the one available. **Medical Kit** is free, score. I know I've got a medical lab in my warehouse, but having more options to heal me or my pokemon isn't a bad choice."

"I'll take **400k** pokedollars for 50 cp, naturally. Money makes the world go round. And **3x Master Balls** for 100 cp seems like the thing to get for those powerful pokemon. Ooh, a **Rebreather** for 50 cp for underwater adventures, I'll take it."

"**Handgun**, **Sniper Rifle**, **Tranquilizer Gun**, and some of the other gear looks nice, but I would have to take some flaws to get them. I think I'll stick to what I've got now. I'll just buy whatever else I want in the world with my pokedollars, since I'll have some money."

"And thankfully I don't need to take any flaws. Especially that one that has a legendary pokemon out to kill me." Carl shivered. Sure he was a powerful magic user, but he had no idea how he would stack up against a legendary pokemon, and he didn't want to test it.

Clicking the finish button, the world dissolved around Carl.

* * *

Carl woke up excited. It was the start of his pokemon trainer journey! He loved his parents, he did, but they went overboard on his schooling. All day, every day, nothing but study! Study! Study!

He was sooooo ready for an adventure!

Sitting up, he saw Fiona laying next to him in bed. Mom had bought her for his 8th birthday, and she was the best friend, ever. She was fun to play with and mischievous, making his days of study slightly tolerable. She even kept him warm on winter nights.

"Hey, Fi, you excited to get started on our adventure today?" Carl excitedly asked as she woke, stretching and yawning. Fiona simply nodded as she curled back up for a few extra minutes of sleep. "Fine, then. Be that way. You can have a few more minutes of sleep. But we're leaving in, like, an hour, tops."

Carl got up and made his way to the bathroom. Flipping the light on as he entered, he did his business. He turned on the faucet to wash his hands, and then looked up into the mirror. The moment he looked in his own eyes, he froze.

Memories started flooding his mind. He stood rigid as the memories started filtering in. He was Carl, 12 years old, a genius. He never forgot anything, and he was a whiz at maths. He could do problems in his head like he was a calculator. His parents, once they found out, were so enthusiastic. They never sent him to public school. Instead his parents hired threw tutor after tutor to teach him and give him a super advanced education.

But he never got to make friends. He grew to hate studying because he was always cooped up all day every day. To attempt to cheer him up and encourage him in his studies, his parents bought him a Fennekin for his 8th birthday. They also scheduled in time for him to play with his pokemon, as well as making sure to hire some tutors to make sure he exercised and was physically fit. Because of his time playing with his fast little fox, he ran a lot. They liked to bounce around the mansion grounds, parkour running everywhere they could.

He was still that 12 year old Carl. But he was also the Carl who was jump chaining. Who had lived a normal life on a normal earth until the age of 33 where he started his jump chain. He had spent the last 10 years in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world, learning magic, killing vampires, ending world threats, and protecting his sister and lovers while training hard and generally enjoying life.

He finally unfroze as the two different sets of memories settled in properly. He felt like he was who he always had been. He was Carl.

"Whew." Carl breathed out in relief after the merging of memories was over. "That was a rush."

Looking down at the still running water, Carl finished washing his hands. Carl then examined his face in the mirror.

"Well, the appeal stat seems to have worked, no acne. I like that the memories of growing up incorporated memories of exercise and free running. Makes it feel natural in this 12 year old body. No need to adjust to being so short again." Carl grinned at the feeling of being a young 12 year old again.

Even though he had the same abilities as a fully grown man in the warehouse prior to coming here, there was something just so energetic and…bouncy about being so young. Of course, he is kind of on the older side for a jrpg protagonist. "Eight year olds, saving the planet!" Thanks HCBailly.

To reassure himself that he still had access to his magic, Carl reached out for his magic like he had trained to for the last 10 years. He felt the energy flooding him, but not as much as there was when he was 27 at the end of his last jump.

"Huh, looks like this immature body can only handle so much energy." Carl muttered as he floated the soap, shampoo, and a few combs to rotate around him in a circular pattern. He felt a little bit of strain levitating the objects. "Looks like I can't slack on any training, magic or physical, as I grow up again. Not if I want to get back to where I was previously." Carl concluded.

Carl left the bathroom, and got dressed. He wore olive green pants, with many pockets, made to be tough for outdoor activity. He slipped into a long sleeved light grey shirt, a dark colored jacket with many pockets that was designed to keep him cool in hot weather and warm in cold weather. He was loving the technology of the Pokemon world already.

Completing the ensemble, he wore rugged, yet light weight, hiking boots, and his red hat. Now that he had memories of the Pokemon world, he felt like the hat was almost a necessary part of a trainer's uniform for some reason. It wouldn't be right without it. Not quite as important as a straw hat to a certain pirate, but up there.

Looking over at Fiona on his bed, and seeing through fresh eyes how realistic she looked, like a real animal, Carl was a bit surprised the world didn't look more like a cartoon. At the same time, with his 12 year old memories, it just seemed natural. It was the way it had always been.

Carl wondered just how dangerous this world would be for him. From looking at Fiona and the memories he had of watching pokemon battles on the television, he realized that the pokemon were real animals, not cartoon friends. Their abilities could be really dangerous.

His memories of people talking about the games and animes gave him the impression that the Pokemon world was always focused on the warm fluffy feelings of friendship and teamwork. Pokemon you hadn't caught yet were just friends you hadn't met yet.

Just how much of the actual world would be gritty reality? How much of the universe's natural laws pushed for fluffy happenings? In the past world Carl noticed the universe seemed to push for love drama to happen.

Just because he was lucky enough and worked hard at it, he managed to have several girlfriends. But that didn't mean he hadn't been an inch away from turning into a cautionary tale of what would happen to a man who pissed off several witches at once.

One of the complications that he could have bought for this world was having a Legendary pokemon try to kill him. So there was certainly deadly danger around. And he now knew there were plenty of dangerous meat eating pokemon around.

Carl decided it was best practice to treat the world like it was extremely dangerous. And if he ended up pleasantly surprised at things turning out for the better than expected, well, that would just be a bonus.

For now, it was time to pack. Carl looked at the stack of items the 12 year old Carl had set aside to be packed for his adventure.

He first pulled out his backpack that was bigger on the inside. "Let's see, going through the list that the 12 year old me wrote, we have a change of clothes, check. Toiletries, check. Bug spray, check. Extra hiking boots, check. Extra socks, check. Rain gear, check. Water canteens, check. Pokeballs, six, check. I guess Fi came with one pokeball, in addition to the five that the jump chain said I'd get." Carl smiled at that. A bonus was a bonus.

"Three master balls, check. It's weird that I know I only have these because of purchasing them for the jump, but at the same time I have memories of my parents giving them to me yesterday for my 12th birthday gift. Whatever, not something to worry over." Carl continued packing.

"Laptop, check. Bicycle, check. I love that all this is fitting in a normal sized backpack. Gotta love the perks that come with jumping. Rebreather, check. Medical kit, check. Three potions, check."

"HM Collection, check. Huh, good thing I went with the moneybags insertion method, cause I now know what things are. This HM Collection will be priceless for training my pokemon all the moves they need to know." Carl grinned widely. "And to think, I only got it cause it was free for Moneybags! I totally would have been kicking myself later if I'd missed out on it."

"Cash reserves, check. Gonna have to be subtle with pulling cash out. Don't want anyone to get tempted by a 12 year old carrying 400k pokedollars."

"Pokegear, check." Carl put his phone/radio/clock/map away in a protected pocket on his jacket. "I can only imagine that if this wasn't a pokemon world, no parents would be letting their 12 year olds wander around the dangerous wilds. Guess it helps that they have phones for emergencies to make them feel better about it."

Carl then picked up his pokedex that looked like a red square card. He pulled it apart, revealing a holographic interface that listed and categorized pokemon. He could view their information, and keep track of whether he's caught them or not through this device, as well as monitor the status of pokemon in this pokeballs. It would regularly sync the data with his laptop. The pokedex was for quick information look up while in the field, while the program on the laptop made it easier to play with the data and do research about various pokemon, as well as keep track of his pokemon's training.

The data on every single pokemon one was already filled out. Carl was happy with this treasure trove of information, it would be a good reference for his training journeys. He closed and placed his Pokedex into another chest pocket of his jacket.

Carl then put his wallet in his pants pocket. It held several bills of the 400k pokedollars he had so he wouldn't be flashing large wads of cash around to tempt thieves, as well as his Trainer Card.

"Come on, Fi! Time for breakfast!" Carl called as he ran out the room, Fiona sped past his legs before he reached the stairs. When Carl entered the dining room, he saw his parents already sitting at the table as their chef served breakfast. Fiona was already at her place, chowing down. "Man, Fi, you're just too fast for me." Carl said fondly as he petted her back on the way to his seat. Fiona wriggled excitedly from the attention, but didn't stop eating.

"Well, good morning, young man. Someone seems excited." His mom, Claire, commented cheerfully. She was a lovely lady in her 40s. She always dressed impeccably, and she was the social center of the city. She knew who everyone was, and helped her friends network to solve problems.

"Yes, I am. I can't wait to go out and start training!" Carl exclaimed, letting his 12 year old persona take the lead.

"Be sure to stay safe son. I'm still hoping you'll replace me at the company one of these days." His father, Clark smirked at him.

"Yeah, but that'll be in, like, a bajillion years from now." Carl declared. Fiona barked in laughter, which his parents joined in on.

"Yes, yes. Adventure first, boring work later." Clark laughed.

Carl squirmed a little at the gentle teasing of his dad. "It's not like what the company does isn't cool, dad. I mean, all the newest advances in trainer gear, pokeballs, and medicine come from our company. It's just…I haven't even seen the world yet. I'd like to learn about how our tech works in the field, and go and see new things, and meet new people before I have to go to work in the company."

Carl's father, Clark, had built up Poke co. into the large company it was. It was the number one company in the Kalos region. But compared to some of the companies that were global in scale, it was only a little fish. Poke co. specialized in pokemon training gear, always working on the leading edge of pokemon gear advancement.

"Perhaps we pushed you too hard in your education until now." Claire softly said. "But we just wanted the best for you. We didn't want your unique gifts to go to waste." She smiled proudly at Carl. "But you'd better call every day to let me know you're okay. If not, you'll be in big trouble!" She mock threatened.

"Yes ma'am!" Carl cheekily replied.

Carl soon finished his meal while chatting with his parents. They escorted him to the edge of their property while giving him more safety tips for his travels. They gave each other one last hug before Carl strode out on his adventure to be the best trainer he could be.

* * *

As Carl and Fiona were walking through Lumiose City, Carl was seeing the new/familiar city with fresh eyes.

On the one hand the city seemed so familiar from growing up here as the son of the owner of Poke Co, a large company that researched and manufactured gear related to the pokemon trainer profession.

His parents being the owners of such a prestigious company was the biggest reason they were able to get him the master pokeballs for his birthday. Not everyone has the connections to be able to afford such high end goods.

His parents, having built up the company from scratch to what it was now, was also the biggest reason they were so happy and went overboard when they found out he had an eidetic memory and was brilliant at maths. It meant that the company, the legacy, they were building could probably be passed to him with assurance that, with his talents, he would build it even bigger.

In his memories of growing up Carl had been introduced to many of their business associates around the city, and made the occasional trip to the factory. One of the things Carl learned from his memories of living in this world is that was huge, and only a small part of the world and people in it focus on pokemon.

This was a society that has a good enough science to create pocket dimensions to store creatures the size of a blue whale in a baseball sized device. Backpacks that were bigger on the inside than outside was just another example of this. Pokemon, for some people, was just that weird hobby that other people indulge in. But for the people who make pokemon their hobby or job, it's their entire life.

And his parents built their company to create advanced gear that would make the lives of pokemon and their trainers easier and better. To give them greater tools for training for the battles and arenas.

But on the other hand, seeing the city through the lens of having lived in different worlds, everything looked so interesting and new.

And while the vast majority of people in the world didn't focus on pokemon, their society was evolved from a time in the past when they were intimately connected with pokemon. If Carl were to compare it to anything as an analogy, it would be to his original earth's relationship with horses.

So much of human's culture in olden times was centered around horses. They were used to transport people and goods, to help farm, and to go to war. They were an integral part of human life. But as the industrial revolution grew, science and technology replaced the use of horses with machines.

In modern times back on earth, horses were more of a recreation for some people, while others made their whole life and career centered on horses. There were horse races, horse shows, and rodeo that brought in much money in advertisement and gambling.

And pokemon were in a similar place in this world that horses were in his original world. The only difference being the vast variety and abilities of pokemon making them wildly more popular to the average person than horses were in his old world.

So while looking around Lumiose city, Carl especially noted that there was a curious blend of people making use of modern tech mixed in with those who lived in a more old school manner. On the same street he could see people riding motorcycles, bicycles, and also having pokemon drag wagons. For those people who loved pokemon, they made them a part of their lives in any way they could.

Because of the pokemon craze/hobby, it was actually cheaper for those who were poor to buy a pokeball, catch a suitable pokemon, and train it as a draft animal, than it was to buy a truck to transport their goods to market. And it let them indulge in their love of pokemon.

The love of pokemon and incorporation of them into their lives was such a culture relic for so many, from living side by side with pokemon for so many years, that in many ways they couldn't step back and separate their lives from that of pokemon.

Here was a world that actually had science that could control space to an amazing degree. They were able to put huge animals in a baseball sized pokeball. They had backpacks that were bigger on the inside. And yet instead of using that technology as a means to transport their trade goods to market easier, they used it to catch and train a draft animal to drag a wagon.

It blew Carl's mind how they didn't really take advantage of the tech they have. The society grew to what it was with pokemon, maybe even because of the pokemon. As a result, they just couldn't leave the pokemon behind them.

As a result of pondering this issue, some memories from 12 year old Carl's studies popped up in his head. The key to the space manipulation tech came from human scientists who saw the talents of certain pokemon and managed to duplicate it with technology.

'So that's how they managed to have such advances in certain areas of technology, compared to back on my old earth.' Carl thought, finally having grasped the missing puzzle piece. 'So to say that this society's science and technology is intricately linked to the existence of pokemon is only touching the tip of the iceberg. And that's probably why human society still lives an almost symbiotic existence with pokemon. There is still so much we can learn from them.'

Shaking his head to dispel his musings, Carl focused on what he was doing now as he made his way to the market district.

"Got some more supplies to pick up before we leave, Fi." Carl said to Fiona questioning glance as to why they weren't leaving the city immediately. Fiona just gave the fox equivalent of a shrug as she continued to follow him.

Carl first stopped off at a firearms shop. The 12 year old him hadn't felt the need for extra protection because he had Fiona. But the current Carl had more experience, and had spent 10 years fighting vampires and demons. Having extra options to defend himself or attack was always the right decision.

He was just glad he was in a pokemon world. With animals in this world that can throw lightning bolts, fireballs, or even just put people to sleep with a thought, there didn't seem too much sense in regulating firearms heavily. So even a 12 year old like him could purchase weapons without having to go find a black market.

After looking over the shop's inventory, Carl purchased a 9mm handgun, a tranquilizer rifle, a .308 sniper rifle, and a decent amount of ammunition for each, as well as cleaning kits.

In the previous world, he'd only ever practiced with the sniper rifle in order to take out the Mayor and Glorificus, since they had been human, or at least the host of Glory was. Most of the demons and vampires would only have been slightly staggered by small arms fire, and sitting around at night trying to snipe room temperature vampires with thermal optics would only have been an exercise in frustration. So he hadn't used firearms.

But with the Savant bonus of spatial awareness and being a crack shot with firearms, Carl planned to practice and become adept in the use of firearms.

Carl once again blessed his backpack as he stuffed his purchases in it without increasing the backpack's weight or bulk

The next stop was the market, where one could find most any goods being sold. Grabbing a shopping cart he made his way through the various vendors, he loaded up with everything he could think of that the 12 year old him hadn't.

Seriously, 12 year old him didn't even think to get a tent for when he planned to stay outdoors. How was he planning to make a fire, rely on Fiona? What about toilet paper? Cooking without cooking gear? What about spices?

The 12 year old version of him had been highly educated, but lacked experience living on his own and dealing with many daily necessities. He had some vague notion of living off the land, not realizing just how much work would be required. But Carl, with his survival training perk, had a decent idea of what he would need to survive the outdoors.

Carl also bought a heater and AC unit that he planned to install in his warehouse. After purchasing everything, he wheeled the load over to a corner where there were few people. He discretely opened a portal and pushed the overloaded cart into his warehouse before moving on to the last thing he would purchase today. He would organize his purchases later.

At Fiona's questioning look at him opening the portal, Carl just smiled and said he'd explain it later.

Carl was planning on catching quite a few different pokemon and using them as training partners for him and Fiona. So he needed more pokeballs. He certainly wasn't going to waste masterballs on weak pokemon.

Once Carl had bought another 30 pokeballs and the various training gear and pellets available to boost training, Carl and Fiona finally made their way outside the city to the Southeast.

Carl pulled out his bicycle, unfolded it, waited for Fiona to jump in the basket on the handlebars, then set off for the wilderness area between Lumiose City and Santalune City.

As Carl pedaled along the walkway/bicycle path next to the actual road the cars and motorcycles were driving on, he enjoyed the view while reviewing the plans his 12 year old self had made, and modified them to suit his own purposes on this jump world.

The 12 year old him had been full of enthusiasm and wanted to train up a team of pokemon to beat the elite four, the best of the pokemon battle league. He didn't have much of a method in mind of how to do it, and he wanted to get out of the endless studying so much that he thought he would figure it out later.

Carl decided that he liked the goal his 12 year old self set, but for different reasons than youthful excitement. With his awakened memories, Carl had a more mature perspective and access to magic. He recognized that the more league tournaments he won, the more prestige it would gain for his family's company, helping them gain more contacts and resources to continue growing and being competitive in the pokemon trainer circles.

Aside from the benefits to his parents company, Carl knew that in future jumps he would likely have many battles, and not all of them could be easily solved with his magic and a ritual sneak attack.

He had been really lucky in the past world that he had actually watched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel shows and knew enough about it to ambush the really bad Big Bads before they were ready for him. Otherwise he would have been as clueless as the show's characters about the big dangers and would have been battered around and played with just as easily as the Scooby Gang had been. It would have made for a very tough 10 years, indeed.

Recognizing that he couldn't always hope for advanced knowledge of the plot and enemies, Carl recognized the unique blessing he was given, to be in the pokemon world with magic on his second jump.

This 10 year span would give Carl time to learn how to train and fully utilize powers and abilities to fight in a relatively safe world. With his magic, he gained an edge on analyzing his pokemon that other trainers couldn't get through technology alone.

Just from sitting at the breakfast table with Fiona he had been able to use his magic to study her physiology. When he had given her a twig to chew on, he had sensed the flowing energies in her body, and how it manifested her flames.

Using his magic senses, Carl could delve into every aspect of how to fully utilize and bring out the maximum potential of the pokemon while training. And with there being so many types of pokemon, he could build a good database on a vast array of different powers.

He could then apply this training knowledge to training himself and others in future jumps, thus raising his survival ability.

Who was to say that Carl might not end up in a world in the future where he would have to build an army in order to win? With what he learned here, he would have a good foundation for training that army.

After several hours of peddling, Carl decided he'd traveled far enough outside the city. Packing his bicycle up again, he left the highway and found a decent place on a nearby hill to set up his campsite.

Looking around, Carl turned to Fiona. He reached out with his magic, establishing a mental link. "What do you think, Fi? Does it look like a decent place to set up our first training camp?"

Fiona spent a few minutes to evaluate the camp site. They were in a clearing on the side of a hill. There was a large rock on the uphill side that would give Carl a good area to open a doorway to his warehouse, though Fiona didn't know about it yet. The clearing was a good 50 feet across, giving a nice flat area for the tent and training. The elevation of the hill and the space between the trees let them see any who would approach the clearing, giving them plenty of warning.

[Looks good I guess.] Fiona thought while nodding for Carl's benefit.

[Glad you approve, Fi.] Carl thought back while looking at Fiona.

[W-What? How are you talking in my head?] Fiona cried out in shock.

[Well, that's quite a story. It might take a while. Why don't we go to a more comfortable place?] Carl opened up his warehouse, and stepped in. Fiona didn't hesitate, and followed him in.

After a short tour because there wasn't much to see in his warehouse yet, Carl and Fiona settled on the couches in the entertainment room and Carl spent the next few hours explaining the jump chain to Fiona. He had spent four years with Fiona already in this world, and everything he had learned about pokemon said they could absolutely be trusted. They were very loyal, once loyalty was given.

He talked about his time in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world, showed Fiona his magic and what it could do, and talked about his plans for their training.

Fiona seemed really excited about their prospects. Jumping on the back of the couch, she posed heroically.

[We are going to destroy the competition!] She declared. [With my speed and supreme fire abilities, and your magic, no one will stand a chance against us!]

"The mistress of speed, Fiona herself, has declared it. It must be so." Carl played along, truly enjoying himself.

[Naturally so.] Fiona nodded imperiously in agreement, causing Carl to once more smile.

He was happy with his method of insertion into this world. It gave him such a wonderful companion for this adventure in Fiona. It felt…refreshing to have the memories of growing up in this world of Pokemon with his new family and Fiona. Definitely more innocent and clean than dealing with vampires and demons all the time.

At the same time, he realized that he would have to be careful in the future about insertion methods. If in the last world he had picked a demon background, for example, the memories of growing up as a demon or being vampire would have seriously twisted who he was. So he would have to remain cautious about what he would pick in the future.

"Well, time to get to work." After he and Fiona played around for a while, Carl set about putting up his tent and ordering his campsite. While he had the warehouse to fall back on, it wasn't good to always depend on it.

If he spent all his time in the warehouse, he would likely miss opportunities to find and catch pokemon, thus defeating his purpose of being out in the wilds.

One of the things he'd learned from his education growing up was that pokemon weren't the sole animals in this world. They were actually a type of mutation or evolution of the normal animals that lived there.

Two normal animals had a small chance to give birth to pokemon. A normal animal and a pokemon had a decent chance of giving birth to a pokemon. And two pokemon had a much larger chance to give birth to more pokemon. It still wasn't a 100% chance, but it was much more likely.

So he would have to actually spend effort to hunt down pokemon, unlike in the game where they just popped up from walking around in the grass.

After setting up his tent, a fire, and the cooking area, Carl and Fiona tested how his Warehouse worked. The barrier around the door seemed to work based off of Carl's expectations. If he concentrated on not letting anyone but him in, Fiona found an invisible barrier preventing her entry. When she had his approval she could enter, even when he wasn't looking to see when she tried to enter.

If she was inside the Warehouse when he closed the portal, she would pop up right next to where the portal previously was. If she was in her pokeball when he closed the portal, she would remain in the warehouse. Carl was especially happy about that loophole, because then he wouldn't have to leave Fiona behind when he left this world.

After their testing was complete, Carl noticed the sun was close to setting. With the evening approaching, Carl pulled out his pokegear and called his parents while preparing dinner for him and Fiona.

He spent a good amount of time talking to his parents about where he was and what his plans were for catching and training pokemon. His dad seemed especially interested in his training and made Carl promise to keep good records of everything he noted about his gear for the company to use for future products, while his mom spent more time making sure he was safe and would eat well.

"Food is ready, Fi!" Finally hanging up, Carl called out to Fiona, who had been exploring their surroundings. Fiona soon zoomed in and was sitting at their foldable dinner table, looking expectant for food. "Find anything interesting?" He asked Fiona as he served their dinner.

[Yup, I smelled a couple of grass type pokemon on the edges of the clearing, but they didn't enter the clearing. They probably retreated back into the trees when they saw the clearing was occupied. I should be able to track them down tomorrow.]

"Hmm, nice. I didn't expect to find some other pokemon so soon. You'll have to be careful though when we find them. With your mighty fire you might accidently kill grass types if you're not careful." Carl gently teased Fiona.

[Indeed, my fire is mighty.] Fiona proudly nodded.

Carl simply smiled at her pride in her abilities. From what he has seen of other pokemon of the same level, her abilities were a higher tier, in both speed and fire power. Thus, her pride was justified. Right as they were about to start eating, Fiona twitched.

[We have company. No cause for alarm, it's only a Ralts. She seems hungry.]

Carl looked in the direction Fiona was looking. He saw a small juvenile Ralts shuffling over toward him. Something in her posture looked nervous but hopeful. Seeing her looking back and forth between him and Fiona and nodding in approval, Carl realized the little Psychic/Fairy pokemon probably felt the bond and positive emotions between him and Fiona.

"Hey there. You want to join us for dinner?"

At her enthusiastic nod, Carl set aside a decent portion for her. She hopped up on the table next to Fiona.

"I'm Carl. This lovely lady here is Fiona. Enjoy the meal."

The Ralts nodded happily, then began eating like she hadn't had food for days. Carl smiled, amused again at how cute pokemon were.

Eventually, everyone was stuffed full. Carl cleaned up the dishes, packing them away until the morning. He then turned to talk to the Ralts, only to not see her around the campsite. Looking over at Fiona in question, Fiona gestured with amusement towards the tent. Looking inside, Carl saw the small Ralts curled up on his pillow, snoring away.

Smiling at the sight of the small Ralts making herself at home, Carl joined Fiona in lounging in front of the fire. Idly scratching Fiona's back, Carl thought about the opportunity he was being given. He got to experience the adventure and excitement of exploring the multiverse.

In the previous world, even when he'd been there for close to 10 years and had destroyed all the Big Bads he knew about from the show, he still couldn't fully relax. He knew there were nearly an infinite number of demons and gods wandering around that universe. And if he was noticed by them first, he could end up being their dinner before he even knew what hit him.

But here in the pokemon world, at a fireside at night where a beautiful panorama of stars adorned the night sky, next to his companion Fi, he felt…content…in a way. His drive to learn and survive the jump chain didn't go away, but he finally felt like the stress and danger was worth it. He finally felt glad that he was picked.

So many people he would never have met. Cordelia, Harmony, Amy, Marcie, Fred, Fiona, and his parents in this world, the Scooby Gang, and Angels crew.

Who knew what else he would experience in the future? Who knew what friends he would make on the way?

Eventually he and Fiona joined the Ralts in the tent and fell asleep.


	8. Pokemon 2

The next morning Carl woke with two pokemon draped over him. Smiling at the pair, he carefully wriggled out from under the two of them.

Exiting the tent, he opened the Warehouse and used the bathroom there to do his business and clean up. Just because he was roughing it for the sake of finding pokemon didn't mean he had to fully give up the luxury of a modern bathroom when he had it available.

Once Carl had breakfast ready, he called Fiona and the Ralts over. The two were enthusiastic for breakfast, bringing a smile to Carl's face.

After cleaning up again, Carl smiled gently at the Ralts. "Would you like to join me and Fi on our journeys?" Carl got straight to the point, seeing as the Ralts seemed to want to hang around them. The Ralts firmly nodded yes.

"Okay, I'm going to need to bind you to a pokeball so you can stay with us. It's also for your protection. If you are ever injured, putting you back in the pokeball will keep you stable until we can get you healed. Don't resist the pulling sensation, okay?" Carl asked.

Seeing the Ralts nod, Carl pulled out a pokeball and gently tossed it next to her. She was easily sucked in to the pokeball. A pokeball binds to a single pokemon. Once bound, it wouldn't change unless you took the ball to a factory for a reset.

Carl picked up the ball, and soon activated it, letting the Ralts out again. Carl smiled at the Ralts encouragingly. He then reached out and connected mentally with her like he had with Fiona.

In the past world, when Carl was 27 he could connect to 5 people at a time, which made the sex with his girls beyond fantastic, when everyone could share mentally what they wanted or what made them feel good.

Now that Carl was 12 again, he felt like 2 mental links were his limit, until he grew and trained up again.

[This is Carl.] Carl transmitted to the Ralt's amazement. [I've connected a mental bond between the three of us. What should we call you?]

[I don't have a name.] The Ralt shyly said.

[How about the name Rhona? Does that sound like a good name for you?]

Rhona nodded enthusiastically, sending feelings of happiness across the bond. Carl looked over at Fiona and saw she too was happy their team had grown by one.

"Well, now that we're a team, its best we get used to each other's moves and abilities so we can work together without getting in each other's way." Carl stated. He then opened the portal to his warehouse, and led Rhona inside.

He explained about his warehouse ability and how they would use it to help the team. He lead Rhona over to the obstacle course and training setup he'd put up the previous day, to find Fiona already waiting for them.

"Okay, first thing we're going to do is a timed obstacle course. Don't worry about how long it takes you, or if you're doing good or bad. Just do your best. This is only to see where your abilities are. Fi, will you go first to show Rhona how it's done?"

At Fiona's nod, Carl called "Go!" while starting the timer. Carl and Rhona watched as Fiona zoomed through the obstacle course, juking left and right through the obstacles, bouncing over and under the fences. She soon arrived at the end point. "Good job, Fiona. 1 minute 43 seconds." Carl recorded her time in his laptop.

"Okay, your turn, Rhona. Ready? Go!" Carl started the timer. Rhona was noticeably slower, taking nearly twice as long as Fiona. "Time. 3 minutes 23 seconds. Good job, Rhona."

Rhona looked heartbroken at her slow time. [I'm so slow, though.] She complained.

Fiona moved over and nudged her encouragingly. [Don't worry about it, Rhona. I'm just exceptionally fast.] She half bragged, half consoled. [Just because you're not as fast as me doesn't mean you're bad. Remember, you're a Ralts while I'm a Fennekin. We're good at different things, so don't feel bad.]

After hearing that encouragement from Fiona, Rhona looked over at Carl, as if to question if that was true.

"What Fiona said is right, Rhona. Everyone has things they are good at, and I'm sure you've got talents that Fiona won't have. That's why we work as a team, to help each other be stronger than we would be alone." Carl gave an impromptu pep talk.

Seeing that Rhona perked up at that, Carl smiled. "Okay, next test will be-"

[Wait. You haven't gone yet, Carl!] Fiona pointed out.

[Yeah, yeah! It's Carl's turn!] Rhona joined in.

Carl laughed. "Okay, it's my turn." Carl gave in. He did say they were a team, after all. He has to put in as much work as any other member. He handed the stopwatch to Rhona and showed her how to start and stop the watch.

[Go!] Fiona called out.

Carl ran the course, actually having fun making use of his parkour skills to go as fast as he could. The ingenious course was set up to be variable in size, depending on who was running it. So the size of the obstacles adjusted to be larger for him.

[Time!] Rhona called out as Carl finished the course. [I can't read the time.] Rhona complained after looking at the watch for a few moments.

Carl looked over her shoulder. "2 minutes 41 seconds. Looks like I'm in the middle of the pack." Carl joked, causing the two pokemon to laugh. "Rhona, do you want to learn to read so you can tell time and other stuff like that?" Carl asked.

[Yes, that would be nice.] Rhona said.

[Ooh, me too!] Fiona said, not to be outdone by the other pokemon. Carl realized that even though Fiona has been with him for the past four years, she wasn't there when he first learned to read and write, so she hasn't learned in all that time.

"Okay, I'll see if I can't get some lessons prepared soon so you can learn. I'll have to pick up some books too, so you can practice. Or maybe some electronic readers or laptops?" Carl trailed of, thinking up plans on how to make reading and writing easier for the multitude of different size and shaped pokemon. It was a long term goal, something he would probably bring up with his dad the next time he went home. Probably after Fiona and Rhona have learned a bit more.

Seeing the two looking at him expectantly, Carl shook off his thoughts and plans, shelving them for later.

"Okay, next is to measure your attack abilities." Carl stated, moving over to what looked like a 5 foot tall and 5 foot diameter cylinder rock. "This particular item will measure your abilities. It will convert the strength of your attack to a range of numbers, based on the strength of the ability. Who wants to go first?"

Fiona swiftly jumped in front of the rock, excited to go first. She first attacked with Scratch, slashing the tester with her each of her front paws.

"Nice damage! Looks like a 17 for your right paw, and a 16 for your left, Fiona. Next attack." Carl cheered.

Fiona charged straight at the tester stone, swerving away at the last second while whipping it with her tail, before returning to her starting position.

"No damage, but it greatly decreases the enemy's defense, making them vulnerable to your follow on attacks. Very nice." Carl made sure the Tail Whip was dispelled from the stone. "How about your flame attack, now?"

Carl could see Fiona's ears brighten up, as she charged up her Ember attack, before spitting out a small fireball that swiftly flew and impacted the tester stone.

"41! Nice job Fiona." Carl praised.

[And that's why I'm the Queen of Speed and Fire.] Fiona bragged.

[You're a Queen?] Rhona oohed at her in awed respect.

[Of course!] Fiona affirmed.

[I'm so jealous.] Rhona said.

[Don't worry. Now that you're following Carl, you are at least a Princess.] Fiona comforted Rhona.

[I'm a Princess?] Rhona asked in wonder.

[Of course! You'll see when we return back home. We live in a castle, and we have servants. Sometimes Carl's parents invite the other nobility over for a ball. We always get the best food and accommodations, because we are royalty.]

[That is so exciting! I'm so happy I'm a princess now!]

Carl had a funny look on his face, his smile twitching at the edge, while listening to Fiona and Rhona's conversation. She wasn't exactly wrong, they did live in a large manor and had servants and parties. But to label them royalty was a bit…different…from what Carl thought their situation was. But he definitely wasn't going to try to convince the two girls they weren't royalty. That would just break their hearts and get him labeled a jerk, for absolutely no reason.

"Okay, how about you go now, Rhona?" Carl suggested.

Rhona stepped up in front of the stone, and let out a Growl. The visible sound waves, impacted the stone.

"No damage, but that attack would make an opponent weak. Their attack damage would be halved. That's a very useful ability for opponents that hit hard, Rhona." Carl praised.

The shy Ralt nodded happily at the praise. Rhona then used a different attack, sending a different sound wave attack.

"20, nice damage, Rhona. Do you have any other moves?"

Rhona shyly nodded. [My mother taught me one before she…went away.]

Sensing Rhona's distress at thinking of her probably dead mother, Carl gently placed his hand on her head, stroking her head in comfort. "When you're ready, then Rhona."

Rhona nodded. Opening her mouth, she blew a bubble of water that hit the stone.

Carl's mouth dropped opened in shock. Rhona just used a healing ability. For her mother to be able to teach such a young and immature Ralts a healing move, they both must be exceptional.

"Wow, that would have healed 40 points of damage! You two are amazing. Fiona is indeed the Queen of Speed and Fire, and you, Rhona, are the Queen of Healing!" Carl praised. He was indeed lucky to have such exceptional companions.

[Okay, your turn, Carl!] Fiona exclaimed.

Nodding, Carl stepped up to the stone. First he hit it with a palm strike. "8." He hit it with an elbow strike. "9." Then a front kick. "10." Feeling a bit depressed, Carl stepped back and summoned a wind blade that would be capable of decapitating a newborn vampire. He launched it at the stone. "17."

Sure, his magic wasn't as powerful as before because he wasn't able to train it yet. But for his two pokemon to be able that much stronger than him when they were all basically level 1 just kind of depressed him a bit. At least until he realized what his group could do to a bunch of vampires once they all leveled and trained up.

[Its okay, Carl. Even if you can't be a Queen at anything, you can still be a Princess.] Rhona consoled him.

'This kind of consolation…are they making fun of me?' Carl wondered.

"Of course I can't be a Queen, I'm a boy." Carl explained. "Only girls can be Queens or Princesses."

[Well, what is the boy version then?] Fiona asked curiously.

"A Prince is the boy version of a Princess. And a King is the boy version of a Queen." Carl explained.

[You can be Prince Carl then.] Rhona said in a helpful voice.

[That makes sense then why he's always making food for us. It's cause we are Queens, while he is a only a Prince.] Fiona said smugly, before the two started laughing at the little prank they had played on him.

Carl froze for a bit, before chuckling along with them. "You cheeky minxes." He muttered, wondering if having mental links so he knew when they were making fun of him was worth it. After considering it for a bit, he realized of course it was. Even if the joke was at his expense.

After the laughter settled down, Carl then started explaining to the two Queens how he wanted them to train on some targets, and he would monitor them with his magic as they wore themselves out, then recovered. They would experiment with repetitions and rest periods to find the best training method.

He would also evaluate how they reacted to different vitamin and medicinal supplements when taken before, during, and after training sessions.

They would also work on fighting as a team to integrate their attacks and attack patterns into a whole strategy to keep the enemy off balance and unable to strike back.

Once they had a schedule set, they got to work. And Carl wasn't exempt from the hard training. He needed to work hard to get to his peak ability, after all.

And each evening as Carl was cooking their dinner, he would talk with his parents about his progress and training. He would also hear the various anecdotes from home about his parent's lives. It was a nice time.

* * *

Five days after Rhona joined the group, Carl felt that they were working well as a group, so they started hunting around the area so Carl could capture one of each of the local groups of pokemon.

The pokemon that had been outside the clearing on the first day Carl had arrived had long since vacated the area. Fiona had such a wonderful sense of smell, though, she was able to make it easier on them to find the territory of different pokemon and track them down.

On the afternoon of the first day, they ran across their first wild pokemon, aside from Rhona that simply wandered into his campsite.

[There's a Budew hiding in the bushes over there, Carl.] Fiona thought while adding a little nudge of direction to her message so Carl and Rhona knew exactly where she was "pointing" to.

Looking over, Carl could barely make out the Grass/Poison type pokemon that looked like a walking, smiling plant hiding amongst the bushes.

[Okay, we won't go all out attacking him, cause we're trying to catch him. So we'll try this. Fiona, you hit him one time with a slash. We'll then judge if he is weakened enough for me to capture him with a pokeball. If he isn't, then Rhona can use your Disarming Voice to damage him once more. Sound good?] Carl thought at his two pokemon.

Sensing their approval of the plan through the link, Carl gave the go signal.

Fiona attacked like a flash. She was in front of the Budew before he knew anything was happening, and slashed him with her right paw. The Budew flew back from the attack, smashing into a tree behind him and then falling to the ground, unconscious.

Carl could see the slash marks from Fiona's attack start to ooze a little green blood. He was shocked for a second at just how much damage Fiona had done with one attack. It was more than he expected. She really was a higher tier than the average pokemon.

Quickly breaking himself out of his shock, he threw the pokeball and easily caught the Budew.

Now that the action was over, Carl was very relieved he didn't have the team go all out. They would have easily killed the Budew if they had.

"Well, that went a lot easier than I thought it would." Carl said. It was his first pokemon battle, and it was over so quickly. "Let's get him into a medical unit in the medbay. You really smacked him good, Fiona." Carl praised.

[But of course!] Fiona gloated.

[But I didn't even get to do anything.] Rhona complained while slumping down as they walked to the medical unit. She was a little down at not being able to show off too.

"Don't worry Rhona, we'll let you go first next time." Carl promised, causing Rhona to perk up in excitement.

Carl released the Budew and then placed the still unconscious pokemon into the medical unit. Closing the lid on the cylinder shaped medical unit, Carl hit the start button.

While watching the medical unit do its thing, Carl pulled out his laptop and synced the Budew's pokeball with his laptop, downloading the data. Comparing the data from the Budew with Fiona and Rhona, Carl once again marveled at his luck at having his first two pokemon be such high class pokemon. The stats on the Budew were pretty weak.

Carl debated with himself about whether or not he should keep the pokemon and train it up a bit, or look for a stronger Budew. Eventually Carl decided that since he didn't really have a baseline for how strong the average Budew was, he would keep this one for now, and continue to catch more around the area.

Whichever one was the strongest of each species his group caught would be the one he would keep long term and train, while letting the others go.

* * *

Over the next couple of weeks as Carl, Fiona, and Rhona hunted down the pokemon in the area, the capture of each went pretty much like the first combat. Both Rhona and Fiona were able to knock out the pokemon they fought with only a single hit.

They were a little dissatisfied with how weak their opponents were. Carl assumed that the further out into the wilds they went, the stronger the pokemon would be. He planned to test that assumption in a few weeks by going deeper into the wild, but for now, they would stick to their current hunting grounds. It was good practice for tracking down pokemon.

Fiona had an excellent nose for sniffing out the pokemon. After a few times of following Fiona on a hunt, Carl started paying more attention to his senses. He had paid for tier 4 senses, after all. It would be foolish not to learn while he could.

His sense of smell still wasn't as sharp as Fiona's was, but as he actively paid attention to what his nose told him, he started being able to use his nose to learn more about his surroundings. He could differentiate the scents of any creature that were close by.

He was also using his vision to start recognizing pokemon and animal tracks. Some of the tracks were made in soft soil, making obvious tracks that even his pre-upgrade eyes could have picked out. But so many of the tracks made by animals and pokemon were so faint, it was hard to differentiate an actual track.

Carl was making progress on seeing the tracks, mostly because he knew to look for them when following Fiona who was following scent trails. As the days passed, Carl's eyes really started to shine. The tracks almost seemed to become more visible to Carl each day as he got lots of practice in.

As time went on, Carl also soon learned to identify unseen objects based on sound. When nuts fell to the ground out of sight. When squirrels were running round the tree branches. He began to recognize all the little sounds that he never noticed before.

Even though Carl had upgraded his senses, until now he didn't have a database in his head of what each sound or smell was, thus he wasn't able to fully utilize his senses. But as he slowly built up the database of sounds, smells, and sights, he discovered a whole new world opening up to him.

Or rather, the world had always been there, the same as it always was. But Carl found himself aware of the world on a whole different level. He felt like he had been blind, deaf, and dumb all his life before now.

At the end of the two weeks of hunting, Carl, Fiona, and Rhona had caught several of each of the pokemon common to the area. The Grass/Poison type Budew, the Bug/Flying type Combee, a fairy type Flabebe, a Bug/Flying type Ledyba, and a normal type Skitty.

After comparing each pokemon based on their attack prowess and the growth potential Carl felt in them through his magic scans, he kept only one of each type for training, letting the rest of them go after healing them up.

Unlike Fiona and Rhona, who voluntarily joined Carl, the rest of the pokemon were forcefully captured, and Carl didn't have a magical mind talking link with them, so Carl had to spend time appeasing them and assuring them that he wouldn't treat them bad before they were willing to start working with him in their training routines.

After a few days of working with the new pokemon, Carl could tell the difference between the five newbies and Fiona and Rhona. Fiona and Rhona had a much bigger growth potential and they got stronger, faster, from the training, than the five other pokemon.

Carl hadn't quite planned ahead on just how much food seven pokemon would eat, even though most of them were very small. So after two days of training, he put the pokemon in their balls, except for Fiona and Rhona, packed up his camp, and made his way back to the road.

He then pulled out his bicycle and with his two pokemon in the basket, started peddling back to Lumiose City. He wanted to introduce "Queen" Rhona to his parents and their "Castle", while at the same time giving his father his training research notes and seeing if his father had a solution for how to feed a horde of pokemon while on a training journey. He definitely hadn't taken into consideration how the both he and the pokemon needed more food than normal when training.

When he arrived home, his parents were out socializing for the evening. He told the mansion staff not to call his parents with news that he was back. He had only been gone a couple weeks. He could wait until their scheduled evening was done rather than call them back and interrupt their night out.

While Carl was arranging his notes and gear, Fiona took Rhona on a tour of their "Castle". Carl simply smiled in amusement as they wandered off, hearing snippets of Rhona's oohing and ahhing over their magnificent new digs.

Later that night when his parents arrived home, they were surprised to see him home. Carl enjoyed spending the evening with decent parents again. The Chases back in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world were absent at best. Obsessed with their fortune, reputation, and popularity, they could barely be called relatives, really.

But Clark and Claire did a wonderful job of staying down to earth good people despite their wealth. They were fun to spend time with.

The next day Carl joined his father at Poke co. Headquarters, going over his notes on training, gear, and what he realized he needed if he was going to keep catching pokemon and training them. After receiving so much data, his father was pretty happy. Apparently until now they didn't really have a decent way to get feedback from their costumers about the usefulness of their products, or what they desperately needed. So the information Carl was providing was priceless.

Even just figuring out an organized method to store enough food for a training team to remain in the outdoors without just stuffing it in a backpack was innovative.

Not to mention he had magic senses that could really dig deep into what was happening in the pokemon's bodies as they trained or used supplements. Carl's father didn't ask how he came across the knowledge he did, he simply trusted what information Carl gave him. Which warmed Carl's heart.

After going over the data, Clark soon got completely focused on his work, even forgetting to eat. He would have forgotten to go home for the day, if Carl wasn't there with him.

After a few days, Clark brought home some experimental feeding stations that Carl could set up for his groups of pokemon. Carl was happy about that. He didn't mind cooking meals for a group of three. But cooking every meal for a group of eight had started to get out of hand. And in the future he would only increase the number of pokemon he had to feed.

The feeding stations had the same pocket dimension setup the backpacks did. He could go to the pokemon store and purchases many bushels of each kind of food the pokemon preferred, and have it set out for them to eat from. It would save Carl time in food preparation, while ensuring each pokemon had enough food, vitamins, and supplements they needed to remain healthy and energetic.

Carl and Clark determined that he would try training the pokemon in groups of three for an hour at a time. If Carl tried to train too large of a group, he wouldn't be able to give the same amount of focus and attention each pokemon deserved.

After each training session, the pokemon could sit and observe the next group train, do self training, or simply laze around and nap or play. Carl didn't feel a huge sense of urgency to get strong quick in order to fight an overpowered monster, so he didn't plan to set up his training camp like a military boot camp.

After dinner each day, they would bed down around the temporary camp he would set up at each camp location. Carl decided that unless they were traveling, while they were training or hunting, he would leave the pokemon outside their pokeballs. That way the group could get to know one another, interact, and be used to working together.

Fiona and Rhona of course would not be going in the pokeballs even during travel, unless absolutely necessary. They were his "Queens", and he was very fond of their presence in his life. Their conversation often times made him smile or laugh.

After spending another week at home, Carl was re-outfitted with the new gear. He was enjoying the time he spent with his parents and the work he was doing in developing pokemon gear with Clark. It was fun and satisfying.

Carl, Fiona, and Rhona once more set off on their journey by bicycle. This time Carl made it to the forests surrounding Santalune city, where they would find new pokemon to capture and train with.

After leaving the highway, Carl began hiking into the woods, looking for a good place away from the highway to set up camp. After a couple of hours, he found a nice spot in a clearing near a river. Since all animals needed to drink, he could be assured that spending time going upstream or downstream from his camp to scout for sign of pokemon would be a good use of his time. So he set up camp, prepared to stay for a few weeks.

* * *

Carl and his pokemon soon got into a routine. He would spend the morning scouting for any sign of pokemon in the area with Fiona and Rhona. After lunch he would spend time training with the batches of pokemon he'd caught so far, as well as training himself, both magically and physically. Fiona especially seemed happy to boss around her subordinate pokemon, and encourage them to train.

And in the evenings, just before going to bed, Carl would log all his gathered data on their progress. Being able to closely track his team's progress in training and growing stronger would help him understand the needs of each individual pokemon. He would be better able to maximize their strength gains.

Then he would give Fiona and Rhona reading lessons. One of the projects that Clark had started the last time Carl had been home was to set a few researchers to figuring out how to make computer interfaces that would allow even animal shaped pokemon to read and type electronics.

If they could design a device to teach pokemon to read and type, every trainer with their device would be able to have actual conversations with their pokemon, not just play charades. Such a simple innovation would then make their company lots of money with all the people who would want to know exactly what their pokemon were trying to say.

He already knew from his education growing up that he couldn't directly apply what the pokemon used to get stronger on himself. Humans that tried to eat the same growth supplements usually had their bodies break down on them. Humans just weren't as robust as pokemon were.

While pokemon could be stored in pokeballs with no problem, if a human were to be put in a pokeball, they would come out brain dead. So there were certain safety measures put into place in the technology to ensure that never happened.

Four days after arriving at his spot on the river, Carl witnessed one of the most ridiculous scenes he'd ever seen. As he was following the river downstream, he saw a Magikarp majestically jump out of the water, snapping up a large juicy bug that had been taunting him. Only to fall onto the riverbank like an idiot. He just sat there, stupid mouth opening and closing, flopping a little bit. But the more he flopped, the further away he got from the bank.

Carl, Fiona, and Rhona all exchanged glances. Carl was wondering about the stupidity of that Magikarp. He's a fish, shouldn't he be trying to get back in the water?

[Maybe he's in pain and doesn't know what he's doing?] Rhona speculated.

"I'll check him out." Carl started scanning the big goldfish looking pokemon. Usually with a pokemon directly in front of him, Carl would be immediately trying to catch it. But he really didn't want such a stupid pokemon on his team.

"He's not hurt or anything." Carl said after a few moments of scanning him with his magic. "He doesn't actually feel distressed at all. He feels like he's straining for something. Trying to reach out for something."

[Is he trying to reach out for water?] Fiona asked. [He is a fish.] She defended herself when Carl and Rhona looked at her weird.

Then, before their eyes, the Magikarp started glowing from the inside. Carl could feel the energies inside the pokemon reaching a new tier, a higher tier. He saw the body shape of the fish start to change, like it was liquid. Stretching out and changing color, the pokemon was completely evolving into a new pokemon.

The new shape was vaguely serpentine. The scales on his back were a dark blue, while the belly was a lighter blue. He had two whiskers, hanging from his face, and he was now seven feet long. He almost looked like small cousin of an eastern dragon. Carl realized that the dumb fish had just evolved into Gyarados.

'Could this be like that Chinese saying, the fish leaps over the dragon gate in order to become a dragon?' Carl thought.

Carl could tell from his magic scanning the pokemon that he was much stronger now than he was as a Magikarp. But at the same time, Carl could tell that the fish hadn't maximized his potential.

When the pokemon was still a Magikarp, Carl sensed both its potential, and its actual power level. He had been monitoring these two levels for weeks on his other pokemon, so he was used to sensing it. The scans didn't return exact numbers, but he could vaguely sense that the fish pokemon was only at about half his full potential at the time he evolved.

But now that he had evolved, Carl could tell that the newly evolved Gyarados was at about 1% of his maximum potential. But the thing that puzzled Carl, was that he felt like half of the pokemon's maximum potential was locked.

This was a puzzle that Carl wanted to explore more.

"Fiona, subdue the Gyarados for me please. I need to learn more about what is happening with him."

[Right!] Fiona confidently declared.

The newly evolved Gyarados was just beginning to gather himself, and started floating around, getting used to his new body when Fiona arrived in front of him and started beating him up.

The Gyarados was immediately angered. Here he was, newly evolved and feeling like he was king of the world, when some small creature dared to challenge him! He immediately tried to bite Fiona, but she was too quick for him.

The moment he snapped at her, she was already gone, moving around his large frame, smashing him with her claws.

The Gyarados roared, angered beyond reasoning, and started wildly thrashing, trying to hit Fiona with his tail and water attacks from his mouth, but it availed him nothing. He didn't have the speed to keep up with her, and he was unused to fighting in his new form, allowing Fiona to dominate him.

Within a minute the Gyarados lay on the ground, exhausted, while Fiona stood to the side, proud of her performance. Carl wasted no time in capturing the exhausted pokemon.

"Nicely done, Fi!" Carl didn't forget to praise Fiona. Such a small fox subduing a much larger foe with speed was entertaining to watch.

[Yeah, good job Fi!] Rhona chimed in, clapping in excitement.

[But of course! It was me, Queen Fiona on the job!] Fiona proudly exclaimed. Carl just laughed, enjoying her confident attitude.

"Let's head back to camp early. I want to do some scans on this newly evolved Gyarados. Something is odd about his growth potential after evolving, and I'd like to find out what it is. What we find out may help you two for when it's time for you to evolve."

[But I don't want to turn into a fish or a snake!] Rhona exclaimed in horror. Fiona also gasped in horror at the thought of turning into a big dumb snake.

Carl had to really struggle not to laugh.

"No, don't worry, we're not trying to make you into a fish or snake." Carl reassured them. "I just need to understand pokemon evolution a bit more to help you two be the best you can be. It won't turn you into something weird, I promise."

The two pokemon sighed in relief that they would not be turning into anything weird.

When they arrived back at their camp, Carl first entered his Warehouse, going over to the medunit to heal the Gyarados from the beating he'd taken from Fiona.

Although Fiona had learned many new skills in the past weeks like Flame Charge, Psybeam, and Fire Spin, she held back greatly, only using her scratch attack. The serpentine pokemon had still taken quite a bit of damage that needed healing if Carl was to study him properly.

Looking at the medunit that would only barely fit the pokemon, Carl suddenly had an idea. He placed the pokeball the Gyarados was stored in on the medunit bed. Looking at the medunit screen, he saw that he could start the healing process while the pokemon was inside its ball.

This was great, he didn't have to risk further damaging injured pokemon by transferring them from their ball to the unit bed. And if they were too big for the bed, they could still be healed.

The biggest complaint Carl had against the medunit was that the only function it offered was healing when the start button was hit. It offered no diagnostic service, no data in the healing process, and no records of the patient's history.

But because he got free healing out of it, Carl couldn't complain too much. It helped his pokemon remain in peak condition while training, and allowed them to grow quickly, so he should just enjoy what he has, instead of complaining about it he often chided himself.

Over the next few weeks as he trained the Gyarados, he also caught some of the pokemon from the area. He found some Pidgey bird pokemon that he caught a couple of and kept the one with the most potential. Strangely the Pidgey looked more like an owl than a pigeon, which Carl was happy about. He didn't really like dumb pigeons.

He got really excited when he saw his first Pikachu, but after working with him a bit he found he was kind of betrayed by high expectations. He had the impression from his previous life that Pikachu was pretty cool, because he was that kid Ash's companion and they made a big deal about him. But the Pikachu was nowhere near Fiona or Rhona's growth potential. At least not the one's he found. He still kept one though. Gotta catch em all, right?

He also caught some rabbit looking pokemon called Bunnelby, another bird pokemon called a Fletchling that looked like a big headed sparrow, a groundhog looking pokemon called Bidoof, a bug pokemon called a Burmy, that looked like he was wrapped up in tree leaves, and a fairy type pokemon called Azuril looked like a squished mouse whose thin tail had a weird fluffy ball of fur as big as his own body that he liked to perch on when resting.

'Some of these pokemon are just fucking weird.' Carl thought on more than one occasion.

During all this catching and training of pokemon over a month's time, Carl carefully monitored the Gyarados' progress as he gained strength. After a month of hard training, the Gyarados had reached about 10% of his potential. He had also grown a few inches. Carl had records of some Gyarados being 21 feet long, so he figured their size was a mostly a result of their age, and that after several years this Gyarados would finally reach that size too.

As he gained more pokemon, Carl started having a little tournament once a week to get his pokemon used to the elimination style event. The winners would get some special treats and prizes in order to encourage them to try their best. Despite the Gyarados gaining much more practice in his new body, he still couldn't beat Fiona or Rhona.

The two self titled "Queens" simply had monstrous growth and learning curves. They learned and became practiced with a new move from Carl's HM Collection nearly every week, while the other pokemon Carl had were struggling to perfect their first three moves, even after a month.

After a full month of training, it was time to head back to town to resupply. Even with Carl supplementing their food supplies with wild animals and plants, their rations were getting low. Carl found that the idea of eating pokemon was almost sacrilegious to this world's culture, and that Carl, with his memories of growing up in this world, shared those same values. Normal animals were just fine to eat, but only degenerates ate pokemon.

Carl packed up his campsite and made his way back to Santalune City. As Carl was approaching the Santalune Market on his bicycle, he noticed a large crowd blocking the entryway. Curious about what was going on, he packed up his bicycle so he, Fiona, and Rhona could edge their way in so they could see just what was causing the commotion.

When he finally saw what was causing the commotion, Carl was flabbergasted. It was two teens who looked a couple years older than Carl, yelling at each other. The dark haired teen boy was dressed in jeans, a blue jacket, and a red hat. While the blonde girl was dressed in a red skirt, black leggings and shirt, and a red hat.

"So, what's going on here?" Carl asked a fellow onlooker, a middle aged looking man who was dressed in casual wear.

After glancing over at Carl, the man faintly laughed. "Dunno why, but the boy seems like he's trying to provoke the girl into a pokemon battle. Kids these days."

Focusing in on what was being said, Carl couldn't understand how the boy's brain worked. Didn't he know there were pokemon centers with battle rooms? Why did he have to go provoke a fight in the street and block traffic?

"And I'll prove, once and for all, that I'm the better trainer! You should just give up and go home, you don't have a chance at fighting against the Elite Four! You don't have the determination needed!" The boy in a blue jacket was shouting at the girl.

From the way she was gritting her teeth and glaring, it was probably a good thing for him she didn't have any pokemon powers, or he would be toast already.

"Fine! If it'll shut you up, we'll battle right here, right now!" She finally exclaimed while pulling a pokeball out of her bag.

"Good! Finally!" The boy exclaimed, also pulling out his own pokeball.

"Hah! Looks like we get to watch a good show today." The man next to Carl laughed.

"Yeah, you show him girl!"

"Let's see you fight!"

Carl shook his head. No matter what, people were the same everywhere. The onlookers had nothing to do with the argument or issue between the two teens, they just wanted a show and were willing to egg them on to get it.

The two teens threw their pokeballs, and their pokemon materialized. Carl looked at the two blue and white colored frog Froakies facing each other. The boy and girl then started calling out attacks for their pokemon to perform.

Carl watched the slow paced static fight. Both Froakies just sat in one place, growling and blowing bubbles at each other. They barely tried dodging. After a few minutes, the two frogs knock each other out at the same time.

Carl almost felt embarrassed for the display. But most of the people was still enjoying the spectacle, so they kept egging them on. From the red face the boy was sporting, Carl figured the jeers from the crowd was really getting to him. While the girl quickly called back her pokemon. She at least looked like she was worried about the state of her frog, which Carl thought at least spoke well of her for caring more about her pokemon than what some random crowd was yelling.

The boy finally put his frog back in his pokeball, and sent out a Pikachu this time.

"Come on, Pikachu! We can win this!" The boy yelled enthusiastically.

The girl hesitated a moment, until she saw the mocking look on the boy's face. She then firmed her resolve, and sent out another pokemon. This time she sent a Cubone, a little dinosaur looking pokemon with a skull on his head, holding a bone in his paw.

'Looks like the dude made a mistake by letting her know what pokemon he chose before she chose her own. The Cubone is immune to electric attacks.' Carl thought. Soon enough, he was treated to the sight of the little dinosaur beating the living tar out of the Pikachu.

Carl laughed a bit. He had made sure that his pokemon were strong and fast enough to do major damage even if they couldn't use their primary element as a damage dealer. Faced against a pokemon at the same level, even if they were immune to fire, Fiona could demolish them.

Somehow Carl's laughing happened at the same exact moment the crowd had fallen silent, which left Carl sticking out of the crowd. The teen took apparently took Carl laughing when his Pikachu was defeated as a mortal insult, based on the way he was glaring daggers at Carl.

Carl couldn't do anything other than scratch the back of his head sheepishly while shrugging. He had been laughing at the boy's ineptness as a trainer, after all.

"Oh, I was just laughing 'cause I saw someone in the crowd pick their nose and wipe a big booger on that guy's shirt." Thinking quickly, Carl threw out a random lie while pointing at the dude next to him. Using the man's exclamations of disgust and antics of trying to look at the back of his shirt to pull attention away from him, Carl slipped back into the crowd to leave post haste.

Based on the way the teen boy was acting, Carl really had no desire to get entangled with him. He was busy with his training and felt no need to get sucked into whatever shenanigans the boy was up to.

"I mean, he could have agreed to meet the girl at the pokemon center and have a private battle if he was just trying to test his skills against her." Carl said to Fiona and Rhona as they paced besides him. "Instead he makes a huge public spectacle and mocks her until she was mad enough to fight him. And if he's got a crush on her and trying to get her attention, then he's one of those people with some kind of brain damage, to think she'll somehow appreciate his skills when he used them to try to belittle her own skills."

[If he has brain damage, can the medunit heal him?] Rhona asked. Carl barked a laugh.

"I'm afraid it's not something the medunit can heal, Rhona. He's just out of luck to have some incurable brain sickness. Maybe he'll eventually grow out of it though. It's possible."

[Yeah, best to stay away from sick puppies like that. Who knows if they are contagious!] Fiona exclaimed.

While Rhona felt a little confused at what kind of physical damage couldn't be healed by the medunit, she seemed okay with letting the topic go. Besides, Carl had impressed on them that the Warehouse was their team's secret. No outsider was to know about it. So it wasn't like she could ask for some stranger to be healed in the medunit.

Carl soon arrived at the food market, and after some negotiations, arranged for his purchased goods to be delivered to the local branch of Poke co. for Carl to pick up the next day.

It was past time for him to send off his training logs and other observations to Clark, and he didn't want to do so over the unsecure network of the Pokegear. So he would be making use of the secured communications of the local Poke co. branch office anyway, Carl might as well pick up his order there.

Carl then spent some time looking around the market for anything interesting or useful. He bought some snacks and trinkets that caught Fiona and Rhona's attention, just enjoying his free time and the antics of his companions.

Towards evening, Carl brought them to a hotel and checked in to the room he'd made reservations with on his Pokegear a few days ago. The three spent the evening resting and relaxing before all passing out on the bed.


	9. Pokemon 3

The first thing Carl did the next day after a late start was to go to the local Poke co. branch. When Carl checked in with the manager, John, he found it both weird and at the same time perfectly natural that the manager fawned over him so much.

On the one hand, he still had the idea from his previous life that an adult fawning over a 12 year old was creepy. On the other hand, he had memories of growing up as the heir to the company and the manager's future boss.

Carl realized that the manager was worried that if Carl was unhappy with his performance, he could get his dad to fire him. So it made sense John would do his best to make Carl happy.

As Carl thought about it more, he had many memories of people treating him like that all through growing up, so it felt somewhat normal for Carl now. The only thing was that now that Carl had his old life's memories, he realized that all those people that tried so hard to make him happy wasn't because respect for him, a kid with no accomlishments. It wasn't anything he did that was deserving of that kind of behavior from people.

Those people were just afraid to upset him on the chance that he would complain to his backing, his parents, and that would result in their benefits of a good job being taken away from them. They would then lose their financial stability. And then they wouldn't be able to support their families.

And this realization didn't give Carl a feeling of power over people. It didn't make him feel like he was superior. Instead it impressed on Carl the importance of understanding what motivates people. It imprinted the responsibility inherent in a high position on Carl.

These were his people. Or his father's people, so it amounted to the same thing. They depended on his family to survive. And his family couldn't accomplish what they had with their company without their employees willing help.

With this clarity of thought, almost an epiphany, Carl realized that for the most part, people will give him a certain amount of respect and loyalty as long as they had a decent relationship of give and take. They give him labor, loyalty, and respect, and in return he gives them money, job security, and respect back.

For most people, no matter how much the money offered, if there was no respect they would have a cutoff point. A point at which they say "I've had all I can stand, and I can't stand no more." At that point, it doesn't matter how much money or job security they were offered. It wasn't worth putting up with the shit their employers dump on them.

So faced with the overeager manager John, and the fresh realization that respect must go both up and down the chain of command in order to instill loyalty, Carl treated the manager nicely, and actually chit chatted with him about his city and what his job entailed. Carl could tell the man was touched by Carl's apparent concern.

After a good talk, which Carl learned many ins and outs of Santalune City, Carl finally got to the point of why he had arrived at the branch that morning.

Carl first had John give him access to the company's computer, and uploaded his information to his father's files for him to access.

He then asked John about his supplies from the market that should have been delivered. After being assured his supplies were sitting in a secure room, John also informed Carl that Clark had shipped a new machine to their branch when he heard Carl was in the area.

John didn't know what the large package was, but it had been put in the same locked room as his food supplies.

They soon arrived at the storage room. After a polite request, John left Carl alone in the storage room for a few moments, long enough for Carl to open his warehouse and telekinetically shift the goods and package from Clark inside. Once that was done, Carl simply thanked John for his time and help, and left.

Carl didn't worry too much about John wondering about how he took the goods out. In a society with spatial manipulation and pocket dimension tech, little questions like that were not a big deal. At most John would assume he had some high tech storage item from his parents. They were rich, after all. Who knows what toys the rich had?

It wasn't until Carl returned to the hotel that he got a chance to slip back into his warehouse to check on his goods. He first organized and refilled his pocket dimension poke feeders. They were such wonderful devices that made food dispensing easy so feeding a dozen pokemon at a time wasn't difficult.

He then looked at the vending machine sized package that his father had sent him. After opening the box, he saw that it was an actual vending machine. After reading the documentation, Carl soon learned that it was a deluxe pokeball organizer/scanner/record keeping device. Carl simply needed to make sure it received a charge every few weeks when he returned to town to keep it running.

Another great feature it had was similar to how pokeballs could store pokemon, the Poke Organizer also had a small briefcase sized storage unit for ease of transport in the field.

It had plenty of space to store hundreds of pokeballs. As each one was placed in the Poke Organizer, it was scanned. The pokemon species, their power level, their abilities, health, and all other relevant information would be logged, stored, and synced with Carl's laptop and Pokedex for ease of information retrieval.

It would also make it easier to keep track of and retrieve the pokemon he wanted, rather than having tens or hundreds of pokeballs just sitting in a pile in his backpack.

Carl was very enthused for the new toy! He had over fifteen pokemon, and it was already getting to be a pain to keep the pokeballs in a decent order. This device would only help him. And the best thing was Carl could simply plug the device into the power grid in his warehouse and didn't need to worry about remembering to charge it.

Carl immediately installed the software on his laptop, loaded his pokeballs into it, and synced his data across the board. As Carl looked through the program and data provided, he smiled in satisfaction. He would have to thank his father for this gift. This would save him a lot of time by having the data automatically entered, instead of having to do it by hand every day. More time for training and other things.

Carl decided to spend one more day in the city. He took Fiona and Rhona to some of the local sights, parks, and a movie theatre. So far, despite being a "queen" Rhona hadn't experienced much of the posh life. Most of the time was spent traveling and training with Carl. So this new experience really made her day, and Fiona enjoyed talking about all the things she'd experienced in her life by Carl's side.

It made for a relaxing day.

* * *

The next day Carl, Fiona, and Rhona checked out of the hotel, and made their way out of the city, heading south. It took nearly a day of traveling to make it to Aquacorde Town. Since it was already evening, Carl checked into a motel and spent the night there, eating out at a restaurant instead of preparing his own food.

The next day, Carl made his way out of the town, and started exploring the wilds as he resumed his training schedule.

With the extra time available in the evenings now that Carl didn't have to manually enter his training logs, he spent a bit more time training his magic. He was able to really exercise his body all day as he hiked around and trained with his pokemon, so he really felt he needed some extra practice with his magic to get it back up to where it used to be, even if that would take a few years.

After a week and a half of following his training regimen, Carl finally, fully. admitted to himself something he had been suspecting for some time. Ever since he'd first used his magic attack against the attack power training stone the first time, he suspected it, but only with months of training and searching his suddenly improved memory had he solidified his suspicions.

Now that he had the **Savant **perk, he never forgot anything. He had been going over his memories from ten years ago, from when he first started training up his magic. His memories from before he'd gotten the perk were a lot duller and more difficult to remember, but once he dredged a memory up, he didn't forget it again.

And he'd finally concluded that it wasn't his imagination, his magic really was noticeably weaker in this world at the same stage than it had been when he was in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world.

After some thought Carl decided that the reason why is that this world's laws made it so that pokemon and their abilities were the strongest thing around. The only way for humans to have access to that power was to convince pokemon to fight for them. Or with them.

Even the perks available before entering this world were all geared towards making humans better trainers. Even the psychic abilities available was relegated to a simple tool to communicate with pokemon.

For whatever reason the natural laws were like that, Carl just had to suck it up and realize that by using the same amount of energy as a pokemon, his magic would be at least half as effective as a pokemon's abilities. Maybe in different worlds his magic would once more be just as powerful and effective, but in this one, he would have to work twice as much for half the effect.

Which to Carl just meant he had to put in at least as much effort into his training, if not more, than his pokemon did. Who knows when a little extra punch, no matter how light, would tip the scales in his team's favor? So he couldn't slack any. It would also set a good example for his pokemon to see him train just as hard as them.

Carl was very happy he had purchased the medunit. He had already determined that the medunit sped up the body's natural healing, while keeping the patient alive so the healing could take effect. This meant that when he or his pokemon trained hard, all those microtears in their muscles that cause soreness and weakness after a workout, could be healed with a quick use of the medunit, thus increasing their strength, speed, and endurance from the workout in record time.

It made their exercise sessions three or four times more effective, at least.

It also allowed them to train as hard as they could one day, get healed, then go hunting the next without worrying about being too weak to defend themselves.

After training and hunting for a few weeks in the area around Aquacorde Town, Carl moved south again to the area around Vaniville Town. The town itself was very small, and didn't have anything that interested Carl, aside from refilling their food supplies.

After trekking around the wilds for a few days, Carl ran across a small Turtwig being harassed by a flock of Pidgeys. The little turtle with a sapling on his back was actually acting like he barely noticed the birds, which was impressive since a Grass type pokemon like him was usually very vulnerable to flying pokemon.

But the sturdy little guy just kept plodding along, eating the grass in front of him while the bird pokemon uselessly attacked his shell. The few times they attacked his head, he retracted his head lightning quick into his shell, until they gave up and looked for a different target.

Carl extended his magic senses out to the little guy, and sensed that he had large growth potential, similar to Fiona and Rhona.

"Rhona, can you drive off those birds? I'm interested in adding that Turtwig to our team."

Nodding earnestly, Rhona stepped up and started sending psybeams to drive off the birds.

Not to be outdone, Fiona jumped in and sent some fireballs off as well, singing more than a few birds.

"Thanks, good work you two." Carl praised. It was always important to make sure your pokemon knew how much their contributions to the team meant to you.

Carl cautiously approached the wandering Turtwig. He pulled out of his backpack various snack foods since he had sensed the turtle's hunger eating at him. Carl didn't think the grass was his normal food, but it seems that's all he had available to him at the moment.

Carl noticed the little guy's immediate interest when he smelled the food Carl pulled out.

"Hey, would you like to join us? You'll get lots of food, and friends to hang out with if you do." Carl tempted the turtle pokemon.

The Turtwig seemed to be considering Carl's question for a long moment, but finally nodded his head firmly. When Carl saw he had agreed, he set the different foods out for the turtle. The little guy immediately started chomping on the jerky first. Looks like grass was as far from his preferred food as was possible. The more food he ate, the more energetic he seemed to be getting.

Carl reached out psychically to him. Recently, due to his hard work, Carl had improved his magic enough for another psychic link to be established, but Carl had decided to wait until he found a teammate that had potential similar to Fiona and Rhona before establishing it.

[Hey buddy. My name is Carl. The Fennekin to my right is Fiona, and the Ralts to my left is Rhona. Welcome to the team.]

[Hey there, slowpoke! Welcome to the team.] Fiona chimed in.

[Welcome to the team.] Rhona added.

[I'm not a slowpoke, I'm a Turtwig.] Came the response from the turtle as he glared at Fiona.

[Whatever, compared to me, the Queen of Speed and Fire, you're slow.] Fiona arrogantly proclaimed with her nose in the air.

Which was a mistake, because it meant she didn't notice the vine from the Turtwig's sapling snap forward and bop Fiona on snout. It did no damage to Fiona, only startling her.

[I may not be able to move fast, but I can attack fast!] The Turtwig proudly proclaimed.

[Ha! We'll just see about that!] Fiona proclaimed, suddenly taking the contest seriously, she started sprinting around the Turtwig, attempting to get close without getting tagged by the Turtwig's vines.

Carl just smiled as they mock fought. He didn't sense any intent to hurt each other in the exchange, just to test each other's abilities. Carl watched, amazed, as Fiona upped her speed beyond what he thought she was able to. 'Apparently she'd been sandbagging her training, content with her speed as it was. This contest is probably good for her, it seems to have gotten her fired up.' Carl started thinking of ways to increase Fiona's speed training.

Occasionally Fiona would get tagged with the vine, and occasionally she would get inside and tag the Turtwig. Finally, after several minutes of running around, Fiona stopped running outside of the Turtwig's reach.

[Hah! I won, 7 to 4, I tagged you more!] Fiona bragged.

[Yup, you're faster than anyone else I've met.] Turtwig readily admitted.

[You're not so bad yourself. No one else can keep up with me.] Fiona complimented him back after being praised.

"You two are really good. Okay, first things first, let's get you assigned to a pokeball so if you're ever injured we can keep you stable until I can get you to a medical unit." Carl said, dropping a pokeball next to the Turtwig. "Don't resist the pokeball."

And the Turtwig was sucked into his own pokeball. Carl opened up his warehouse and added him to the Poke-Organizer. Once the data was recorded, Carl once more let the Turtwig out, and set out some more food for him.

"Do you have a name already?" Carl asked once the Turtwig had finished eating. After he answered in the negative, Carl asked. "How does the name Talbot sound to you?"

[I like it!] Fiona immediately said.

[It sounds like a strong name.] Rhona added.

[Okay. I'll be Talbot from now on.] Talbot agreed easily.

Carl had the sense that Talbot would be pretty laid back for the most part, but as evidenced by his contest with Fiona was more than willing to step up when he needed to.

Carl then started going over everything Talbot would need to know about their team, with added comments from Fiona and Rhona.

After everything was settled, they soon returned to their campsite to continue their training schedule. Carl was feeling pretty good about his group. He vaguely felt like he was assembling a party group from an MMO. Talbot would be the tank, as evidenced by his toughness in vending off those Pidgeys and being able to keep Fiona engaged, Fiona was DPS with her melee, fire, and psychic attacks, and Rhona was a DPS/support/healer.

With the large potential talents that Carl sensed in these three, he knew they would be his first string team. They would eventually grow into massively powerful pokemon. He was excited to see that day.

* * *

After a couple of weeks searching the area and finding no more new pokemon, Carl packed up his camp and started the trip back to Lumiose City. The basket on his bike now held Rhona and Talbot, while Fiona perched on his backpack and his shoulders for the travel back.

They spent another evening in the hotel at Santalune City. Talbot was just as amazed as Rhona had been, the first time they saw human buildings, goods, and services. Fiona, as the one of the three who had spent the most time among humans, acted as the tour guide with great pride.

Carl simply did what he usually did. Sit back with a smile and enjoy their interactions. It was a strange position he held. He was their good friend, but at the same time he wasn't a pokemon like them, which for some unknown reason made it so he wasn't just one of the crew. He was the leader and trainer, which seemed to put him a bit above them in a way.

Carl had had time to become accustomed to the curious hierarchy their group had, and he had long determined that he would simply enjoy the group for what they were. Trying to purposefully shape their attitudes and behaviors would just destroy what they had, so Carl was determined to just let the group dynamics grow as they would.

The next day in the evening Carl finally peddled into Lumiose City. He arrived home late, but still found his parents waiting up for him. This kind of care and love was hard to find, and Carl was determined to enjoy it as long as he could.

After a late dinner with his parents, Carl soon retired to his room, and slept until late the next morning. Arriving at the table, Carl was surprised to find his parents still home.

"Dad, mom, why are you still here?" Carl asked in surprise.

"What? You can't wait to get rid of your poor parents?" Claire teasingly asked. "Do you maybe have some girl coming to visit that you don't want your parents to embarrass you in front of?"

"Come on mom, you know I don't!" Carl exclaimed, while blushing.

'Damn you hormones and my 12 year old body! I've got at least four girlfriends waiting for me in the last world. I've been an adult for many years! I've even had orgies! But the moment I'm back in a young body, I can't help but be embarrassed by my mom! How ridiculous is that!' Carl couldn't help but complain in his mind.

After his parents had their laugh, they settled down to talking about plans. This time around, Carl planned to stay home for at least a month while he went over his data and plans with Clark at the company. He was hoping that by working with him as he scanned the pokemon and adjusted the equipment, Carl would be able to help him develop more advanced equipment.

Also, his Gyarados had gotten up to 40% of his maximum potential. Carl was really interested to see just how much he could grow, because he could still feel that only half of his potential was available, but only by reaching that point could he be sure if he was right.

Meanwhile, Claire informed him what social events were happening and that she expected him to attend over the next month. Carl agreed to attend the events to help his mother with her socializing.

From his memories Carl remembered being bored at those events, but now with a new, adult perspective, Carl was interested to see what he would think of the socializing parties.

With the late breakfast over, Carl joined Clark at the company and started using the company's pokemon gym to train his pokemon and getting more data, while at the same time helping Clark adjust the equipment in the proper directions to get better scans.

While on the weekends, Carl would join both Claire and Clark at social engagements.

Carl met, or rather, reacquainted himself with the local businessmen, politicians, and other professionals. He also met their young sons and daughters, and tried to be friendly.

However, Carl wasn't able to make any decent friends. The young men either cared nothing about pokemon, which was a huge part of Carl's life at the moment, or they felt they had to be douchebag rivals, since they, for some reason, felt they were superior to Carl and wanted to prove it.

Carl didn't feel any need to fight those kinds of people. Proving he was better than them in pissing contests that would waste his training time had no appeal to him. They would just keep coming after him over and over if he won, annoying the hell out of him, or they would treat him with a supercilious attitude, pissing him off. He would pass.

The young women of those social circles, on the other hand, all seemed to be in training to become trophy wives. In other words, they were what the parents of Cordelia and Harmony tried to force their daughters to be in the last world.

Backbiting, scrabbling for popularity and social credit. Any method of coming out on top was deemed to be appropriate. Which meant they tried to tear each other down more than they tried to build each other up.

Carl just couldn't enjoy that kind of attitude or environment. He had spent so much time in the previous world making sure Cordelia and Harmony didn't have to be like that. But in this life, he had no real connection to any of those young women, and he had no idea of knowing which ones might be worth something.

So instead of engaging in such an exhausting effort as social reform, Carl spent most of his time mingling with the adults and conversing about their company, or district, or whatever was interesting, as opposed to dealing with the crazy young kids.

After a month and a half, the Gyarados had finally gotten up to 50% of what Carl felt his full potential was, and simply stopped growing anymore after that. No matter what training or supplements they tried, nothing could move him past that block.

Once Carl saw those results, he was relieved he hadn't let any of his pokemon evolve when they first felt they could.

From what Carl could gather, if a pokemon in their first form didn't fully grow into their potential before they evolved, they would damage their foundation and it would be nigh impossible to grow to what their maximum potential was.

Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot especially had all gotten to the point where they could have evolved when they were at 33% of their maximum potential. It would be a tragedy if they couldn't fulfill their potential because they sought out short term gains of evolving into a more powerful form. At this point they were up to about 75% of their maximum potential in their first form. So another month or so should see them up to 100%.

The data about training and supplements they had been taking had allowed Carl and Clark to tailor individual training regimens that had really improved the speed of their growth. After talking to the Gyarados about whether he wanted to stay with Clark and try to find a way to improve past his block, or be let go back into the wild, the Gyarados decided he'd rather go wander the waters of the world. So Clark had some employees drive him in the company vehicles to some nearby rivers to see where he would like to go free. Carl hoped the Gyarados enjoyed himself.

Carl and Clark then made plans to build some water training facilities so Carl could bring some water based pokemon back sometime to train with and get data from. Carl planned to spend some time looking for a Magikarp with decent potential. He wanted to see what happened when he trained it up to 100% of its potential before he let it evolve to a Gyarados.

It was common knowledge that Gyarados didn't have a higher form, unless you could get your hands on a mega ring. The mega ring would enable a trainer to cause their pokemon to have a Mega Evolution. But Carl was hoping that the common knowledge was wrong so he could see what form the Gyarados would turn into after being properly trained to reach its full potential. And if they didn't have another form, at least he could see a Gyarados at full power.

After another two weeks the department that Clark had assigned to designing a computer interface for communications had come back with their first results. Since there were so many different types of pokemon, they had to design three different interfaces.

The first was for small sized pokemon who didn't have hands. The keyboard was designed so that pokemon with paws or beaks could type. It would be very slow typing, via the hunt and peck method, but there was nothing for it. Maybe after they could effectively communicate with the pokemon, they could work on building a database of the vocal utterances of the pokemon to work on translating between pokemon and English.

The next was a laptop for humanoid pokemon. Generally speaking, the humanoid pokemon were smaller than humans, and they didn't have five fingers per hand. So the keyboards were designed slightly differently to accommodate them.

The third design was for the large to very large pokemon that had no hands. The researchers decided they would have to have a stylus the pokemon could use, maybe in their mouths, to use the hunt and peck method.

Carl wasn't particularly happy with the methods they came up with for the pokemon without hands to type. Many pokemon don't have tons of patience, so the slow communication methods would drive them crazy.

Vaguely remembering some systems set up for handicapped people in his original world, Carl interrupted the presentation.

"Have you thought about setting up a system where we have cameras on the pokemon's face while they look at a screen, and software tracks their eyes. When they pause on letters or even some words set up on the screen, it will use that to type for them. It will be quicker than typing using the hunt and peck method for them." Carl could see from the group's eyes that they hadn't thought even considered the idea, but that they were warming up to the idea.

"Another consideration you should be thinking about while developing that idea, is that there are lots of water based pokemon. I don't exactly have any ideas about how to include them in this project. And we don't exactly have to rush it, but keep it in mind in case if you have any good ideas for that part of the project." Carl finished.

Carl could tell from Clark's expression that he was proud of the contribution his son had to the project. Which gave Carl warm fuzzy feelings.

'There are some good things to being 12 again, after all. I haven't felt this good for having someone's approval for years.' Carl thought in amusement. 'No wonder they say that positive reinforcement is necessary for a child's development.'

After a few more details about how to proceed with the research were discussed, the meeting broke apart.

As Carl and Clark were driving home, Clark brought up an interesting topic.

"Carl, the Lysandre Labs based here in the city has a product that they put out in the past month called the Holo Caster. It is truly an amazing invention. It makes use of holograms, so that you can use it to communicate with others, view news bulletins, news reports, and many other things."

"Wow, that's amazing technology!" Carl exclaimed, thinking of all the scifi he had consumed in his original world.

"Yes, but I wanted to warn you about it. Lysandre Labs came out of nowhere with this technology. There's a lot that hasn't been tested about it. So be careful not to send any important documents or messages through their system. I'm concerned that they could use the system they set up for industrial espionage. So be sure to stick to the safe methods we've already established. And if you do use their devices, keep them away from any sensitive material. I haven't been able to have our people go through its code to make sure they can't spy on us with it."

"Gotcha. It's not like not having holograms on the Pokegear for calls makes it difficult to use. I'll stick to the safe methods until we know for sure it is secure." Carl promised.

Like he'd thought before, people are people everywhere. Even if the universe is more inclined towards friends and adventures in the Pokemon universe, there are always bad eggs. He vaguely remembered there was a Team Rocket in the Pokemon series that was always trying to steal people's goods and pokemon.

Just because they came across as really goofy didn't mean they weren't trying to be criminals. Kidnapping and enslaving pokemon, theft, and probably some violence or attempted murder here or there. It's not all happy times in any world.

* * *

Time seemed to pass by quickly for Carl as he trained his team of pokemon. His main three, Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot seemed to take a lot more time to get to 100% of their potential, while all the rest of his pokemon had long since fulfilled their potential and evolved in the labs under all kinds of scanners.

Carl was happy that all of his pokemon that got to 100% of their potential returned magic scans of having no obstacle to their growth.

Finally, in the week before Carl was going to turn 13, Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot were ready to evolve.

Fiona evolved into a Braixen. She turned from a fox, into a humanoid like fox girl that stood on two feet. Compared to a normal Braixen, she stood a foot taller now at 4 feet, and she had three tails instead of only one. She was also insanely fast and hit like a truck. Much more powerful compared to a normal Braixen.

Rhona evolved into a Kirlia. She remained a humanoid form. Similar to Fiona, Rhona was about a foot taller than a normal Kirlia, at three feet. She also had a golden tint to her skin where most Kirlia were white. Her green coloring was also a deeper shade. Now that her dress like covering wasn't getting tangled up in her legs, she almost seemed to dance around the battlefield, easily avoiding many of the attacks other pokemon sent her way. Her healing and psychic abilities were more than a few tiers stronger than a normal Kirlia.

Talbot evolved into a Grotle. A normal Grotle had two bushes on their backs, and their backs were covered by their shell from their head to their tail. Talbot on the other hand now had two small trees on his back. His height was also a foot taller, at 4 feet. The deep green and gold coloring that Talbot had was unusual for a Grotle, and he was even more like an immovable object when he chose. He could easily stomp one foot onto the ground and cause the ground around him to shake, making it unstable for enemies to stand.

Carl was proud of just how strong each of his pokemon were. Their hard work over the last year had really paid off.

A few days later, Carl and his parents had a small, family only, birthday party. Clark and Claire gave him a motocycle with a sidecar. They knew he planned on leaving on another training trip, and he liked to have his three main pokemon out with him always. With the motorcycle he could get around quicker, and more importantly he could return quicker too.

Carl was very happy with the gift. It showed how much his parents cared about his desire to go on a pokemon journey, that they would give him the means to make it that much easier for him to accomplish it.

* * *

A couple weeks after his birthday, Carl decided it was time to head out on his journey. He had everything he needed packed up. Over the past two weeks he had been surreptitiously adding storage units to his Warehouse, so he had several dozen pocket dimension storage units stored on his shelving and around the area. He had updated his training facilities in his Warehouse.

He had also put in a weight lifting gym and treadmill for his own exercise. He was determined that he would stay fit. There was more than a time or two in the last world when a vampire jumped him from behind that being fit and able to hip toss the leach had saved his neck. Despite their great strength, they were still only human in size and weight, thus he could get the needed seconds to pull out a stake or fireball them.

Now that everything was ready, he, Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot mounted the motorcycle and left Lumiose City, headed west toward Camphrier town.

In the wilds between Carl once more set up his camp, and started hunting pokemon. He was starting to gather so many pokemon, that he had to adjust the training schedule. He recruited Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot as his Lieutenants to each take a group and train them. They would rotate through the different groups, making sure that everyone was familiar with everyone else in his growing army.

Carl wasn't sure if he'd be able to keep all the pokemon he trained after he left this world. But on the off chance that he could, he was going to build himself a little organized pokemon army. He was of course the head, the general. So far his Lieutenants were his three main pokemon. They each had platoons, and they chose their own Sergeants as second in commands.

After a month of training and catching a decent example of every pokemon in the area, Carl packed up and moved on to Camphrier Town.

Carl had just arrived in front of the Market, where he planned to refill their food supplies, when he heard a loud cry behind him.

"It's you, you jerk!"

Since Carl didn't recognize the voice or think it was talking to him, he ignored it and continued to move on. He had things to do, and didn't feel like watching some drama happen in public right now.

Suddenly, he felt a hand land on his shoulder.

"Don't you ignore me! You'll pay for mocking me!"

Carl sighed. He turned around. It was the young teenager in jeans, a blue jacket, and red cap that picked a fight with that blonde girl back in Santalune City.

"I think you've got the wrong guy. I don't even know you." Carl evenly stated while thinking at Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot to stand down and not cream the guy for his rudeness.

"No! I've got the right guy, you laughed at me back at Santalune City."

[This guy does have something wrong with his brain.] Was the general consensus among his pokemon.

"And now I'm going to get my revenge on you. I challenge you to a pokemon duel. I'm going to be the one laughing in the end!" And then he dramatically pointed at Carl.

"So, you want to duel me? Sure we can't just agree to part ways and leave each other be?"

"No! My honor demands satisfaction! Let's go, right here, right now!" The dude yelled again. Dramatic much?

"No." Carl calmly stated, and turned around to leave.

"What do you mean no? You can't turn down a duel if you're a trainer!"

"Actually, while we're sitting here in a public space, yeah I can. If you want to duel me, go to the Pokemon Center in town, book an arena, pony up the cash for a prize money, and then send me a message about the time, place, and prize money. I'll see you when you have all that set up. Later."

The whole culture behind the pokemon battling craze had its own rules and traditions. Traditionally, Pokemon Trainers couldn't refuse a duel. Something something honor and traditions. But legally and rules wise, they couldn't duel in a public space without a permit. So Carl was totally in the right to demand the guy act that way.

"But…I don't really have that much money to reserve an arena." The dude said.

Carl snorted. "Not my problem. I don't know you, or have any reason to care about you. You're the one who decided they have a bone to pick with me. Either pony up, or shut up. Either way, I've got things to do and pokemon to feed. Later."

And Carl left. He hoped the dude forgot to-

"What's your name?! How do I contact you?"

Dammit. Carl was hoping the guy would be off balance enough to forget he didn't know him.

"Carl, badge ##-###-##. The Pokemon Center will be able to contact me. No offense, but you're weird, and I don't really want to give you my pokegear number. The less we interact or know each other, the happier I'll be."

Carl left then. He wasn't sticking around the brain drain any longer than he needed to.

A few minutes later, Carl was in the market, purchasing the needed food to be delivered to the local Poke co. branch when he heard light footsteps coming close to him. Earlier he hadn't been paying attention to his surroundings as much, and there was a crowd, which allowed the dumbass to sneak up on him. But after that incident, Carl was much more on guard.

So when he turned around to see who was approaching him, he almost face palmed to see the blond haired girl that had that fight with the dumbass back in Santalune City. It looks like, despite his wishes, he was going to be entangled with this pair for the foreseeable future.

The blonde just smiled happily at Carl. "I hear I'm not the only victim of Calem the creep."

"Oh, is that his name?" Carl idly asked her.

"Oh, yeah. Calem is really annoying. He never let's any slight go, and he'll go out of his way to track you down and try to 'revenge' himself anyone and everyone." The cute blonde cheerily proclaimed. "I'm Serena. What's your name?"

"Carl. So, what can I do for you, Serena?"

"Nothing much. I was just going to pick up some supplies myself, so it's a coincidence we met like this. Although, I'd love to hear about it if there was a duel between you two so I can watch Calem make a fool of himself." She paused to look over at Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot. "I've got a feeling he won't be able to handle your pokemon. They sure are something." She wistfully trailed off.

"Yeah, they're amazing. Let me introduce you. This is Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot. Guys, this is Serena." After talking with her for a short time, she seemed like a nice girl, and she seemed to really appreciate pokemon. So he didn't mind interacting with her.

After a few minutes of chatting, and once the shopkeeper had finished putting in his order, Carl exchanged numbers with Serena with the promise that he would call her if dumbass ever got a duel set up.

Carl then took off to find a hotel room for the night. He would pickup his order in the morning and leave the town then, unless the duel went through.

* * *

The next day after retrieving his goods, Carl still hadn't gotten a notice of a duel being set up, so he left. No sense wasting time on something that he didn't care if it happened or not.

Carl made his way on the road to the Northwest, to the Parfum Palace. The place was the palace of the old King of Kalos. The king had built it 300 years ago, after some war with some of the other regions. It was now a museum, and had a lot of tributes to the generals and pokemon that fought in that war.

When Carl arrived in front of the gates, he saw a man standing near the entrance, just sneering at the place. He cut a striking figure in his black suit with red trim and a white fur collar. He had a head full of wild mane-like red hair and a chin beard with no mustache.

Carl had no idea what problem he had with the museum, and Carl didn't want to know either. He just walked past the man, paid his 1,000 pokedollar entrance fee, and went in.

He and his three Lieutenants spent some time enjoying the scenery, paintings, and statues. Eventually they arrived at the rear of the estate, where there was a lake full of water type pokemon.

Looking around, Carl noticed that there was a stand set up to sell fishing equipment that was designed to reel in some pokemon for those interested. Carl also saw the no swimming signs. 'Well, there goes the idea to make use of my rebreather.' Carl sighed.

He lined up at the fishing shack and bought himself a rod and bait. Soon enough he was on the banks of the lake and trying his luck.

Several hours later he was just shaking his head at how easy it was to catch water pokemon. When they first got out of the water, they were so disoriented he could easily catch them with a pokeball.

He now had a Magikarp, Goldeen, and Corphish that had decent sized potential. Nowhere near the potential that his Lieutenants had, but decent. Carl would keep them in their pokeballs until he got back into the wilds where he could enter his Warehouse and set up the aquatic training area that Clark had designed for him.

Carl really loved pocket dimension storage.

Carl left the Parfum Palace and backtracked to Camphrier town and booked another night. After Carl had gotten to his room and was getting ready to enter his Warehouse he got a call on his Pokegear.

"Well, that's strange." Carl commented when he heard the ringing. "Too early for the parents to be calling."

Carl soon found it was Serena calling. Strange.

"Hello?" Carl answered.

"Are you still in Camphrier Town?"

"Just got back in. I was visiting the Parfum Palace." Carl sat back in his chair, idly watching his three LTs playing a card game.

"Have you eaten yet?" Serena almost squeaked.

'Ahh, that's interesting.' Carl thought. Over the past year he'd hit a grown spurt and was no longer quite and short as he was before. Add on his exercising, and he looked like he was actually around Serena's age. 'If this is what I think it is, she might be slightly interested in me. And she is cute.' Carl thought.

"Not yet. You wanna get something to eat?" Carl asked. He had picked up the clues, he wasn't going to act like a clueless boy. Playing games wasn't his thing.

"Yes." Serena stated in a soft voice.

"Any ideas of where? Or do you just want to meet me at the Hotel restaurant?"

"I'll meet you there at the Hotel Restaurant in an hour." Serena said, before quickly saying bye and hanging up.

"I'm going to go have dinner with Serena in a bit." Carl told his LTs. "I'll leave the Warehouse open for you if you want to get anything from there while I'm out."

[We'll be just fine. This Queen guarantees it.] Fiona declared.

[I like the Serena girl.] Rhona said.

[Hmm. Enjoy.] Talbot as always was very laid back and accepting.

Carl opened the warehouse, entered his newest pokemon into the Poke Organizer, and then took a shower and changed into some decent clothes.

He was waiting at the entrance to the restaurant several minutes early, and didn't have to wait long. Carl liked that Serena was punctual. And that she looked good. Carl made sure to complement her on looking good, letting her know he was paying attention.

They then spent an enjoyable evening, talking about their pasts, their pastimes and hobbies, which amounted to Pokemon. And what they were working towards.

Carl found that he quite liked the vivacious blonde girl. They were both too young to seriously date now, but in a few year, who knew?

Carl walked her to her door, and then retired for the evening.


	10. Pokemon 4

The next morning, after exchanging farewells with Serena, Carl and the LTs made their way west to Cyllage City on the coast.

Looking out at the ocean and the many islands, Carl then turned his gaze to his fire, grass, and fairy pokemons. He was going to need to train up his water pokemon if he wanted to get anywhere with catching the pokemon in the area.

The first thing he did was something he hadn't had to until now. He looked up the local trainers to see if they were willing to impart tips to the new guy in the area. After asking some of the locals for information, he was directed to one of the docks.

Upon arrival, he saw a guy in fishing gear getting set up, who was Fisherman Shad, according to the person who gave him information. Next to him was a blonde haired girl in a red bikini, who fit the description of Swimmer Marissa.

Carl introduced himself to the two friendly trainers, and asked if they had any advice or tips on how to go about exploring the area.

The two, especially Marissa, seemed to catch fire with enthusiasm for their topic of conversation. They spent at least an hour telling Carl all about what areas he should avoid as a newbie, how to go about training water pokemon, how to teach his future water pokemon how to surf, and other helpful advice.

After thanking them for the helpful advice, Carl went and checked into a hotel. He checked his HM Collection, and found that it contained the ability Surf, so he could teach his pokemon on his own, no need to seek any other trainers out to teach his pokemon.

The only issue was that Carl couldn't really bring his three LTs with him into the ocean while he adventured. Eventually, with much promises that he would stay safe, they decided that they would rather just wait in the pokeballs than be stuck on shore worrying about something they couldn't help him with.

Later that evening at the hotel, as Carl was returning to his room from the restaurant, he noticed a strange shifty guy that was hanging out in the halls of the hotel. The guy looked like had been backpacking his way around the world.

Before Carl could get a word in edgewise, the guy reached into his backpack, causing Carl to tense. But the strange man only pulled out a little statue of a big headed man, shoved it into Carl's hands and then ran off.

Looking at it closely, Carl saw it was similar to those statues of heads on Easter Island back in his original world. Wondering just why the dude had acted so weird, Carl entered his room and placed the statue on the table in front of him.

It looked like a normal statue. Carl probed it with his magic senses, and froze in pain. It felt like something was forcing itself into his mind. Something was pushing at his mind, and that something was _big_. Carl fought whatever it was, he pushed and strained, sweating and shaking.

Eventually he was able to divert the force away from him, and he collapsed onto the couch, weak, pale, and shaking.

"Fiona, Rhona, Talbot. Get rid of that statue, please." Carl croaked.

Only now did his pokemon notice how unusual he was acting. Talbot grabbed the statue with his vines, while Rhona opened the balcony door. Talbot tossed the statue out the window, and Fiona sent her biggest blast of fire that burned the strange statue to ash.

Looking at the scene, Carl couldn't help but think, 'Shouldn't a stone statue melt? Maybe it only looked like stone…'

"Thanks guys. Whatever that was, it was some type of magic/psychic thing. I am seriously exhausted and hurting now, so I'm going to spend some time in the medunit. Will you guys be okay for now?"

[We're fine. Go! Go! Get in the medunit!]

Carl opened his Warehouse, and stumbled to the medunit. He collapsed in it, and spent the rest of the night being healed up. Whatever that thing was, it had done a number on his brain and mind, almost breaking him. If he ran into any more of those things, they were getting annihilated.

The next day, Carl woke up feeling well rested. He felt around his mind and magic, and felt like it was actually expanded in a way, while being more firm. He couldn't quite explain it. It seems like he got the equivalent to a heavy mental workout, and then healed up in the medunit to get stronger.

When he tested his mental links, he was startled to realize he could create 5 of them now.

"So there had been some benefit to whatever crisis that almost was." Carl muttered. "Don't care, I'm still going to destroy those statues first and ask questions later if I ever see one again."

Carl spent the rest of the day reassuring Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot that he was alright. They had been quite nervous about how he had been attacked by some weird statue and they hadn't realized it at the time. They too promised to destroy any of those statues they saw, which actually reassured Carl a great deal.

The next day, the LTs went into their pokeballs and into the Poke Organizer in the Warehouse while Carl made his way to the safe areas the trainers had pointed out to him. Ever since he had purchased his rebreather, he had been looking for excuses to use it, and today was the day.

He slipped into the ocean and started exploring. It was a lot of fun, seeing the underwater beauty. He had never had an opportunity to Scuba dive before, so this was an entirely new experience to him. In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world even though he had the money to afford the hobby, he hadn't dared actually go into the ocean. Who knows what kind of water demons he would have ran into? Carl shuddered in fear even thinking about it.

Carl started bringing out his water pokemon that he'd caught before and started training them. It was…unusual. Carl really didn't know how to exercise a fish, until he came up with the idea to use his magic to congeal the water around the fish pokemon. They would then have to work much harder to swim against the resistance, and get a better workout.

That and using their special abilities to exercise and grow stronger in them seemed to be the key to growing the potential in his pokemon.

Carl then got into a routine where he would train his water pokemon in the morning, which was also a huge workout for him as he found that swimming muscles were a bit different from parkour muscles. And then in the afternoon he would join Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot in exploring the land side of the coast.

After a couple of weeks of this routine, Carl noticed a strange Magikarp would keep coming over to check out what he was doing. After a few days of this, Carl scanned the fish pokemon. He was surprised at the potential in the pokemon. It was a similar tier to his Lieutenants.

Carl then reached out with a psychic link. The fish seemed interested in what he was doing, maybe he would accept contact?

[Hello there, Magikarp. Are you interested in what we're doing?] Carl asked once he had established a link.

[Yes.] The Magikarp responded.

[We're training to get stronger. Are you interested in getting stronger?]

[Yes.]

[Do you want to join us?] Carl posed the question to the Magikarp.

[Yes.] The Magikarp answered as he swam closer.

[Is yes all you can say?] Carl wondered if the fish pokemon just didn't understand what he was asking.

[No.] The Magikarp responded after a short pause.

[Okay, then. Do you have a name?]

[No.]

[Hmm. How about Matt?]

[No.]

[Matthew?]

[No.] The magikarp responded more forcefully.

[Okay, you don't like the name.] Carl spent some time thinking. When the Magikarp evolved, he would turn more like an eastern dragon. [How about the name Shenron? It was the name of a powerful dragon.] And it granted wishes if it had the power. So it made him think of the yes/no responses of the Magikarp.

[Yes.]

[Good, you'll be Shenron then.] Carl then had the Magikarp get attuned to a pokeball.

When Carl did a better scan of the fish pokemon, he was glad he had found the pokemon when he did, as he was at 49% of his potential. Who knows but if the pokemon wouldn't have continued training and evolved before maximizing his potential? It would have been a huge waste.

After adding Shenron to his group, Carl slowly made his way south along the coastline as he spent most of his morning trainings Shenron. The fish pokemon was growing quickly, thankfully, because Carl wanted him to get to the point he was at 100% and evolved so he could join the rest of the group out of the water.

Six weeks later, Carl arrived at Ambrette Town, where he ran into Serena again at the hotel. They spent another nice evening, having dinner and wandering around the town together, exploring what was there.

On Carl's part, he really enjoyed Serena's upbeat attitude. She had a lot of drive to improve herself as a trainer, which he admired about her. Carl even shared a little of what he knew about how pokemon should train to their maximum potential before evolving.

Even if she wasn't a friend, Carl didn't feel like sharing this information was too detrimental to him. No one else had his magic abilities, so being able to sense which pokemon had huge potential was beyond anyone else, thus he still had an advantage over everyone else. And no one else but him could say for sure when the pokemon reached 100% and should then evolve.

While Carl and Serena were exploring the town, they found out about the Glittering Cave further east that had been discovered just chock full of fossils. Serena seemed excited about exploring the caves, and maybe finding new pokemon, so Carl decided it would allow them to spend more time together.

The next day Carl, Serena, and his LTs arrived at the cave system. They spent some time spelunking, finding several rock and ground type pokemon.

Carl was enjoying himself until they ran into some guy in a red suit with red hair and sunglasses. Who wears sunglasses in a cave? Idiots, that's who.

"Well, well. What do we have here? A couple of nosy little Trainers have come poking around." The red clothed idiot spewed some nonsense. "Listen up! We're the fashionable team whose very name makes people tremble in fear: Team Flare. Team Flare's goal is to make it so we're the only ones who are happy! We don't care one bit about what happens to other Trainers or Pokemon. Get out of here. Don't you know not to play with fire?"

Carl looked at him for a moment. Then looked over at Serena. "Do you know anything about this Team Flare he's talking about?" Carl totally ignored the red idiot for now.

Serena nodded affirmatively. "Yes, they are a group of thugs, thieves, and terrorists. They've caused the deaths of a number of people and pokemon."

Carl saw the member of Team Flare get really mad and start reaching for a pokeball, which could be considered a deadly weapon. [Fiona, Rhona, Talbot. Subdue him and any pokemon he might call out.] Carl gave mental commands to his team.

The member of Team Flare called out, "Get him Houndour!" And then threw out a pokemon. The pokemon looked like an armored Rott Weiller.

Fiona disappeared from view and reappeared behind the Team Flare idiot, and knocked him out with one swipe. Meanwhile Rhona and Talbot combo attacked the Houndour, knocking him out instantly with overwhelming attacks. Carl casually walked up and grabbed the pokeball the Houndour came from and put the hound back in its ball.

"What? Aren't pokemon battles supposed to be fought one by one?" Serena asked.

"Well, this idiot wasn't trying to duel us, he was attacking with the intent to cause harm, or even kill us. Since it wasn't a duel, we didn't play by duel rules. Like you said, their organization has killed people in the past. Evil people like that won't be stopped by being nice to them." Carl tried to get Serena to understand that holding back on thugs would not help, and would be even more dangerous to her health.

"Of course we don't fight like this in real duels. But in different situations, different rules apply." Carl continued talking as he pulled some rope out of his backpack and began tying up the Team Flare member. Carl was pleased to see a thoughtful look on Serena's face, as opposed to her outright rejecting his advice.

Carl let Talbot carry the team idiot captive as they exited the cave and made their way back to Ambrette Town to turn him in to the police. They had to spend some time giving statements and contact information to the police.

Eventually they were free to go, chose to have another dinner and night out together before retiring for the evening.

The next day they decided to leave town together, traveling back to Cyllage city where they split ways. Carl was going to return to Lumiose City. He had gotten word from Clark that the water training facilities were complete, and wanted to test them out. As well as have Shenron in the lab to record his evolution now that he was getting close.

Meanwhile Serena continued her journey, headed Northwest towards Geosenge Town.

A few days later, Carl returned home, and spent a few days relaxing with his parent with some light training put in every day.

By the end of the week, Shenron had gotten his potential maxed out and was ready to evolve. Claire joined Carl, Clark, Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot in the lab as they watched the evolution of Shenron.

When he was done evolving, he was 8 feet long. The blue scales on his back were a deep ocean blue, and almost iridescent. A regular Gyaradoss still had many fishy features, like his fins and tail. Shenron still had those fishy features, but they were much smaller than a normal Gyarados.

After testing his power level and attacks, Carl was quite happy at his strength. And now that he could fly and breathe air, Shenron could join the rest of his Lieutenants with him on their journey and training with the pokemon army he was building.

They threw a party with all his pokemon at the facility to celebrate. It was a fun time, watching all his pokemon playing with each other. Thank goodness he didn't supply alcohol, cause a drunk pokemon that said "Hold my beer and watch this" would be terrifying.

* * *

After a month at home, spending time with his parents and training pokemon, while talking with Serena on the pokegear in the evenings, Lumiose City experienced blackouts for three days.

After the three days, when power came back, the news reports came out that Team Flare had temporarily taken over the power plant supplying power to the Kalos region. There was a lot of talk amongst the citizens that the police should work harder to round up Team Flare and lock them in jail. They were a public menace.

A week later came news that Team Flare had taken over the Pokeball Factory and tried to extort several Master Balls from the personnel there. Serena called Carl that evening and narrated how she had ran into Team Flare at the Factory. She wanted to thank him for his words that convinced her not to play by Trainer Dueling rule, because it allowed her to subdue them and stay safe.

Carl was happy to hear she was safe. But he was getting really tired of putting up with Team Flares shit. He wasn't sure what he could do about it, though. He had no idea where the organization was based out of. The police were obviously also stumped, since they hadn't taken them down yet.

Just as Carl was getting ready to head out for another training trip, everyone's Holo Caster suddenly turned on. A hologram of that black suited man with the red mane-like hair showed up. Carl was wondering how he managed to hack everyone's Holo Caster.

Carl's question was answered shortly, as he revealed he was Lysandre of Lysandre Labs and the secret boss of Team Flare.

"Guess that answers how they were able to stay ahead of the cops as well as finding secret information." Carl commented.

Lysandre explained that he was the rightful King of Kalos, and then revealed that he was going to use the "Ultimate Weapon" from the war from 3,000 years ago to wipe out all live in the Kalos Region that didn't submit to his rule.

'That's it. Lysandre has just hit the point of no return. Time to take out the garbage.' Carl thought.

He then went to his Warehouse, gathered his gear, assembled his pokemon army, and prepared to deploy.

He hadn't felt a need to use his Sling Ring that he got from the Sorcerer Supreme costume he had worn all those years ago on Halloween. He'd been enjoying living life at the pace that the Pokemon world moved at. There had been no urgent need, until now, to use it.

Carl opened some portals inside the defenses of Lysandre Labs, where Lysander was doing his world hostage terrorist play. He sent his pokemon army to subdue any members of Team Flare around. He meanwhile, made his way to the main lab.

When Carl got there, he saw that red lion-mane haired man working on some kind of device on a platform. Apparently he hadn't prepared his big weapon before gloating to the world, and he didn't expect anyone to be able to open portals and get through his defenses as quick as Carl did.

Carl didn't bother trying to talk to the man. He didn't know him, or his past. And he didn't have any Talk-no-Jutsu available to turn enemies into allies. The man was a terrorist that was holding a gun to the head of the world.

So Carl didn't hesitate, he simply aimed his previously purchased sniper rifle and put a round in Lysandre's head.

After the head of Team Flare died, Carl spent a few moments looking around suspiciously, keeping his guard up. The head terrorist had died so quickly and anticlimactically, that Carl kept thinking there would be something else happening.

When nothing happened, Carl put away his rifle, and began looking through what the mad man had been working on. Not willing to leave such a nasty weapon lying around to fall into who knows whose hands, Carl began disassembling everything for later study, chucking it into his Warehouse. He then searched Lysandre's body.

Carl looted his Pokegear, his Holo Caster, his accounts and pokeballs. He found a single Master Ball on the man. Carl put it away for later. If Lysandre needed a Master Ball to catch some pokemon, it must have been an impressive pokemon.

After looting the labs, Carl left to find that his LTs and pokemon army had subdued all the Team Flare members and their pokemon. The police were moving around, arresting them while his pokemon looked on.

After praising his pokemon, Carl returned them to their pokeballs, left a short statement with the police, and then left.

* * *

Once everything finally settled down, Carl and his Lieutenants gathered to see just what pokemon was in the Master Ball. When Carl released it, he saw it was a majestic looking deer with his antlers rainbow colored and glowing. The legendary Xerneas pokemon stood in front of his group.

Carl extended a mental probe, enough to communicate, but not establish a bond, to get the story from him about how he was caught. Team Flare had besieged him and wore him down to the point that Lysandre had an easy time capturing him with the Master Ball.

The proud pokemon naturally wanted his freedom, so Carl let him go. He felt more at ease with the pokemon he was raising. They had more history, friendship, and loyalty due to their long journey of training to be the best they could.

Besides which, when Carl scanned the Legendary pokemon, he had detected that his LTs had a similar potential level as the Xerneas had. So Carl was excited with the idea that he would eventually train up a team full of Legends.

Why would he need to convince one proud pokemon that had gotten to the top on his own to join his team? He could just train them himself, and they would have a greater sense of loyalty and belonging because he brought them from the bottom to the top.

* * *

Carl soon resumed his training journeys. Time seemed to be passing in a blur, since he was having a lot of fun and was so focused on his goals.

He found a female Bagon with a potential large enough that she would eventually grow to be a legendary pokemon on the outskirts of Geosenge Town. After creating the psychic mind link, she took on the name Selene. After three months she evolved into a Shelgon, but her shell was red, different from the usual white.

Shortly after finding Selene, when Carl was traveling back to Lumiose city, he found a Honedge, which was a Ghost / Steel type pokemon that looked like a floating sword. Carl was impressed with his potential, and made his offer to join them. He had just been able to create a sixth psychic link, and sensed that this was the last one he would be able to make in this world. Something about the number six seemed to be the max in the Pokemon world.

The Honedge took on the name Calibur. It amused him because of the reference to Soulcalibur and Excalibur from his original world. A week after Selene evolved, Calibur evolved into a Doublade, a double sword body with long arm like tassels. Calibur's new form was a brilliant golden color that emphasized his excellence.

Carl's 14th birthday came around, and he invited Serena to come, where he found out she was only a year older than him, not two years like he had assumed the first time he saw her. Thankfully the idiot Calem found someone else to hassle, and Carl never heard from him again.

Carl's parents really liked Serena, and he could tell they were already thinking about them getting together.

A few months later, while Carl was on a training journey to the Azure Bay for another underwater adventure, he ran across another Legendary Pokemon, the Kyogre. It looked like a weird fish with large hand-like fins.

Before dropping into the world, Carl had been planning on using his Master Balls that he'd purchased to capture some powerful pokemon, but now his plans had all changed. He had six Legendary Pokemon in the making, so he wasn't really tempted to go looking for already powerful pokemon. He decided he would save the Master Balls for emergency situations. Like if he ran across rampaging pokemon that he couldn't subdue or kill himself.

So he just enjoyed having seen another rare pokemon, took some pictures, and went about his business.

* * *

Towards the end of his third year in the pokemon world, he found another couple of pokemon with the potential to grow into legendary pokemon. One was a Sneasel, a weasel shaped pokemon. The other was a Mienfoo, a fighting type pokemon that looks like a martial arts weasel.

Carl decided they would make excellent gifts for Serena, since he was growing even closer to her. He spent many long discussions with her about how to train up her Legendary pokemon in training.

Halfway through his fourth year in the Pokemon world, Fiona finally maxed out her potential and evolved into a Delphox. Like her previous evolution, she was a foot taller, at almost 6 feet, and she had 6 tails.

Shortly after, Rhona evolved into a Gardevoir. She was taller than normal Gardevoir, and her green hair fell down to her waist, instead of her shoulders. But like all of his Lieutenants, she was powerful.

A month later, Talbot evolved into a Torterra, and he was huge. At 8 feet tall, with small trees on is shell, he was an absolute tank.

Shenron surprised everyone when he maxed his potential and evolved. Until that time, no one was sure if he had another form. He didn't grow much larger than he already was, but he did grow four legs and claws, and looked even more dragon-like. His whiskers on his face were now almost three feet long.

Selene finally evolved a few months later into a Salamence that looked like a stereotypical western dragon. She was about 6 feet tall, with long blood red wings and a deep green body.

Calibur was the next to evolve to his third form, an Aegislash. He looked like a floating sword with arms, carrying a shield.

* * *

On Carl's sixteenth birthday, Serena agreed to try dating him. They began traveling together on their pokemon training journeys. By this point Carl trusted her enough to show her the Warehouse, though he still didn't share details about the Jump Chain yet.

Carl parents also purchased a much larger van with expanded space inside so Carl and Serena could transport their pokemon with them. Even though Serena didn't have a psychic link with her pokemon, she had taken to following Carl's practice of keeping her most promising pokemon out with her, so they could build a very deep relationship with each other.

Over the year they traveled, Carl found four more pokemon with Legendary potential that Serena caught and started building into her main team.

All this time, Carl continued to send data to Clark and make the occasional stops to work with him at their company. As a result their company, Poke co. was starting to get a name for itself outside the Kalos Region for high quality, advanced Trainer gear.

At Carl's 17th birthday party, his parents gifted him with a large cargo hauling helicopter so he could transport his pokemon with him as he planned to travel to other regions soon.

But before he did that, he went on a tour around the Kalos region, beating each of the eight gyms needed so he could enter the region tournament. He then beat the elite four and the past champion. It wasn't hard to win with the quality of pokemon he had.

The first region Carl and Serena visited was the Kantos Region. Once they parked their helicopter in the capitol, they used their van to travel around the region, catching and training. Carl loved the life he was living. Adventure, an open road, and a hot girlfriend.

At one point in their journey, they heard about a rare Dratini pokemon that was spotted in the Safari Zone, so they decided to take a look. When they arrived at the Warden check in center, Carl noticed the pictures on the wall of a young looking warden posing with the Dratini. When Carl asked about it, the man pulled his gun and started pointing it at Carl's face.

Carl was pissed. He didn't know why this nut job was pulling a lethal weapon on him, and he didn't care at the moment. Using his magic to control the air around the Warden, he made it hard for the man to move. Carl moved in and broke his hand first, to make sure he couldn't use that handgun. Then he proceeded to break his arm and knock him out for good measure.

Afterwards, they called the cops to press charges.

The investigation showed that the Warden had a habit on pulling his gun on anyone who showed interest in the Dratini and threatening them to leave it alone. Just the previous day, he had pulled his gun on a 12 year old boy trainer, and scared the young boy near to death.

Since he had a history of unstable behavior, the cops pulled him in for a psych eval, and to charge him with several crimes.

After a few days, Carl and Serena were free to resume their journey. The Warden was sane, just incredibly obsessed with pokemon, and so he was fired from his job and placed in prison for a few years while he got help.

Carl and Serena continued to tour the different regions around the pokemon world, always returning home every three months to continue building up their knowledge and technology base.

At the end of his 8th year in the world, his pokemon started evolving into their Legendary forms.

Fiona returned back to being a fox shaped pokemon, with 9 tails. She stood 6 feet at the shoulder.

Rhona evolved into a fairy / elf looking pokemon.

Talbot actually shrunk a bit to 6 feet at the height of his shell, but he had a miniature elven forest on his back. And he could fly. So that was amazing.

Shenron grew deer horns on his head, lost all his fishy characteristics, and grew to be 20 feet long. He looked very similar to the Shenron from the Dragonball manga.

Selene also grew to be 20 feet long, but she was built more solidly. She reminded him of the western dragons from D&D.

Calibur evolved into a plate armored knight with a sword and shield. He could still fly just fine, and he didn't clank when walking. So even though he looked like a knight, he could sneak like a thief.

* * *

When Carl turned 21, he knew he had a year left in the world. He had been thinking about it for a while now, and he finally made the decision to share with his family about the Jump Chain.

At first it was hard to explain why he never told them before. There were a lot of feelings that were running hot.

Carl didn't have all of the answers for them. He didn't know some of the answers himself. But he promised them that he would return for them.

He also shared about his life and times in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world. For Serena to find out he already had multiple girlfriends waiting for him in that world was a bit awkward at first.

Especially when, with his enhanced hearing, he heard her murmur, "No wonder you were so skilled on our first time. I'll have to get those girls a thank you gift for training him so that our first time was wonderful, and not painfully awkward."

He was both proud and embarrassed.

But she made him promise to follow certain rules in the future. In her mind since she couldn't stop him jumping into different worlds and possibly getting involved with different women, then he needed guidelines.

No matter how hot, he couldn't get involved with bitches. They needed to be generous and open minded, not small minded and jealous.

Before taking their relationship to the next level, he needed to make her aware that he's got other girlfriends too. It's not fair to blind side the girl with his other relationships after they've already had sex.

No children until they can all reunite and the girls can meet and get to know each other.

Carl was just relieved she was taking it so well, he might have agreed to more stringent rules.

Once everything settled down from Carl's revelation, Clark, Claire, and Serena started working on making sure to outfit his warehouse with everything he would need. Pocket dimension storage bins. Weapons, foods, medicine.

They also installed the machinery needed to create pocket dimension storage units, incase he needed more space later.

Finally, on the last day, everything was packed. Carl was as prepared for his future jumps as he could be. They had said their goodbyes.

Carl and Serena had made love for the last time for however long the separation would be.

All of Carl's pokemon were in their pokeballs and in his warehouse.

Time was up, and Carl left the Pokemon world behind.


	11. The Warehouse 2

Carl opened his eyes once more in between worlds. He found he was laying in his bed in his house in the Warehouse.

"I can see why people love the Pokemon series now. They are pretty cool critters. I'm going to miss Serena, Clark, and Claire." Carl spoke aloud, while thinking fondly on his time in the Pokemon world.

Carl got out of bed and casually strolled through his house on his way out to find out how much time he had before his next jump. After making it down the stairs, he almost made it to the front door before he noticed what was wrong.

There was someone sitting in his kitchen.

Carl froze in shock.

There shouldn't be anyone in his kitchen.

Feeling the blood run cold in his veins, Carl started to gather his magic, preparing to strike first if needed.

"There will be no need for that." Came a sing song voice from the impossible person sitting in his kitchen.

The moment the person talked, Carl felt his magical energies dispersed, as if he had never gathered it. Carl gulped. Obviously this was a very powerful person.

"Come on over, we have some things to talk about." The figure said.

Carl cautiously edged his way into the kitchen. He kept a wary eye on the figure who was sprawled in one of his chairs, his feet kicked up onto his table. He was dressed in what Carl would describe as army commando gear. Green camouflage pants, black boots, a green wifebeater, and a red bandana around his head, keeping his long black hair out of his eyes. He was casually sipping a mug of Carl's root beer.

"No need to be so nervous. I'm not here to mess with you." The figure stated as Carl warily sat down across from him.

"So…who are you?" Carl asked.

"What? No introducing yourself first, before asking who I am? That's not very polite." The man chided Carl with a grin.

"Yeah, how forgetful of me." Carl sweat dropped. If this guy was powerful enough to find his way into his warehouse between jumps, how could he not know who Carl was? "My name is Carl. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Good. The proprieties must be observed, if we are to have polite interaction. Man is a social animal, after all, and when the…niceties…are not observed, who knows what else might fall by the wayside? We might drop the social part, and just become animals."

The man showed way too many teeth in his wide mouthed grin for Carl's comfort, his eyes glinting with an underlying hint of madness. Carl was somewhat relieved when he realized that hint of devilry wasn't really focused on him, so much as it was just, always there.

"It's good to meet you too, Carl. You may call me…Spere 037."

The man, Spere 037, dropped his feet from the table and abruptly stood, causing Carl to jump a little bit. Carl was still very nervous around this unknown man. He wasn't sure what to make of him.

"I've come to visit you today, because I find that you are in an unusual position." The man began pacing back and forth as he gestured with his mug. "Usually, someone in your position has an overseer to watch over your jumps. To answer questions, offer advice, or even just to watch you flail around and laugh at your antics. They like to title themselves Jump-chans. But you, my little friend, have somehow lost yours."

"Lost mine? But I've never met anyone named Jump-chan since these jumps started."

Spere 037 barked a laugh. "No, you are quite right. It wasn't you who lost their Jump-chan, it was the previous jumper. There was an *̸̠̬̈́̑̑̀4̸̠̖͑,̶̧̭̭̦̀̋̒́$̷͈̱̉̓̕2̵̗̼̦̬̇̐͋x̴̱̹̰͗̎͛x̷̰̌́!̶̢̛̩̕l̷̢̺̦̄̏͜ó̷̤͔̘͐͘ơ̶̠̗̱̌́͋p̶͍̠͈̔̎ "

Carl cried out in agony, clutching his head as he fell from his chair. His ears and mind _hurt._

Spere 037 paused what he was saying, looking at Carl more closely.

"No, I don't suppose you are ready for that level of knowledge, just yet." Spere 037 finally said.

Panting as if he'd just sprinted a marathon, Carl could only think, 'No shit, Sherlock.' But he thought it very quietly, not sure if Spere 037 could read his mind.

Eventually Carl felt the pain lessen, dulling to just a pounding headache instead of the brain twisting _agony_ of only a few moments ago. Carl pulled himself back into his seat gingerly, only to find a fresh mug of root beer waiting for him.

"Drink, young Carl." Spere 037 commanded. "You made a most excellent choice in your first jump, obtaining this blessed keg of liquid ambrosia. It is actually the most valuable thing you could have purchased."

Carl was skeptical at that claim. While he loved root beer, the keg was only 100 cp. Heck, his magical ability had cost 600 cp and did a lot more to keep him alive through that world than the root beer did.

Stuffing his doubts deep down inside, Carl gingerly picked up his mug and took a mouthful in. As the root beer slid down his throat, he could immediately feel the lingering headache simply disappear. Eagerly, Carl took another large mouthful, and felt himself being refreshed, calming down, and his attention sharpening.

"Yes, it is cleverly disguised as just a mere bauble, a party favor." Spere 037 laughed. "But it has healing properties for soothing the pain lower beings feel from coming into contact with something so much...larger than themselves."

"How do you think you managed so well in a world of demons and gods? How do you think you learned magic so quickly? Your keg of root beer kept the microdamage caused from studying the mystic arts as a normal man from accumulating. Not to mention how much time you spent on the Hellmouth."

Carl swallowed nervously. The implications of what Spere 037 was saying gave him some decent amount of fear.

"Usually someone with such an ordinary body as you had, that delved as deep as you into the arts, would have long since lost themselves in madness and magic addiction. Because your friends also partook of your blessed Root Beer, they too avoided much of the damage of practicing magic as mere mortals."

"That healing ability is what allowed you to actually research the rituals you performed to end those old ones. Not to mention it kept you sane after you performed such dangerous rituals."

Carl felt a shiver of fear run down his spine. "So, if I didn't have the Root Beer, what would have happened to me in that world?" Carl wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he was sure he needed to know the answer.

"You remember the warlock Rack?"

Carl nodded. "Yeah, the dark magic pusher."

"Indeed, that's the one. You would have either ended up as one of his most loyal customers, or, more likely, become him within a few years."

Carl gulped. He was only saved from becoming an addict or drug pusher from his whimsical desire to have a comfort item. Close call.

"Or more likely, you would have fallen afoul of the magical covens after a time, and been executed for your crimes, ending your jump in your first world."

Looks like his decision to pick up that **Perfect Harmony** complication in order to afford the Root Beer keg was the best decision he'd ever made. He would have to do something nice for Harmony when he next saw her.

"And that leads me back to why you are where you are, and why that's unusual." Spere 037 commented. "Some…accident" Spere 037 cautiously began "befell the Jump-chan and the jumper just before the jumper entered the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world. Since the Jump-chan had set things up on their end on…automatic…the Jump Chain, with no jumper present, _reached out_ and snagged you, since you were close and available."

Carl could tell that Spere 037 was being more careful with his words in order to avoid giving him brain twists again. Carl was suddenly very appreciative of Spere 037's efforts to use smaller words. Words that weren't multi-dimensional.

"So, you're saying that I'm a last minute substitute?" Carl asked in disbelief.

"Indeed, you have the right of it." Spere 037 cheerfully agreed. "Bad things would have happened to the…balance…if the Jump Chain didn't have a jumper when a world started. And since the Jump-chan had already started the process on automatic, since they were lazy, the process couldn't be halted."

Spere 037 paused for a moment until he saw that Carl was ready to hear more.

"Normally a Jumper's first world isn't Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That world is usually reserved for after the Jumper has a few worlds and abilities under their belt. The Jump-chans found, after some trial and error, that sending the Jumpers into such dangerous worlds first rarely ended well for the jumpers. And all the energy they spent on picking up a Jumper in order to…charge their battery? Yes, that analogy will work. Premature death on the part of the Jumper before they could fully charge their battery meant that the energy spent outweighed the energy gathered."

Now that Carl thought about it, it did make sense that the people in charge of Jump Chains would get something out of the deal. Most people weren't altruistic enough to grab a random person and personally hand them a million dollars out of the kindness of their hearts. Let alone gifting away a method of gaining abilities and powers straight out of fiction.

No, Carl was sure they had enough of their own issues and concerns for such creatures of their power and abilities for them to waste time and energy finding "lesser beings" and giving them wish fulfillment abilities. The fact that they got something out of the deal actually made Carl relax a bit, since a reciprocal relationship made much more sense to him, and he wouldn't always be wondering when the bill would come due for the goods they were serving.

"No, the world that Jumpers usually start off in is the Pokemon world. But your first jump was the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world due to that error. When the Jump Chain scanned you after you finished the Buffy world, it noticed that you hadn't been tagged with completing the Pokemon world, so it sent you there next. Usually you wouldn't have gotten access to the Warehouse or Body Mod until after the Pokemon world, but since you had already been tagged with a Jump World count of one world, the Jump Chain went ahead and applied the Warehouse and Body Mod package to you before the Pokemon world jump."

"So, did you come to explain that to me and take over the jump?" Carl tentatively asked when it looked like Spere 037 wasn't going to continue talking after falling silent.

"No!" Spere 037 started laughing deep belly laughs. "Definitely not. The idea of me being a Jump-chan is just too funny." Spere 037 continued laughing for a good minute. "Oh, that was just too funny. The absolute chaos that would cause." Spere 037 wiped a tear from his eye.

"No, the reason I'm here is Up Up Down Down…" Spere 037 said before falling silent and waiting expectantly.

"Left Right Left Right B A Start." Carl finished speaking the Konami code when it looked like Spere 037 wasn't going to.

"Excellent." Spere 037 clapped his hands. "Looks like I didn't waste a trip, after all. You would be surprised at the number of people who don't know the code to get access to my wares." Spere 037 grinned hugely. "Usually I have to do this all clandestinely, in order to avoid the attention of the Jump-chans. But what they don't know won't hurt them, now will it?" Spere 037 conspiratorially commented.

Spere 037 then snapped his fingers and a terminal appeared against the kitchen wall.

"Now, usually I don't show up until after the 10th world a jumper has completed. But it just so happens that with the absence of Jump-chan I can twist the rules a bit. Using the energy accumulated from the last jumper, added onto the energy from your past two worlds, and I can offer you 600 cp and a list of perks you can purchase with it. Now, why don't you take a gander, and see if anything takes your fancy." Spere 037 gestured at the terminal.

"Some of these purchases will loosen the restrictions you operate under, making things easier for you. Take your time deciding." Spere 037 sat back in a chair, putting his feet up on the table and kicking the chair back onto two legs.

Carl first refilled his mug of Root Beer. Now that he knew that his root beer addiction was justified by the amazing brew he had purchased, he was definitely going to drink it more often, if that was possible. He then made his way over to start reading the available options.

* * *

**The Cheater's Manual Supplement**

**Jump Chain Supplement**

**By "Spere"**

[Tell me, Jumper, are you tired of dealing with some of the restraints imposed on you by the Jumps? Well see, I've got a list of perks here that are a bit of a workaround, cheats if you will, to all those pesky limits and they're all technically legal. How you ask? It's actually a real simple loophole, Jump-chans like to claim that they have you Jumpers all to themselves but there's actually no rules against third party meddlers so long as we don't get caught at it. A lot of us like to do little things to mess with you but I'm a bit more direct than most, I like to…make things interesting.]

* * *

Carl could now see why Spere 037 had laughed his ass off when he had asked if he was here to replace his Jump-chan. Carl shrugged to himself and moved on to reading the list of perks.

**Power Storage (600 cp)**: Tired of your powers being shut off due to nerf drawbacks? With this handy perk you get an internal storage space plus five slots to keep all those powers at hand while your benefactor gets some very convincing copies…The five slots allow you to use any five powers from your storage and you can seamlessly transfer them around…comes with a built in toggle switch…

**Perk Storage (600 cp): **A perk storage and five slots to keep your perks from being messed with by drawback interference and other things, as well as a built in toggle switch…

**Drawback Storage (600 cp)**

"Why would anyone want to keep drawbacks?" Carl thought aloud as he read about storing different drawbacks.

"Didn't that **Perfect Harmony** drawback turn out pretty good for you?" Spere 037 casually answered his rhetorical question. "There are some jumps where if you choose a certain combination of drawbacks and perks, they actually synergize with each other in such a way that they are almost an instant win in that world. It's up to you to use your intelligence to figure out how to make it work."

Spere 037's words lit up a light bulb in Carl's head. He hadn't even bothered thinking too hard about the drawbacks as anything other than BAD THINGS TO AVOID. He vowed he would take a more open minded approach in the future. The two successful worlds he had under his belt were also bolstering his courage to be willing to take a bit more of a risk.

Next on the list were several perks that allowed him to exchange powers, perks, and drawbacks with companions. Since he didn't have any companions for now, he skipped those.

Carl continued to read the list. **Perk Discounts Rollover **and **Item Discount** **Rollover **offered discounts on perks and items, when choosing for a jump world, that were similar or the same to what he'd already purchased in the past.

"Why would I want to buy the same perks in different worlds? If I already have it, why buy it again?" Carl wondered out loud.

Spere 037 sighed. "And this is what happens when you don't got a Jump-chan to explain things for you. You should already know this by now, but I guess I'll spend the time to tell you. Most Jump-chans will limit your powers growth. So if you purchase a perk in one world that lets you lift one ton, then in a second world you purchase the same perk of lifting a ton, the second perk you purchase would only be three fourths as effective. So instead of lifting 2 tons after buying two perks, you could only lift 1.75 tons. Then if you got a third perk that was the same as the first two, you could only lift 2.25 tons. Diminishing returns."

"But you are exceptionally lucky. Since you don't have a Jump-chan imposing rules like that on you, each 1 ton lifting perk you get would just add on the amount that you could lift. So after buying three perks of being able to lift 1 ton each, you could actually lift 3 tons. No diminishing returns."

"So, as you can see from that example, buying the same perk multiple times will always improve your abilities. It's just, in your case, it's more effective with no artificial restrictions."

Carl nodded his thanks to Spere 037. That was very valuable information to have.

He continued reading the different available purchases until he got to the **Beneath The Mod (600 cp): **The improvements that Benefactors give have a tendency to overlay your base body without actually changing it. Bodymods do this automatically, which means if it were ever stripped from you, you'd be left with that ugly sack of flesh you had before. It is their own subtle version of control to grant you gifts that they can easily take away. If you want real improvements that will stick even to your base body you now have the means to make those adjustments yourself. You can apply the traits from your perks to your base form and that will be your new default. However, I should warn you that nothing shy of the Great Architect themselves can reverse these changes once made, so you better be really certain you want a vampire form as your base body because even time travel is not going to remove any decision you may regret in the future.

"About this **Beaneath The Mod** perk. Is it saying even the changes I did to my body in the **Body Mod** before the Pokemon world are not permanent?"

"Oh, no, everything you changed about yourself in the **Body Mod** perk made real, unalterable changes. But everything you bought as a perk is only temporary. There are some Jump Worlds that will strip you of every perk you purchased and you will just be in your base form. The magic ability you purchased in Buffy the Vampire Slayer world? Gone. The perfect memory, calculator-like mental math, better spatial awareness and firearm aim that you got from the **Savant** perk in the Pokemon world? Gone. At least while you are in those restricted worlds."

"And I get to pick and choose what perks and abilities becomes part of my actual base form? It won't just randomly add what I don't want to my base form?" Carl asked intently. He really didn't like the idea of losing everything he'd worked hard for the past 20 years. If he suddenly lost all the abilities and skills he had already trained and relied on while in some random dangerous world, he would end up being a sitting duck, and likely dead shortly after.

"Exactly. If you pick that perk, I'll leave this terminal in your bedroom for you to decide what to add to your base body. I'll even set it up so it asks for verification several times before making the change." Spere 037 promised.

After reading through the rest of the perks, Carl didn't see anything he wanted more than the **Beneath The Mod** perk, so he went ahead and purchased it. Once he finalized the transaction, the terminal in front of him disappeared.

"I've gone ahead and moved it up to your room." Spere 037 commented before Carl could say anything. "A few more things to note. Every 10 jumps, you earn another 600 cp that you can spend buying my perks. You can just access them from the terminal in your room."

"There are certain jump worlds that act as a kind of Gauntlet challenge. You don't get any cp to spend initially, so you have to take drawbacks in order to buy any perks. A failure in the Gauntlet world does not end your Jump Chain, but if you fail those Gauntlet worlds, you don't get any of the perks or special prizes from those worlds. So it's in your best interest to give it your all."

"And finally, after each Jump World you'll notice that you will accumulate 10 cp that can be used on your Warehouse. My suggestion would be to hold on to those until after your 15th jump. I can't spoil it for you what it is, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised."

"Thanks Spere 037."

"Don't mention it. Later, kid."

And Spere 037 disappeared from Carl's kitchen.

Carl plopped himself down on a kitchen chair. "Well, that was…something alright." Carl was talking to himself again. "At least now I know more about my situation. Drawbacks that can be helpful. Stockpile my cp. Changing my base body. Gauntlet challenges." Carl got up and poured himself another mug of Root Beer. "I don't know just what that guy or the Jump-chans get out of their "services", but at least it is beneficial to me too. I just hope I don't find out later that I'm giving away the equivalent of pure gold for the price of glass beads." Carl laughed.

"Even if I am accepting glass beads for gold bars, with my current level it's not like I have the ability to go to the multidimensional market and sell the gold myself. And who knows but if someone else would just rob me without even giving me the glass beads. But hopefully these purchases will one day get me to the point where I can go to the market on my own." Carl trailed off in thought at the analogy.

Carl continued to ponder on all he had learned, while trying to cement the advice he'd been given in his mind, as he opened the fridge and started pulling out the makings of a sandwich. He was too preoccupied to make himself a decent breakfast, so a sandwich would do for now.

After finishing off the sandwich, Carl made his way outside his house, into the warehouse. First he looked over the terminal that governed his jumps. He saw that he had 6 days and 20 hours until his next jump.

"It looks like I'll have a week between each jump. The body modifying will probably knock me out for a couple days at a time." Clicking on the screen to check it, he saw a popup that queried if he wanted to jump early.

He quickly selected no to abort the early jump.

Carl then moved over to his Pokemon Organizer. Carl selected Fiona's pokeball and retrieved it.

He tried to bring Fiona out of her ball, but nothing happened.

"So, I really do have to have a stasis bed for anyone to join me." Carl was a little disappointed he hadn't found a loophole. "But if what Spere 037 said was true, nearly all Jumpers go through the Pokemon world, so they probably have very few loopholes to take advantage of. Or at least everyone is so new at that point, they don't know how to take advantage of opportunities."

Sighing at not being able to have his pokemon keep him company, Carl put Fiona's pokeball back into storage. He then double checked all the storage units. The expanded space in each storage unit seemed to be working fine, so Carl was happy with that. It would give him a lot more space to store things he would pick up on his jumps.

Now that Carl was assured his pokemon were alright for now, and that everything he'd installed in the Warehouse was fine, he moved back to his room. He stood gazing at the terminal, thinking about the benefits this perk would give him.

The thought of having all the abilities he'd come to rely on being stripped from him in some of these worlds, making him easy prey, really scared him. Carl realized in that moment, that while he could be brave and bold under certain circumstances, he still had limits and moments of fear. Fear that these abilities were easy come and would be easy go, leaving him vulnerable.

Fear that he'd never see the people he'd come to care for again.

"Fear is the mind-killer." Carl intoned, thinking of the Litany Against Fear from the Dune books. "Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Carl laughed at himself. The fear was still there. Just reciting the litany did nothing for him.

"Easier said than done. Especially when I'm safe in my house. The true test will be when I'm face to face with something that causes that fear. If I can still remain level headed at that time, then I can start bragging." Carl sarcastically said to himself.

Operating the terminal that Spere 037 left him, Carl soon selected to upgrade his base body with the **High Stakes Fighter**, **Cunning Linguist**, and **Sorcery Savant** perks from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world, and the **Suvival Training** and **Savant **perks from the Pokemon world. He didn't want the basic knowledge, skills, or abilities he gained from any of those to disappear on him. Especially his perfect memory from the **Savant** perk.

He then had to click that yes, he was sure. Yes, he was positive. Yes, he understood that it was final. He hit the complete transaction button, only to get one more popup to confirm his decision.

"Well, at least he was true to his word. I doubt I'll accidentally add anything I don't want to my base body with this many confirmations." Carl snorted before clicking yes.

Carl blacked out.

* * *

Carl woke on his bed once more. Getting up, he didn't feel any different from before he blacked out.

"I suppose that's a good thing. I was already operating under the perks, they are just permanent now." Carl realized after a moment.

Nodding in approval at the terminal that stood in the corner of his room, Carl soon took care of his bathroom needs, showering, and shaved. He felt good.

He descended to the kitchen and soon had a decent breakfast spread cooked up for his breakfast.

"It seems like I'm only ever eating breakfast between worlds." Carl chuckled in realization. "Even if it's only a sandwich for breakfast."

Carl pulled out his laptop and spent the rest of the day writing down his thoughts. From the beginning of the Pokemon world Jump, he had been writing daily logs on training activities and thoughts on how to maximize the pokemon's potential.

It was a habit he decided he would continue. It helped him clarify his thoughts when he saw it written on paper.

When Carl was finished writing his thoughts down in the afternoon, he decided he would have one more meal. Not a breakfast meal, before starting the next jump. Carl fixed himself a nice steak dinner with salad and baked potatoes.

After polishing off the meal, Carl felt he was ready. He didn't need any more downtime at this moment, so he might as well get started. The sooner he could get through the jumps, the sooner he'll gather enough points to gather his girls and friends.

Carl exited his house, and clicked on the early jump option.

"Farmville?!"


	12. Farmville

Carl sighed, staring at the screen. He'd never played Farmville. What was it with giving him game worlds he had never played?

"I guess since the Jump Chain is set to automatic, there's no way to choose the worlds as places I actually want to go. Well, at least it's only farming. I'm sure I can handle that. I mean, there are still the perks and what not to help me get started. It's not like I'm going in with absolutely no advantages." Carl reassured himself.

"Let's see, Loss Conditions. I have to maintain positive financial balance. If I go in the red for more than 6 months, I lose. I can't go bankrupt. Losing isn't a jump chain ender, but I won't get to keep anything from this jump. That is strangely generous." Carl commented.

After thinking about it for a bit, Carl shrugged off his suspicions. From what he understood of actual farming, without the benefits of perks, keeping a farm in the black was actually a lot of work. Lots of things were out of your control, like pests, disease, drought, etc.

After reading the introduction, Carl learned that his only option was drop in, so he couldn't do like he did for the Pokemon world and gain knowledge from having a background.

"Is there actually a background for Farmville? Isn't the whole game just managing your farm?" Carl asked facetiously. "Ooh, what's this? If I'm successful all the farms I own will be added as an addition to my warehouse. And I'll even get more farms added on for each jump that will continue to grow during the jump. Very nice."

Carl started making his picks of specializations and perks that seemed good. He then picked some drawbacks to afford his expenses.

At the end of an hour of work, Carl looked back over his purchases, and just wasn't satisfied with what he'd picked.

"I'm sure I can do better." Carl told himself. He cleared everything out and started over again, making slightly different picks.

At the end of another hour, Carl was again staring at his screen in dissatisfaction. It just felt like he was all over the place. He could tell that he would be running himself ragged for the next ten years.

"The problem I've been running into with my picks is I've been trying to pick up a bit of everything to try to make sure I have lots of products." Carl decided. "I've been focusing on how Farmville is a farming simulator and so I've been focusing on how to grow crops and orchards, and everything in between. I've been thinking I need to get everything so I can be successful."

"Let's walk through this, then. Really, the only loss condition is going bankrupt. So that gives me a lot leeway to work with." Carl realized. "I've got a Warehouse with my own housing, daily food, electricity, and water. So all my basic needs are met. Even if I only sit in my Warehouse for 10 years while having a positive balance of money, I'll win. So, without any pressure on me, what do I _want_ from this jump?"

Carl snapped his fingers, realizing he was being an idiot.

"I've been forgetting what I already knew, I need to create a specialization. In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world, I focused on magic. In the Pokemon world, I focused on having a perfect memory to help me through it. A background with money added on, and I was pretty much set for the ten year span."

"So, what do I want to focus on in this world?" After thinking for a while, Carl made his mind up. "I'll focus on being an expert with animals. I enjoyed my time in the Pokemon world, and wouldn't mind expanding on that. Nothing is forcing me to rely on growing crops, just because the world is called Farmville. I just need to remember not to spread myself too thin."

"First, for specialization I'll pick up **Animal Husbandry **100cp. That will give me knowledge of how to raise and breed any mundane animal, even those normally found in a zoo. Just not dragons and unicorns, heh. Now for some related perks."

"**Know Your Animals** is free since I selected **Animal Husbandry**. That will shore up my knowledge of how to care for and feed any animals I raise."

"**Butcher** 100cp will make me an expert on butchering the animals, saving me both time and money."

"I'll pass on **Veterinarian**. I've still got my medunit that I can use to heal my animals of anything, so no need to waste the points."

"I'll pick up **Animal Whisperer** 300cp. Being able to speak to animals and have them follow my commands will make taking care of dumber than pokemon animals much easier."

"**Hunter** 200cp will make me an expert at tracking and killing wildlife, as well as creating hunting and trapping gear. I'll also get a warning sense if some dangerous predator is around so I'll always be ready to avoid their attack. A very specific spider sense is still a spider sense. I'll take it."

"**Domestication** 400cpwill turn me into an expert at domesticating wild animals and breeding them to get the desired results."

"But wait, if I take the **Prehistoric Farming** 200cp specialization then it will discount **Hunter **and **Domestication**, and give me **Gatherer** for free so it will cost the same for even more perks."

"So there we go, I'll be an expert on dinosaurs and giant ferns, able to add anything that roamed the prehistoric earth to my farm. And with **Gatherer** I'll have knowledge of when and how much to harvest from my crops, and what to leave behind. I guess that translates to an ability to know how ripe the produce is. That would make trips to the supermarket easy."

Carl chuckled, thinking off all the time he spent in the past, squeezing fruit and vegetables when he went shopping only to give up and just randomly grab some in the end.

"Okay, I'll also pick up a **Crafting Specialty** 100cp, the focus will be 'Anything made from animals'." Carl manually typed in his chosen specialty, and was happy when it was accepted. The jump document even expanded on it. "Expert at making trade goods from animals. You know how to use everything from the fur, leather, bones, and even the meat and sinews of animals in order to make quality goods." Carl read. He really hadn't expected such a wide ranging specialization to be accepted, but was pleased it was.

Looking further down, Carl next added some free generic perks for jumpers. **Buy Menu & Express Delivery** would give him access to a store to buy and deliver goods to his farm so he wouldn't have to go himself. **Farming Community** gave him access to a farming community to exchange ideas with. He could also ask for some basic items like building materials once a day, and if someone fulfilled the request, they both got the item.

Carl then picked the **Beekeeping** 100cp perk. The bees would produce honey and bring good luck to his farm that will result in bigger harvests. Carl was still going to be planting some crops, he just wasn't picking perks in relation to them. He still needed to feed his animals, and growing his own feed would help defray costs. So since he wouldn't have any perks for taking care of crops, the extra luck would help.

Next, Carl picked **Salesman** 200cp. It would make him an expert at selling anything that his farm produced, or that he made. It ensured he would always get the best price, and that he could sell everything he wanted. This was definitely one of those perks that would be useful beyond the Farmville jump world.

Carl reread the section talking about his **Farm** 0cp that he would be given. It would be 140 meters by 140 meters of undeveloped land. He chose not to buy any **Expansions** 50cp at this time. He could always buy the 20 meter by 20 meter expansions after he starts the jump, and Carl would rather use his cp for other things.

Every three months while in the Farmville world, Carl would receive a new 100 meter by 100 meter **Additional Farm **that would be placed somewhere in the world**.** He wasn't sure just what the document meant by each of the farms having a different theme, but he was glad that he would be able to teleport between his farms, if they were going to be spread around the world.

Carl was down to the **Gear & Buildings** part of the jump document, where he was given an additional 600cp for only that section.

There were three free items for him that each farm received. The **Centrepiece Building** that each of his farms would get, even if they only started off as a foundation, and he would have to build them himself. At least they came with a box full of plans and instructions on how to build it. And once he got it built, he would receive daily gifts of some kind of useful goods.

Next was the **Storage Cellar** that could store up to 100 individual items. It acted as a kind of inventory, since each item once stored took up the same space no matter it's actual dimensions. He could buy extra space to store more items for cp, or he could expand it himself once he was in the world by digging out more space.

And finally was the **Storage Silo** that would store up to 500 bushels of produce. He could also spend cp to expand it or expand it later by adding building materials. But no matter how much extra space was inside, it wouldn't get any bigger after the first expansion expanded it to double its starting height.

"I would be more impressed with these storage items if I hadn't already spent 10 years in the Pokemon World. They had very convenient storage tech. I'm so glad my warehouse is full of shipping bins with expanded space, it really adds to my storage capacity."

**Fences** 50cp would give him an endless supply of fences. This was an essential item for Carl's plan for his farm.

Next, Carl chose **Super Fertilizer** 100cp that would provide him an endless supply of super fertilizer that would double the amount his crops produced. Since his focus would be on raising, breeding, and processing animals, the less attention Carl had to pay attention to the plants while still getting a good yield the better, as far as he was concerned.

Carl had to pick up **Animal Feed** 200cp when he saw it. It would provide an endless supply of animal feed for his animals. With this new perk, Carl realized that he didn't have to grow crops at all if he didn't want to. His own food and his animal's food was now taken care of.

Ultimately, Carl's plan still required some crops to be present. It would just be more of a garden than farmlands that he would maintain on his farms.

Carl selected a **Craft Shop** 100cp dedicated to his specialty of animal products to be built on his land. The jump document on the terminal let him work on the layout of the interior, and Carl spent some time designing the place he would spend a lot of time making products.

Next Carl received a free **Animal Pen** for having selected **Animal Husbandry**, a free **Beehive** for selecting **Beekeeping**, and a free **Totem of Divine Guardian** for selecting **Prehistoric Farming**. By giving offerings to the totem in the form of harvest, crafts, and livestock, Carl would gain its blessing for his farm, giving him small blessings like faster growing crops and protection from crop parasites.

He then chose a **Box of Building Materials** 100cp that would contain enough building materials for building one building that would refill each month.

A **Packet of Potions** 100cp would give him 20 magical potions each month. The potions had various uses, from crops insta-grow potions, to animal fertility, to unwither potions. Carl liked the sound of that packet, and if he didn't need the potions in a given month, he could stockpile them in his Warehouse until he had need.

Carl saw that he had 150cp remaining, so he sunk it into **Starting Capital** that would give him $16,000 starting fund. If the winning condition was to stay in the black on his budget, he wanted a bit of a cushion to make sure he didn't fail.

Finally, Carl chose two Drawbacks.

**Unwanted Critters** level 3 for 300cp would make it so there would be all kinds of animals coming to try to eat his crops or snatch his poultry. Carl chose his **Animal Husbandry** specialization and **Crafting Specialty** with this drawback in mind.

One of the drawbacks to hunting is that a lot of the times even expert hunters don't bag any game. But with this drawback, the animals would come to him. The various small amounts of crops that Carl would grow would basically be the lure to bring in different types of animals for him to hunt and trap. He could then either kill them for their meat, leather, and fur, or capture them and domesticate them.

With being able to domesticate, train, and command animals, he would build up a decent force of guard animals to protect his farm and animals from wild animal attacks that made it through the traps. The trained animals and animal products that Carl would be able to sell on the market would keep him solvent.

And finally the **Quests **200cp drawback said that he would have an endless loop of quests and missions coming in. At first it sounded annoying, but upon further reading, it said that it would be related to his specializations. So the thing requested would be things he would be doing anyway. There were time limits set for the quest, but no penalties listed for not completing a quest.

So with no negatives other than the endless quests being a headache, and for something he would be doing anyway, Carl was okay with getting 200 extra points. Who knows but that he would also get some important rewards from completing the quests too?

"Whew!" Carl mimed wiping sweat off his brow. "That was the longest I've taken on deciding perks and drawbacks. What a lot of reading."

Carl finalized his build after verifying that he was sure. The world went dark.

* * *

When Carl opened his eyes again, he was laying in the middle of his new plot of land. Getting to his feet, he looked around. It didn't look like a virtual world, it looked quite normal. The sun was shining from near the horizon, so it was either morning or nearly evening. Judging from the feel and the bird calls, Carl assumed it was morning.

He noticed there weren't any trees or large rocks on his land, so that was lucky. He had dug up one tree stump years and years ago, and it was a pain in the ass.

He could see his farm borders delineated by some wooden stakes. Turning around he could see the large concrete foundation where he presumed his house would go. To the left of the foundation, he saw the cellar. Further left, he saw the single story standing there. As Carl walked towards a pile of boxes that lay in front of the foundation, he saw the Craft Shop was standing behind the silo.

Next to the foundation Carl looked over the pile of boxes. Each box was about three feet on a side. Carl moved read the note he found on top of one of the boxes closest to him. It was the shipping invoice.

Box of plans for the Centrepiece House.

Box of Building materials.

Box of Fencing supplies.

Box of Super Fertilizer.

Box of Animal Feed.

Box containing an animal pen.

Box containing a Beehive.

Box containing the packet of potions.

Box containing the Totem of Divine Guardian.

Carl started moving the boxes over to the cellar first thing. Opening the door to the cellar, he saw a set of stairs going down. He started carrying the first box down. There wasn't a lot of room down in the cellar. He set the first box down, and it disappeared.

When Carl looked around the room in consternation, he noticed that a mural on the wall that was divided into a 10x10 grid. The grid in the upper left now had a picture of the box on it. Carl focused on the box, thinking about retrieving it, and the box appeared in front of him again.

"Not bad. A mix of real world and video game." Carl laughed.

Concentrating on storing the box, it disappeared again. Looking at the mural on the wall, Carl saw the box and a description of what was in it. Nodding in satisfaction, Carl moved the rest of the boxes, except for the box with the plans and the building materials down into the cellar for now.

Going back to the box of plans, Carl opened it up. He saw a blueprint, as well as a list of directions. Setting them out on top of the box, Carl then moved to the box of construction supplies.

Remembering from the Jump Chain document that he had to stated what building he wanted materials for, Carl stated out loud. "Centrepiece building." When Carl opened the box, he saw a flash of light that temporarily blinded him.

When he opened his eyes a moment later, he saw the supplies stacked neatly in the yard. In front of the supplies were a hammer and a screw driver sitting on boxes of nails and screws.

"Well, apparently it's self assembly? This Ikea house better be damned sturdy." Carl sarcastically commented as he picked up the directions and began reading. "At least the supplies are very clearly labeled." Carl commented, moving to pick up board A1.

A second later, Carl almost face palmed. Embracing his magic, he levitated the long frame board over to its position at a hole in the cement. Slotting it in, Carl soon got into a smooth rhythm as he used his magic to levitated pieces into place.

Soon enough he picked up the hammer and nails and continued putting his house together. Carl was so focused, that he didn't notice the passage of time, or feel any fatigue, hunger, or thirst. After some time, Carl finally finished laying the last floorboard inside the completed house.

Straightening up with a sigh, Carl wiped the sweat off his head. Looking around, he was shocked. He had been in some kind of super focused fugue state while building the house.

Opening the front door and moving out, he noticed that it was like no time had passed. Thinking over his memories of building the house, he realized that the sun had barely moved the whole time he had been building the house.

"That is so weird. It's like a time dilation field of some kind, so it only took a moment of real time. But I still had to physically build it. A mix of real world and game mechanics indeed." Carl shook his head. He looked at the single story house that had a living room, kitchen, dining room, one bed, and one bath, Carl was bemused at having built a house.

Going back inside the house to look around again, he noticed a terminal in what would be considered the living room. Moving over to see what options were available, he noticed a menu. The options were Farm, Store, Forum, Friends, and Local Map.

Clicking on Farm, he saw an overview of his farm. He saw there was an option to rearrange his farm. Curious about the feature, Carl moved the silo to the other side of his house. He didn't hear anything move outside, but when he went to look, the silo had actually moved.

"Not bad at all." Carl whistled.

He moved back over and clicked on the Store option. The store opened up. Up top there were tabs for the different sections. Seeds, animals, tools, vehicles, farm options. Clicking around, Carl familiarized himself with the functionality of the options.

Clicking on the Forum, Carl saw there were a number sections for different topics. Clicking on the FAQ, he soon got a clearer sense of how this world and the farming community worked. He read an introduction to the local people, got introductions to the market in the local town, and read various updates about the weather, animal activity, and other such things that concerned the locals and their farms.

Carl backed out and clicked on the Friends option, and found it empty. Not surprised, Carl backed out of the friends option.

Opening up the local map, Carl made note of his address, and the names of the owners of the nearest farms to him. His nearest neighbor was a few miles away.

The next thing Carl did was to return to the cellar and bring out the boxes one at a time to open. He placed the animal pen in an appropriate location, and opened and situated the endless animal feed station nearby. While the animal feed was endless, he still had to manually gather the feed and move it to the animals. The feed station would dispense different feed depending on what animal food Carl asked it for.

Carl then moved the box of fencing supplies to the edge of his property and started working. Pulling out the post hole digger, he first dug a hole, put a post down, then moved to the next one. When he had two in a row, he would nail the boards to the posts. He soon entered that fugue concentration time dilation state that he had previously when building his house.

Soon enough, he had a five foot tall fence around the perimeter of his property. It would keep out some of the animals for now. Not all of them would be deterred by such a simple fence, but enough so he could hopefully get everything set up and operating before changing the fencing so that he could allow them entry at specially prepared trap entrances.

Now that the outer fencing was done, Carl set up another square fence in one corner of his property where he soon placed his beehive. After placing it, he soon heard the bees inside waking up and moving out to do the things bees do.

Carl then placed his endless Fertilizer station in an out of the way corner that would be convenient to where he would place his fields.

He spent some time thinking about it, and decided to place his Totem of Divine Guardian in a prominent place on his land near his house. Carl didn't mind having it in a noticeable area because the Divine Guardian was a very useful part of his farm. And it would remind him of the need to keep it happy with tithes so his farm wouldn't be plagued by bad luck instead of good.

Carl re-entered his house to use the store, when he noticed a box sitting in front of the terminal.

"Ahh, that must be my daily gift. Let's see what's in it, then." Carl checked out the box. "Ahh, construction materials for a chicken coop. How did they know what I wanted for Christmas?" Carl chuckled.

Carl picked up the box and carried it outside, and soon a chicken coop was standing near the animal pen with a fence around it to keep the chicken in the immediate area.

He returned back inside to peruse the store.

He already had a hammer and screw driver, and left over nails. So Carl bought some of the other tools and items he needed, like a hoe to till the earth and prepare it for planting. A construction kit for a well, and a bucket to carry the water. Some butcher knives and skinning knives, the various tools needed to tan hide and prepare furs. Various seeds for planting some vegetables and saplings. Milk jugs, food containers, water troughs, salt licks, and all other things he would need.

He ordered 6 dogs, so he could get started training them for farm security. Once he'd trained this group of six properly, he could get another young bunch. That way the older dogs would make training the younger ones easier, in that they would assist him.

For now he would use his handgun or AR15 as security for now, but he would soon find some appropriate wood to make a bow and arrows and traps that he would place around the farm. Despite having plenty of bullets stored away in his warehouse, he was still here for at least 10 years. There was only a finite amount of bullets, but he could continually make new arrows.

He had noticed the drawback **Extended Stay** that could let him stay for up to 50 more years for 100 cp each 5 years. He wasn't positive he wouldn't take that drawback later. Maybe he would find an urgent need to purchase more specializations sometime in the future? Probably not, but he was going to keep an open mind about it for now.

Carl also purchased a dozen chicken to go with his chicken coop. Then he bought a couple horses and a dozen cows.

He exited the house and noticed everything he'd purchased were already here. He spent the next few hours organizing everything.

All the animals were still really young. He soon had them separated into their areas with food and water available. With some of the materials purchased, he soon had some kennels built for the dogs.

Carl stood in his yard as the sun was approaching the horizon.

"Well, that was a productive day. Definitely some mixed real world and game mechanics. There is no way I could do so much in one day otherwise." Carl smiled, enjoying the sense of having built everything he looked at. It gave him a profound sense of ownership.

* * *

Carl was woken up in the middle of night by the sound of his animals making a racket. He got up from his sleeping back, carrying his handgun, he left his tent.

With Carl's Tier 4 senses, he was able to clearly see the fox that was causing the racket chasing one of his chicks. "Damned bastard." Carl cursed while aiming and firing in one smooth motion, hitting the fox in the chest, dropping him.

Moving over to the chicken coop, Carl counted his chickens. The fox had one before he could get up.

"Well, I knew they would be coming. Gotta get the traps set up tomorrow." Carl grumbled as he picked up the fox. Now that the danger had passed, the six puppies were poking their heads out of their kennel curiously. Stashing the bloody fox away from the animals temporarily, Carl spent some time soothing his animals so they could once more settle down.

Afterwards, he took the fox to his craft shop where he skinned it and butchered the fox, letting its meat soak in some salt water to tenderize the meat. Carl then cleaned up the organs, so he could cook them up and chop them up to go into the dog's bowls the next day. No sense in letting any of it go to waste. Even the bones could be made into various little tools, like needles or buttons or whatever.

Moving back outside, Carl once more checked on the animals, and saw they were doing fine now.

Carl knew that pests would be attacking the farm, and his defenses and traps weren't fully prepared, so he had set up his tent that he'd used for ten years in the Pokemon world to be on call. And it was good that he did. Who knows how many of his little chickens the fox may have eaten? Probably all of them.

Carl soon got back to sleep.

* * *

Carl woke up as the sun was coming up. He started going about the needed chores, feeding each of the animals, preparing his garden plot and his orchard. He took his axe into the nearby woods, and started gathering the materials he needed to set up traps.

While there, he saw many animal tracks. Fox, dear, wolves, and rabbits, oh my.

When he returned to the farm, he started setting up snares and traps around the place. He added to the fence except around areas the traps were, to fool the wild animals into trying the easier routes in so they would get snared.

Looking at the animals growing before his eyes, Carl was at first surprised before remembering this was a reality/game world. The animals would probably all be done growing between a week, for the chickens, and a month, for the horses and cows.

So Carl spent some time in the afternoon working with the dogs on their training. Best to start young.

That evening Carl noticed an insistent beeping coming from the terminal in the house. When he checked it, Carl received his first quest. A neighbor had recently lost all their chicken to a fox. So they needed two trained dogs to protect them within 2 weeks. The pay (quest reward) was quite generous, far more than Carl had spent to buy all 6 of his dogs. He couldn't deny the quest, but he decided he would fulfill it. He would still have 4 of the dogs left afterwards, and he was already planning on buying more dogs in two weeks.

* * *

It had been a month since Carl started on his farm, and things had been going well. Any time he had some concerns about his garden or his orchard, he just had to hop on the community forums and easily find his answers. People were kind enough to answer pretty quick, if there wasn't already a posted answer.

One of the suggestions that helped the most was to buy a delivery box. It was linked with the market so he could simply place the goods he sold online in the box and it would deliver it to the buyer. It saved him from having to make the 30 mile trip to the nearest town.

He now had 24 dogs, and they were doing a fine job of protecting the place. He could even sleep in his house now. He had bagged many squirrels and several more foxes in the traps he'd set. Any that got by the traps fell to his dogs or dozen cats that he bought. There had even been a deer who jumped the fence that froze when he saw Carl. Last thing that gluttonous buck had ever done.

He'd purchased many more chicken, and was selling eggs and chicken meat through the market. The feathers actually also sold relatively well. Someone out there with the user name Pinfeather must be making lots of pillows.

He had been expanding the various accommodations of the animals, so the horses now had their own enclosure. He had been getting them used to the idea of saddles and that he would be riding them soon.

He had one bull and over a dozen cows now, and it was only a matter of time before he could start milking the cows.

So far he was still in the building up phase, so he hadn't recouped back to his initial investment, even though the chicken products and the furs were slowly making him money.

But once the milk and then the meat cows started hitting the market, he was sure to start making money.

Once he built up some more infrastructure and a pond, he was planning to start buying some geese and ducks.

Last week he'd gotten a quest for some dinosaur eggs. Carl had spent some time poking around the forest and hadn't seen anything resembling dinosaur tracks, so that quest was a no go. But it was like he'd assumed, there was no failure penalties. Just annoying quest givers demanding he fulfill their request.

"Look, guy. I'd love to get you some dinosaur eggs. I just don't have any. No one here has any that I know of. You're just out of luck, I'm afraid." Carl rolled his eyes. That Dennis Nedry guy had been really persistently annoying.

* * *

It had been 8 months since Carl started his time in Farmville. His original farm was expanded as large as it could go. The defenses were _tight_.

Several months ago, he had caught some hawks trying to snag his chickens. So he had caught them with his telekinesis. It took a bit of work, but he'd eventually tamed them, and bred them. They now served as anti-air defense as well as lookouts for any incoming pests.

He had 40 dogs that patrolled the fence in groups of four in different shifts. His two dozen cats were in charge of inside defense, making sure that any small critters that burrowed their way in were snapped up immediately.

His garden was producing nicely fresh produce very nicely. Most of it Carl sold, since he didn't need that much.

His milk and meat cows were making him tons of money. As was his other meat animals, like the ducks, geese, chicken, and turkeys.

He had two other farms available that he could occupy, but he wanted this main farm to be fully situated and producing him money before he started sinking time and money into his extensions. Especially now that he his dogs, cats, and birds could reproduce enough to quickly bring up the defenses of the other farms.

But Carl was quite proud. He already had three times the amount of money he'd started with. It was a lot of work every day, but it was satisfying.

Carl teleported to his first farm extension.

Looking around the surrounding area, it looked tropical, and it was humid as fuck. There were coconut trees, papaya, banana and some others he didn't recognize.

Well, time to get started.

Carl began the process of building up his Centrepiece building on this plot of land. The time compression fugue focus began.

* * *

Carl was celebrating his year anniversary in the Farmville world with Ronaldo and Marietta, Ronaldo's wife.

Carl had found a nice feature of the community function. He could hire a local to manage his additional farms. Which was a godsend, because Carl was already behind. Every three months he got access to a new farm, but he didn't have the time to be taking care of multiple farms. So, he finally discovered he could hire locals to work his farm. They get a wage for their work, while as the owner he gets a majority of the profit. Or has to pay for whatever disaster happens. But that's the nature of the beast.

One of the things Carl realized really quickly is that he couldn't always emulate his success from his original farm in his satellite farms. For one thing, he wasn't always there to keep an eye on it, and his hires didn't have his animal specialization.

So over the past four months Carl had hired Ronaldo and his wife to work his tropical farm. Ronaldo had a specialty in fish farming, so that's what Ronaldo did at his tropical island farm. Digging out the fish ponds by hand had been quite some work, but he and Ronaldo had done it.

Marietta had a talent for making the most exquisite jams. So the farm also had many fruit trees and bushes. Carl also shipped the fruits from his main farm to her to make the jams and jellys to sell at market, and they were making Carl lots of money.

So even though Ronaldo and Marietta didn't have Carl's experience with taming animals, once the dogs had gone through his training, Carl could tell them to listen to someone else's commands and they did just fine. They had saved a lot of trouble by being the defense at his farms.

One of the issue that Carl had found early on was that he couldn't teleport with any of his dogs, and since he didn't have the Link so he could not open two portals and use his Warehouse as a transit point. So he ended up having to pay a lot of money to get a shipping license, which solved his problems, even though he nearly went in the hole because of the cost.

Now that his second farm was established, Carl was going to start opening up other satellite farms. He had already gone through the process of developing two farms, and he was getting better at it. His first had been 8 months long before he'd fully developed it. The second was 4 months. He was planning to hire someone to watch over his main farm for a while, so he could work on getting the time down even more.

If he could catch up with the number of satellite farms he had available, then he could probably go back to minding his main farm and only troubleshooting issues here or there at his satellite farms.

But for now, he had a delicious meal that Marietta cooked to enjoy.

* * *

A busy year had passed for Carl. He had finally caught up with the satellite farms development. With each additional farm adding money to his coffers, he was able to blast through the development phase. He would quickly maximize the land extensions, build fences, traps, introduce dogs, cats, and birds as defenses. Hire a local, find out what their specialty was, and help them get started before leaving them to work.

Then he would go back to his farm and train more animals for deployment, and hunt more creatures, thus perfecting his skills at processing animals. Thankfully his critters drawback only applied to him, not to all his satellite farms. So only the farm he was staying at got attacked by crazy wild animals.

So far he had an English countryside that focused on sheep, wool gathering, and English foods.

A coastal area that focused on fishing and sea food.

A farm called Jade Falls in china that produced rice and the local hire's wife was the most amazing cook. They could produce dozens of dishes a day. It amazed him.

His sixth extension had been a Halloween Theme farm. It was weird, the entire countryside it was in was Halloween theme. It was always fall there. They produced everything associated with Halloween.

The seventh was Sunflower Meadows, whose specialty was flowers. Everything to do with flowers. Which meant they had lots of beehives, and also produced lots of honey.

And the eighth farm was Mistletoe, that was always in winter, and produced Christmas themed products.

By this point, Carl just shrugged at the silliness of Farmville. The fact that a perpetual winter farm still grew vegetables other such produce out of season no longer bothered him. It was the way it was, and as long as they made him money he didn't care. With the continual influx of money he could continue to develop farms. Farms that he would keep after leaving this world.

He sometimes wondered how he was going to keep working the land when his farms left this world with him. But that was something for him to worry about later. For now, he had to make sure he had as much land as possible before the jump ended.

* * *

Over the next several years Carl kept himself very busy. He found that he couldn't always rely on his dogs/cats/birds combo to help defend his farms.

His tenth farm was freaking Atlantis. An underwater farm. So, he had to adjust, grab his rebreather, and go out and catch some underwater animals for defenses. Domesticating some sharks had been an interesting experience. Domesticating octopi was actually easier. They were actually pretty clever creatures.

Once Atlantis was up and running, it steadily produced many things that only an underwater farm could. Pearls, coral, ambergris, and an assortment of underwater delicacies that couldn't be found anywhere else.

When he received a farm in Australia, he had been pretty excited. He got to train kangaroos. Those guys can _kick_. And they could fight nasty. But they were good for roving patrols to keep the big pests away. The day Carl saw a group of four kangaroos beat a crocodile to death was amazing. They kept coming at it from behind and the sides, and then retreated. The poor croc couldn't do anything, and eventually ended up becoming a pair of boots for Carl.

Carl also obtained a few farms that had magical creatures and plants, some that had alien biology, and some that were in a land of dinosaurs! Carl spent some time hunting dinos there, and he managed to get some young raptors that he raised up and domesticated. They were _vicious_ creatures when they cornered prey.

And Carl obtained a farm for pretty much every cuisine on Earth. Italian? Mexican? Korean? Japanese? Mediterranean? He's got it all.

He obtained a couple farms that produce magical reagents, so he was happy that he would always have access to the ingredients for magical potions or rituals. He even had a couple farms that produced spiritual plants and animals for cultivators. Carl couldn't really make use of it now, but some day in the future he might.

He had a farm that produced gemstones, El Dorado produced gold, and one farm was basically a mine that produced all kinds of metals.

Another produced Marijuana. Seriously. It was a hippy themed one. Another produced all kinds of alcohol.

Overall, Carl was pretty pumped about his sojourn in Farmville. He never thought such a game that he never played had such a wide range of products and resource production. And in just a few hours, he would be finished with the world, taking his farms with him.

* * *

Carl woke up in his Warehouse between jumps.

"Ahhhh." Carl moaned as he stretched. "While there wasn't much danger for the most part, even the dinosaurs were no big deal once I figured them out, it was a very busy jump. Seriously, those critters were relentless. If I wasn't starting a new farm, I was hunting in every freaking environment. In snow, in the deserts, underwater, on alien planets, through magical fields. Thank goodness I didn't take the **Dangerous Wildlife** drawback that would have turned them from pests to dangerous predators. That would have been too much."

"Time to go have some breakfast now that I'm back between worlds." Carl laughed.


	13. The Warehouse 3

Carl hopped out of bed and out of his room. He was too impatient to check out how his farms were faring to worry about toiletries.

When he exited his Warehouse house, he looked around for a bit until he saw a new door on the Warehouse door nearby labeled "Farms".

As he approached, he saw a note posted on the door.

"For the World Jumpers, there are a lot of things they can be doing with their time. Farming outside of a farming world is a ridiculous use of their time. And so boring! So you get, on the house, some analogs of the people you hired to run your farms. They have all the skills the real people had, but none of the sentience, so you don't even have to feel guilty about not paying them. Enjoy!

-Jump-Chan"

Carl looked at the note blankly.

"Jump-Chan? Are you there?" Carl called out while looking around. No answer. "Hmm, either I have a Jump-Chan, but she can't meet me, Spere 037 was wrong about my lack of a Jump-Chan and she doesn't want to meet me, or I still don't have a Jump-Chan and this note was part of the automated system set up." Carl rubbed his chin in thought for a moment.

"Not like I can do anything about it anyway." Carl finally decided.

Deciding not to worry about it, Carl shrugged and moved on. Opening the door, he saw the other side was the inside of the house of his main farm. Moving inside, Carl saw that everything was like he'd left it.

He moved to the terminal set up in the house. Browsing through it, he discovered he still had access to all the forum messages that were posted prior to leaving, but no new messages were coming in. "I guess time was frozen in that world when I left?"

When he checked on the market section, he found a notice that let him know that when he entered a jump world, the market would be connected to that world, and he could buy and sell goods to that world. The analog workers wouldn't make the decision to sell anything, unless he set the rules by which they would sell goods.

So Carl set the rules that of the goods they would sell, they would make sure they had a "full stock" before they would sell off to the market. He set the levels they would stock to before selling. Many of the precious things, like metals, precious gems, and magical items, he didn't want to sell for now. He would stock them up. Only when he felt he had a need to sell, or had a sufficient stockpile, would he let some of his stock go.

Carl then took a tour of his farms. As he teleported from farm to farm and watched each of the workers, he could tell that the note from Jump-chan had been accurate. These weren't the same people he had been working with. They didn't have that spark of life in them. They were just going through the motions.

In a way, Carl was very relieved at that. Having a bunch of people suddenly kidnapped and forced to be virtual slaves to his farms for his sole profit didn't really appeal to him.

After spending some time on his farms, Carl returned back to his house. He decided he would have himself a nice leisurely breakfast while sipping some root beer. It was almost a tradition at this point.

After breakfast, Carl went back to his room. The terminal for his body mod changes was set up. Carl then selected the available options to add to his body, especially including his knockoff spider sense, and clicked yes through the 'Are you sure?' checks.

Lights out.

* * *

Carl woke up once more, stretching while getting out of bed. Looking around at his room after yet another round of knock out, wake up, he chuckled.

"Time for breakfast again."

Carl took his time, leisurely sipping on fine Root Beer, while making himself waffles. The waffle maker came from the Farmville world, Carl had purchased it through the store, and installed it here when he discovered that it made the absolute perfect golden brown waffles, no matter what.

Forgot about your waffle while it cooked, and come back 30 minutes later? The waffle was not burnt, it was still perfectly cooked. "You can't get much better real life game mechanics than a perfect waffle, every time."

After spreading the butter and pouring on the maple syrup, Carl took the first bite, and paused in appreciation. "Perfection." He mumbled as he cut the second bite.

In the warehouse mod he had purchased the **Food Supply** that would be enough food to keep five people fed. For a given definition of food. The food had been filling, but bland. But now that the warehouse had access to the Farm's stock of food stuff and spices, he could feed an army. And, more importantly, the food was _delicious_.

He didn't regret purchasing **Food Supply** even though he now had enough farms to keep himself and an army fed. At the time he'd purchased it, it had been very necessary. And more importantly, it gave Carl the safety net he needed to be bold enough to go out and accomplish what he wanted to with no regrets.

If he hadn't had the guarantee of always available food, he might have been much more timid in his actions in the jump worlds of Pokemon and Farmville. And then he likely wouldn't be where he was now. So it was cp well spent.

And now that it had better food to keep his house supplied with, he was actually enjoying the time he spent here between jumps.

So Carl spent the next four days simply relaxing, watching movies and playing games for entertainment, only spending an hour or so a day in exercise, as opposed to the all day every day training or working hard of his past two jumps.

But soon enough, it was that time to review the next jump world's jump document and make his decisions for world insertion.

When Carl clicked on the terminal, it showed he had less than a day until his next jump.

"I wonder what would happen if I didn't make my jump decisions until then?" Carl wondered. "Would it drop me in as is with no perks or drawbacks? Or would it pull up someone else's jump decisions from the past and make me live with their build?" Carl shuddered at that thought. In some world's that could be very…horrifying.

"Just imagine if I was unlucky enough to be forced to live out the fantasy of someone who was a fan of the creepy romance of Twilight, and I got stuck as Bella. Ugghh. That would be horrifying." Carl gagged. "Living in a world of sparkly, effeminate vampires? I could handle that. Hell, being Mr. Sparkles McVampire could even be a hell of a lot of fun for a decade."

"But being stuck in some teen melodrama love life full of angst with a mind reading pedo stalker after me? Especially as a weak human? No thanks. Hard pass." Carl was horrified at all the nightmare scenarios his mind was conjuring up now. Where's the brain bleach when he needed it?

Pushing the existential horror behind him with some difficulty, Carl returned his attention to the screen. When he advanced to the world screen, he was pleasantly surprised. The world he would be going to was History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi.

"Oh, man, am I glad now I didn't go through all kinds of hoops just to get the slayer strength in Buffy the Vampire Slayer world. Because the martial arts masters of Ki that are in this world? They can bench press _tanks_." Carl laughed as he read the introduction.

"Welcome to the world of History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi. This world is much like the one you originally hailed from save for the crucial nature Martial Arts plays in the backdrop of global events. Through repeated training and years of physical punishment, humans are able to reach beyond what is the physical norm and achieve a state of physical perfection so great that modern militaries are unequipped to handle them..."

Carl reviewed what he vaguely remembered about the story. The last time he'd read the story was before he got the perfect memory from **Savant**, so his stored memories were a little fuzzy about details he'd learned from before he got the perk.

In this world, there were two philosophies of martial arts in opposition. The people of the organization YAMI who follow "Satsujinken", or "death giving fist", are of the mindset that martial arts was made to kill your enemies. Only by killing your enemies do you grow stronger. So they take that philosophy and run with it, embracing their murderous side.

The much smaller group of Master Martial Artists that make up the dojo Ryozanpaku follow the philosophy of Katsujinken, or "life giving fist". They believe that the true purpose of martial arts is to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

"And this is where I have to make a choice, isn't it?" Carl rhetorically asked. "If I'm being honest, I fall somewhere in the middle of these two philosophies. Killing everyone who you fight just to 'get stronger' is the path of a psychopath. But refusing to kill monsters that deserve death is just a different type of stupid. Or maybe a different type of stubborn?"

"I haven't even read the document, and I already know I'll be forced to choose a side. There will be no fence sitting unless you have the power to enforce your neutrality. And judging by my experience in the Pokemon world, my magic will probably be nerfed here as well, and ki will be the local power to get."

Carl sighed. For some reason he hated being forced into a corner and making choices that he didn't necessarily fully agree with. That's probably why the Socratic teaching method became a thing. "You try forcing hot headed youngsters to do what you say, and what do you get? Rebellion. But if you lead them so they come to the same conclusions themselves? Then they _understand_, and are not just fighting against 'The Man'."

"Well, let's get started. I already have an idea of what I want to do in this jump, so let's see what I can buy. I'm going to go with Drop-in. It's free and I don't want to accidently end up with the wrong background that would ruin my plan before I could even get there."

"As for age, I'll roll for it." As Carl said that, the table and d8 appeared in front of him. "A three. So I'll be dropping in as a 13 year old. Not bad, not too old, not too young."

"Next is the starting location. Five different locations, and one free pick. Dojo of Ryozanpaku. Koryo High School, where Kenichi goes to school. Yamigadani, a secret secluded glade high in the mountains of Japan. Despair Island, a private island in the sea of Japan controlled by masters of YAMI. Big Lock, a massive domed prison designed to keep master-class martial artists incarcerated."

"Well, that last choice is just a ball of fun." Carl sarcastically joked. "But with my sling ring and Drop in, I can just leave if I don't like the location I arrive at. They won't have any records of me, so leaving upon arrival isn't a big deal."

Carl rolled the dice. "A 4, looks like I'll arrive at Koryo High School. I can work with that easily."

Carl scrolled down to the next choice. "Okay, it looks like I have to pick one or the other. I'll go with Katsujinken, the life giving fist. While I don't think killing monsters is wrong, I don't hold with that nonsense of indiscriminant killing, either. And the masters of Ryozanpaku follow Katsujinken, so I'll have to as well if I'm going to apprentice myself under one of them."

"Okay, next is a choice of Sei or Dou Ki. Sei users focus their Ki inwards that 'results in an inner calm and centeredness that lends itself well to thoughtful action and awareness of surroundings…will frequently have moments of insight that may turn an unwinnable battle in their favor.' Dou focus their Ki outwards, often getting a boost to speed and strength by channeling their emotions into their fighting style. Well, the style and focus I'm going for in this jump will lend itself well to Sei Ki, so I'll pick that."

"Okay, next is a choice of Unarmed or Weapons focused martial artist. Man, this world really likes their dichotomies. I already learned the basics of Jujutsu and Aikido from **High Stakes Fighter** in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world, and in this one I plan to learn from a Jujutsu master, so I'm obviously going to pick to be a Weapons wielder." Carl sarcastically joked while picking Unarmed.

A moment later Carl had a thought that made him shiver. "I am so glad the automatic service of this Jump Chain isn't so sensitive to take what I said as a joke to lock in my decisions. It would have totally ruined my jump build if that had happened."

Carl was remembering one fanfiction he'd read in the past where the main character, faced with a video game world that was asking for the character's chosen difficulty level, he had exclaimed "What the hell is going on here?" And then gotten stuck on hell difficulty on his first play through.

"Okay, no more tempting the jump chain to play a joke on me." Carl affirmed to himself.

Looking down the list, Carl saw that he could pick which martial arts style he wanted to learn the basics of. The first style would be free, and subsequent styles would cost 50 cp.

"Okay, since I'm planning to learn from a Jujutsu master, and this perk will give me all the basics of Jujutsu in this world, shoring up any weaknesses or holes in my knowledge, I'll pick Jujutsu. I could spend a measly 50 cp to do the same for Aikido, but it says the more styles I pick, the longer it will take to incorporate them into a cohesive and usable whole, so I'll pass."

"And Kenichi was learning how many styles? Karate, Jujutsu, Muay Thai, Chinese Kenpo, Furinji style, and weapons. Six of them, and he somehow became a master by the end of the manga while still young. I don't care what his opponents say, to be able to do that in the time he did, made him _talented_. Thinking back on it, his masters kept him humble so he never let his pride get in the way of learning."

Carl imitated an old wise man voice, "Once disciple think they know it all, their head become hard as rock. No more learning happens."

"But I've only got 10 years in this world, and I'm not going to try to overextend. I'll focus on just Jujutsu. If I end up becoming a master before ten years is up, then I can add something else. But until attaining mastery, I'm going to just focus on the one art."

In the world of History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, or HSDK, the rank of skill starts from the Disciple class. From Low Class Disciple, to Middle Class Disciple, to High Class Disciple.

After graduating from Disciple, they attain the Expert Class. After Expert Class is the Master Class. The Master Class is divided up as Low Class Master, Master, Grand Master, and finally Legendary Master.

"Okay, now for the perks. For a Drop-in I get **Hidden Weapons** for free. But I'm an unarmed focus? Wait, it doesn't have to be weapons, it could be anything, tools, data storage devices, even musical instruments. I can hide two items on my body and two for each article of clothes so that no one can detect them easily."

" 'The only way to fully disarm you is to strip you down naked and have at least three independent observers engage in a detailed simultaneous cavity search.' Hahaha, that's awesome. Not the body cavity search! But the hiding things in plain sight is awesome. I'll take it."

"**Probing Eye** 150cp is some next level Sherlock shit. 'Through a concentrated effort of observation and keen detailing of physical characteristics, you can determine an individual's true personality, notable traits, dietary preferences, recent activities, mostnoteworthy skills and favored fighting style.' Okay, I'm definitely getting this." Carl grinned happily.

There was a saying "Knowledge is power." Through his experiences, Carl felt that saying was very true. Because of his meta-knowledge, when he was in the BtVS world, he knew who the big dangers were, and he was able to take preemptive action to stop them and their shitty plans.

In the Pokemon world, he didn't have that meta-knowledge, and was blindsided by Lysandre and Team Flare's plans to kill off any opposition and take control of the region. If he didn't have his magic and sling ring teleporting cheats, who knows what would have been the results of Lysandre's plan. Carl may now have been sitting in his original world after less than two jumps wondering how he lost in the freaking Pokemon world of all places.

And with Jump-chan missing and the Jump Chain randomly picking places, Carl couldn't rely on meta-knowledge to get him through tough jumps. So the Sherlockian abilities of **Probing Eye** alone made this jump worth it, even if he didn't get anything else out of it.

Carl scanned down the list until he got to **Etiquette** 100cp. "You are instinctively knowledgeable about the etiquette and deference that must be shown in any martial art or martial culture." Carl snagged that, since he would be going to Ryozanpaku to beg a Grand Master of Jujutsu to teach him, not being unintentionally rude would only help him.

The next skill Carl picked up was **Civilian Skills** 100cp. "You find it exceedingly easy to apply your martial skills to mundane tasks. Leg strength developed through repeated kicking and great leaps could be applied to travel faster, and recreational parkour."

"Sold! You had me at recreational parkour." Carl exclaimed. "And I'm also getting shades of the Anything Goes Martial Arts of Ranma ½." Carl was especially thinking about Tea Ceremony martial arts fights.

"Okay, then. **Master's Body** will give me the body of a master after ten years. Even if I only go to this world and nope out of their battles to hide for 10 years, I'll still pretty much get powerful!" Carl laughed. "Going on a 10 year vacation will give me the body, but no training in how to use it, or how to advance beyond the Master level. So training trip it is." Carl firmly decided. "There's a huge disparity between having the raw power, and being able to use that power."

Looking over the other perks, Carl decided against **Strength and Endurance** and **Speed and Agility**. Those would be amazing if he weren't going to be training to get those very things over the next ten years. He didn't have anything against stacking on powers, but he felt that if he was forced to fight for that strength through hard training he would gain a lot more skill in using that strength, than if he got it first, and then had to train it. He could just be blowing hot air, but that is the way he would do things.

He already had his Tier 4 senses so he didn't need **Perception and Awareness**.

**Stunning** was a perk designed to make him look _good_. As in, he could sing that one song, "I'm too sexy" and it wouldn't be arrogant or ironic. But Carl felt he already looked pretty decent. And this early in his jump chain, he felt it was more important to go with substance than style. Maybe after his girls joined him on the jump he would upgrade how he looked, but until then, he wanted to remain as close to the same as possible for their inevitable reunion.

**Youth and Longevity** seemed like a decent pick, except that he was constantly changing ages in these jump worlds. It would really only be useful for Carl if he was quitting his jump chain anytime soon. Which, with the jump chain on automatic, he never had the option to stay in a world or return home. He could only helplessly go from world to world, being yanked out after exactly 10 years.

And Carl had been intending to gain some kind of medical know how sometime in the future, so in emergencies he could keep his people alive long enough to get them to the medbay. So he chose **Martial Art Medicine** 150cp that would allow him to apply his skills in martial arts to heal people instead of harming them.

The Master that Carl planned to study Jujutsu under, Akisame Koetsuji, was also a master at using massage, chiropractic, and acupuncture to heal. So with that perk and instruction from Akisame, Carl hoped to be a master of healing after 10 years, as well as Jujutsu.

And finally, Carl chose **Enhanced Ki** 150cp. Maximizing his gains in Ki training? "Yes, thank you. May I have another?"

Carl then looked over the General Items available. He spent 50cp to get 1,000,000 yen on a debit card. "Having the local currency is never a bad option."

He chose to get a pair of forearm protectors for his version of the **"Sword"** item for free. As Carl grew stronger, the forearm protectors would also gain more durability and strength. To the point they could tank virtually everything short of superheated plasma.

"A very nice item to help me stay alive. I like." Carl approved. "And another free item, the **Data Book**. A small book, PDA, or cellphone, that instantly organizes and records any and all information I've obtained about people I meet. Well, I've already got perfect memory so I won't forget anything, but that doesn't necessarily mean I don't have to think about things for a while to bring the memories up. And it would be good for if I'm making an information brief or passing information to others. I'll merge it with my Pokegear. Adding one more app to that useful device shouldn't be hard."

"I'll take **Headquarters** 100cp. With basic utilities, and tax and amenities free, and able to house 50 employees, it can be a useful base that follows me from world to world. I know at some point in the story Nijima, the information broker friend of Kenichi, will form the Shinpaku Alliance for information gathering and low level protection, so they can make use of the headquarters while I'm here, in exchange for information. Rent paid in information, I like it."

"And let's see, **Entrance Fee** 100cp seems to be a very useful perk that will also help me in every world. 'Regardless of the institution, be it a trade school, a university, a fine arts program, or even a martial arts dojo, you will always have the currency (and other obscure entrance requirements) that will allow you to begin your studies at said institution.' This will actually help me greatly in getting admitted to Ryozanpaku and having Akisame teach me. Not to mention any other jump worlds I visit in the future."

"**Dojo** 100cp is another item that I can take with me out of this jump. 'It holds all of the basic training materials and aids needed to educate disciples in our martial art, or engage in light-training yourself.' And it will be an attachment to the Warehouse in the future, very nice."

Carl checked over everything once more, ensuring he had all he wanted for his plan. Step 1, get to Ryozanpaku. Step 2, get admitted under Akisame Koetsuji. Step 3, get tortured for 10 years. "I mean, get trained for 10 years." Carl laughed. He knew it would be a difficult road, but necessary, if he wanted to get the skills and power of a master.

Carl finalized his selections, and blacked out.


	14. HSDK 1

Carl opened his eyes on a new world.

He was standing just inside the gates to Koryo High School on the morning the manga started.

"Right about now Kenichi should be getting thrown to the ground because he startled Miu by being at her back." Carl muttered to himself.

Looking around, he saw all the students streaming inside the school grounds. They all looked at least 2 years older than him.

Carl looked down at his 13 year old body. He was still as fit as he ever was from his training, but he knew that at this time his strength was scaled down because he was younger than he was previously. But he was just about as strong as a 13 year old could be without adding Ki and martial arts training from a world like the one he was currently residing in.

"Well, I definitely stick out." Carl noticed he was getting looks from the students who were all dressed in uniforms, while he stood in casual jeans and a t-shirt, and was middle school aged, not high school aged. "Time to get out of here."

Carl turned around and left the school grounds. As he left, he pulled out his Pokegear to connect to the local network. He saw he had an email.

Carl stepped off into a corner out of the flow of traffic, and opened the email. It listed the locations of his Headquarters and Dojo, gave him the pin to his debit card, and told him the envelope labeled "Entrance Fee" would remain closed until he agreed with the institution the amount for the entrance fee, then it would be filled with a check, debit card, or cash in the agreed amount.

Carl pulled his wallet out, and saw he had a new debit card. He guessed the balance would be 1,000,000 yen. Then he pulled out the Entrance Fee envelope to look it over.

"Man, I love jump chain magic." Carl grinned.

He quickly put his wallet and the entrance fees envelope away for later.

Looking around, and seeing there were too many witness, Carl walked to a nearby alley and stepped behind some piled up boxes. Now that there was no one around to see, he opened a portal and jumped through.

Carl landed easily on top of a roof near the entrance to Koryo High School. He cast a simple SEP spell and settled down to wait.

He didn't have to wait long before he saw a gorgeous blonde haired, glasses wearing girl of 15 rushing to enter the school. As she was passing him by, he tagged her with a tracking spell.

Before she entered the gates, she paused to cautiously scan her surroundings. But, seeing nothing unusual, she continued on inside the gates.

"Whew, look at that situational awareness." Carl commented. "And she's the youngest, least trained member of Ryozanpaku. Out of all the martial artists around, Ryozanpaku is the best for a world traveler like me to go to for training. They are genuinely good people, so I don't have to fear being killed like I would from approaching YAMI. Or for YAMI to notice something unusual in my behavior when I woke up my memories and decide that torturing answers out of me is the natural response to someone acting out of character."

"Well, now let's go look at my two pieces of property."

Carl pulled out his Pokegear. "Guess since I'm no longer in the Pokemon world, I can just start calling it a phone again, right?" He looked up directions to his headquarters, and started walking there.

He kept an eye out for police or neighborhood watch types. He didn't want the hassle of being chased for ditching school. "I'm a drop-in to your world, I don't need to go to school." That excuse would probably not go over that well.

Carl soon arrived at his office. Looking it over, it looked like a typical office building, nothing special to bring attention to it. Perfect for fitting in the local area. He pulled the key out of his pocket where it was placed by the Jump Chain and let himself in.

Looking around, he saw that everything was set up decently well as he took a tour. There were 50 offices. Every office had a Desk, computer, filing cabinets, chair, phone, and radio. The phones worked, and the computers had internet, Carl checked.

The office had six floors aside from the ground floor and a basement. Ten offices on each of the top five floors. A fully equipped male and female bathrooms on each floor, meaning it included a shower and locker room. There was an employee break room on each floor. On the ground floor was a reception area where security would station itself to screen people as they entered, and a cafeteria. A Laundromat for employees was located in the basement. On the first floor up from the ground floor there were a few conference rooms for group projects and briefings.

After checking the kitchen of the cafeteria, Carl found a note explaining that he now had an app on his phone that could let him manage certain functions of his properties. He soon learned from the app on his phone that it could connect to his storage on the farms, and he could designate foodstuffs from his farm to automatically fill the walk in freezers and storage shelves of the kitchen at his headquarters. That way his employees would always have food available for the long hours they would no doubt pull.

The option to do the same for the dojo was grayed out until he could visit the location in person.

Once Carl set up the automatic restock option from a phone app, he continued looking around for anything else to do.

"Well, everything is all set up here for future employees, nothing else for me to do." Carl commented from inside one of the break rooms after poking around for a while.

Carl left after looking up directions to his dojo. It was an easy 10 minute walk from his headquarters building.

Upon arrival, Carl looked around curiously. This dojo would be attached to his Warehouse after this jump, a nice place for him to train to keep up his skills and so that he could train others. The building currently looked like a stereotypical Japanese dojo. Carl was pleased by the style.

As Carl toured the grounds, he found many facilities that were good for training. There was a weight lifting room, a swimming pool, a track, and an obstacle course for general fitness. They even had those upright tree trunks that kung fu artists jump around on to train their movement and balance skills.

There was plenty of space to practice and spar. Several different sets of striking dummies, wooden mockups of weapons of all varieties. There were also locker rooms, bathrooms, a sauna, a kitchen, cafeteria, and laundry room.

Once Carl saw the kitchen, he opened up the app and set up the auto fill option of the Dojo's kitchen food stock. By the time Carl finished with his tour of the Dojo, it was lunch time. So he cooked and ate lunch for himself while thinking over his plans.

Now that he had a few places that would automatically restock from his food reserves from the farms, Carl thought of a concern for the logistics of it. The time in his Warehouse stopped when he wasn't in it. Meaning his Farms probably time stopped too.

After thinking about the issue for a bit, Carl decided to test something. He had only been making door sized or garage door sized portals to his Warehouse, and he didn't want to leave portals of that size lying around just anywhere where someone might somehow get in. But what if he made a really small portal that someone couldn't get in?

So Carl opened up a small foot wide portal on the wall. He pulled out his phone, with the display set on the clock. He put the phone just inside the Warehouse, and shrunk the portal to the size of a pinhead, but didn't close it.

After waiting for a minute, he opened the portal wide again and checked the phone. "Success! As long as I have a teeny tiny portal open, even if no one can enter, time will be passing by inside." Carl was happy about it. From then on he made it a practice to put a microscopic sized open gate on something he carried with him. Either his phone, his wallet, or his forearm guards. That way his farm would always be running and producing product that would either keep him and his people fed, or make him money.

After lunch was digested, Carl changed into his workout clothes. "It's a good thing I never threw out any of the clothes I outgrew from the Pokemon world." Carl laughed. "I'm back to being a very dangerous 13 year old, watch out!"

After a hard workout for a couple hours, Carl sat in meditation. He knew from his perks and entry into this world that he now had access to Ki, but until he could control the life energy, he wouldn't be able to do much with it.

After sitting for an hour in meditation, Carl still couldn't find his Ki. The difficulty of his search for Ki was complicated by his magic that kept metaphorically jumping in front of his face shouting "Look at me!"

"So, it might take a while to track down and learn to manipulate Ki. I shouldn't be impatient. From what I understand, it takes Masters of the arts years to get to that point. But a journey of a thousand miles will never get done if you don't take any steps. So daily meditation is still necessary, even if it feels like I'm not getting anywhere right now." Carl thought the issue through out loud.

With that issue firmly resolved in his mind, Carl continued to meditate for another hour. It was hard. Hard to sit still. He had spent the past 30 years on go go go mode. Even when he relaxed he was doing it with some form of media to distract his mind.

At the end of the time he allotted, Carl sighed in relief and got up to prepare dinner.

As Carl was preparing and eating his food, he was pondering a little dilemma.

"As it stands now, I've got probably a two week minimum wait until Kenichi joins the Ryozanpaku dojo. On the one hand I like and admire Kenichi. His hero's journey was engaging and entertaining to read. So I don't want to do anything that will tank his chance to come under the tutelage of the Masters of Ryozanpaku." Carl vocalized the issue he was facing. "If Kenichi was a jerk, I wouldn't care. But I want Kenichi to have that opportunity, that chance to become the man he did. And as hot as I think Miu is, I wouldn't want to interrupt their friendship. I liked how their relationship played out. I think they were good for each other."

"That said, there's no guarantee that I'm in a strictly canon world on any of my Jumps. Things could be vastly different from the source material. And I'm under absolutely no obligation to play 'fixer of plot lines'. Or 'fixer of romance' or any such nonsense. Anything I do try to change will because I _want to_, not because I'm obligated to."

"From the moment I enter these worlds, I'm no longer an observer, I'm a participant. I'm also not some kind of god that can make sure things go any particular way for 'story purposes'. I don't have to make sure that any particular character learns a moral lesson. I don't have to make sure that any particular character serves the role assigned him by the author for literary purposes and social commentary. These people are alive and can damn well make their own choices."

"So, I guess it's silly of me to worry overly much about it. The masters of Ryozanpaku aren't so close minded that they would refuse Miu's friend a chance to prove himself simply because I'm there too. It's not like they warmed up to him immediately, it took a few weeks of watching him struggle before they started helping him one by one. And as he continued to work hard, they responded to it."

Carl brightened up in realization. "So I don't have to sit here for two plus weeks before I approach Ryozanpaku! Thanks for clearing that up for me, Therapy-san."

Carl nodded in mock gravity, like he was accepting the thanks. "Youngsters like you sometimes need a little guidance. It's what I'm here for."

Suddenly dropping the act, Carl sighed as he looked out the window at the night sky while thinking of his girls. "How much longer…?" He cut himself off. No use thinking about useless topics.

Carl jumped to his feet, determined to shake off the mood.

"Well, as it's evening, Miu Furinji should be back at Ryozanpaku by now. There's no time like the present."

Carl left the dojo after locking up and followed the tracking spell that he had previously tagged Miu with.

Upon arrival, Carl gazed at the gates of the dojo. It was still early evening, and there was still some light out before night fell. Carl tried to push open the gates.

"Uggh." Carl groaned after he failed to open the gates. "I knew they were heavy, but I had hoped to be able to budge them at least." Looking around and seeing no witnesses, Carl backed up and ran at the wall, then running up it and grabbing the edge. Flipping himself over, he landed on the other side of the wall and rolled to his feet.

He then looked over at the inside of the gate. "Yup, no bar keeping them closed. They really are that heavy. Looks like I've got my work cut out for me."

"And just what work might that be, hmm?" A voice sounded from behind and above Carl.

Turning around, Carl saw the kindly smiling bearded face of Hayato Furinji, the Legendary Master of Ryozanpaku. At over 2 meters tall, the buff grandfatherly looking man towered over Carl's 13 year old height. Even at his tallest, he was only 1.85 meters tall, still much shorter than the giant of a man.

"Why, the work of getting strong!" Carl exclaimed. "Greetings Master Furinji." Carl gave a polite bow.

The tall man laughed freely. "You're a little early to be calling me master on our first meeting, young man."

Carl shrugged. "Well, it doesn't hurt to give the respect deserved to those who earn it. And the masters of the arts that live here are definitely deserving of respect. Especially when I've come seeking tutelage in the arts, it behooves me to be polite." Carl explained.

Hayato hummed in thought as he looked Carl over. Carl felt like he was naked in front of a spotlight from the gaze, like he had no secrets the old man couldn't suss out.

"A little interesting. Which master are you looking for tutelage under?"

"I've practiced a little bit of Jujutsu, and wish to expand my understanding and grow under Master Akisame." Carl promptly replied.

Hayato nodded thoughtfully. "Why don't I give you a tour of the place first?" He suggested.

Carl quickly agreed and followed along behind Hayato Furinji as they toured the area. What followed was beat for beat what Kenichi's introduction to the dojo had been.

First he saw a 2 meter tall Thai who was packing serious muscle absolutely furiously pounding a kicking bag.

"That guy is Apachai Hopachai, a 28 years old Thai, Muay Thai." Hayato introduced, causing Apachai to increase his enthusiasm and after destroying the bag, he moved on to a tree in the yard and kicked it in half. "Hey! Cut it out will ya?!" Hayato yelled at Apachai before turning back to Carl. "He's overdoing it because he's in a good mood." Hayato explained to Carl.

Carl simply laughed. "I gotta say, I'm impressed Apachai. Nice to meet you. My name is Carl." Carl was feeling almost giddy, to see the scene of Apachai kicking a freaking tree in half. This was definitely the right place to become a master of martial arts!

"Apachai is happy to meet you too!" Apachai yelled back.

Next they came to a room where a very shapely woman in a short skirt kimono stood between four posts that had swords tied to the posts so the top of the blades were above her head. As Carl watched, she drew her sword from over her shoulder and in what looked like one move to Carl sliced all four swords around her in half. All Carl saw was a blade flash.

"Sharp!" Carl exclaimed in admiration. He saw a small blush appear on the woman's face at the complement.

"That is Shigure Kosaka, master of blades." Hayato introduced.

"A pleasure to meet you. I am Carl." Carl gave a polite bow.

"Oi, what business do you have with me?" Shigure suddenly said.

Carl knew she wasn't talking to him, so he remained silent.

Shigure suddenly drove her sword into the mats while yelling "Then come up, Kensei Ma!"

A short Chinese man with long bushy eyebrows and mustache dressed in a Tang suit and a hat burst out from under the floor mats. "Eh, I was just passing by." Kensei replied to Shigure, who held her sword at his neck.

"What sort of pictures were you taking with that camera, hmm?" She asked him.

"Just the scenery!" He claimed as dashed for the exit.

When Carl saw Kensei headed for the exit he was standing at, he quickly side stepped away. Sure enough, Shigure threw some throwing stars at Kensei, who caught all but one. That one that wasn't caught by Kensei would have headed straight for Carl's face before it was caught by Hayato, so Carl would likely have been safe staying still, but better safe than sorry.

"Well, you can't always walk around as you please around here." Hayato calmly said, before moving on with the tour.

They arrived at another training room where a 1.92 m tall black haired muscular man wearing only a brown jacket and jeans was standing with a bottle of booze in his hand.

"And here is our basic Martial Arts Teacher, who will teach you the basics. His name is Sakaki Shio, Karate. He's a little bad tempered, but he can get you in shape."

"What? I don't train anyone! That's my motto!" Sakaki exclaimed before taking a drink from his bottle before slicing the top of the bottle off with his hand. "Any disciple I train…" He destroyed some tatami mat targets with his fists in a violence filled second before glaring at Carl. "Wouldn't last three days."

"It's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Carl." Carl gave a polite bow. "If going through your three day death course is the only way to join the dojo, I shall give it my all." He declared.

"Hmm, not bad. Decent composure and polite enough."A voice came from behind Carl.

When Carl turned around, he saw Akisame Koetsuji standing there, a 1.8 meter tall man with a well groomed mustache dressed in black hakama and white gi top.

"Akisame Koetsuji, Jujutsu." Hayato introduced the man.

"Carl, disciple hopeful, Jujutsu." Carl introduced himself to Akisame before giving a polite bow.

"We shall see." Akisame gave a nod in greeting.

Hayato then moved them to another room where the masters all joined them at the short table while Miu showed up with tea.

After only a short moment for one sip of tea, Hayato more formally introduced each of the masters and their specialties before continuing on with his prepared speech.

"This is a dojo that helps people cultivate their skills in order to reach their goals and master the martial arts. This is all we do. We don't consider ourselves to be the best dojo around at the Ryozanpaku Dojo. So, after having met everyone and seeing our poor little dojo, are you still interested in joining us?" Hayato asked.

"I am." Carl simply stated.

Kensei then put a scroll next to him and handed him a calligraphy brush. "Then write your name and address here."

Carl did as instructed.

"Okay, it will cost 2,000 yen." Kensei held out a hand for the money.

"2,000?" Carl asked, thinking about how to go about utilizing his idea for using his **Entrance Fee **item.

"1,000 yen will do then." Kensei changed the number.

"Hold on, one moment." Carl asked while he furiously thought. "Can you write out a bill for an entrance fee for the Ryozanpaku Dojo, but leave a space for the fee blank?" Carl finally asked.

Until now the entrance fee wasn't agreed on or set. If he could get a solid agreement for a high amount, his **Entrance Fee** item would provide any amount of money so he could enter the dojo. Carl wanted to give Ryozanpaku a generous amount because he knew the dojo's finances were tight, and he wanted to be able to gift these well intentioned masters some amount of financial security so they could continue to focus on martial arts. And if they didn't have to worry about money, it wouldn't interrupt his instructions in said art, so not entirely unselfish.

After the master's traded questioning glances with each other, Kensei wrote out a bill for entrance fee, leaving the amount blank.

Carl quickly wrote in 10,000,000 yen as the entrance fee. Even if he had to pay it himself, he really felt the cost would be worth the priceless instructions in martial arts the masters here could provide.

When the master's saw the amount written, their demeanors changed, becoming more wary. Carl swallowed in nervousness. He hadn't considered what it would look like to them if he offered so much.

"I think you'd better explain yourself more fully before we do anything else." Hayato sternly said.

Carl gulped. Looking at these master's in front of him, Carl realized that prevarication would be worse than useless. They were martial artists with keen observation skills, able to spot a lie a mile away. Anything less than the truth would be easily seen through. And if they couldn't trust him to tell the truth, how would they dare allow him to learn from them?

The amount of money he was throwing at them was a huge concern. They were worried that he would consider it some kind of bribe to listen to him or overlook his behavior. Like if he was a spy for YAMI, for example.

Carl thanked his Sherlock-like observation feat that let him know just how important his answers would be to his future here at Ryozanpaku, and how deep the hole he had unwittingly dug for himself was.

This was a big step in the dark for him. He had never put himself or his story out there for the people in his life before living with them for several years first. It required a certain amount of trust that they hadn't yet had a chance to build up.

Carl thought about his situation while looking at the master martial artists. He would be spending the next 10 years with them. He would be putting his life in their hands as he learned their skills. If he couldn't trust them, of all people, who could he trust? And if he didn't trust them, he had no business establishing a master-disciple relationship with them.

Making up his mind, Carl began explaining.

"I haven't really explained much about myself yet, beyond a simple introduction. My name is Carl, and I'm not from this world. Some kind of inter-dimensional being, akin to a god, set me on a journey through many worlds. I've only just arrived on this one this morning."

"Before coming here, I had been made aware of a…briefing, of sorts that explained your world and the major players in it. From that briefing I gained an admiration for the Ryozanpaku dojo and its masters, as well as the disciple you would be recruiting in a couple weeks." There, Carl threw Kenichi a bone to help ensure he would still have a good chance to be a disciple here. "When given the chance, I greatly desired to come here, to meet and interact with you. To learn the martial arts and other things from you."

"One of the things the briefing mentioned was that you aren't exactly swimming in money. And one of the items I received from the inter-dimensional being was an envelope that would provide me with the entrance fee needed for entering any school, institute or dojo. It would provide _any_ amount. So I thought to provide a little extra capital to your coffers so that you could continue doing what you do best, focusing on martial arts. And if you don't have to worry about money, my future studies would hopefully not be impacted."

"It was in no way meant as a bribe, or payment to excuse me if I do something you don't approve of." Carl finished his spiel.

The group of masters were muttering to each other quietly and looking somewhat skeptical at Carl's claims.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." Akisame finally stated/challenged.

"One of the other things I have access to is a Warehouse in a pocket dimension that can be accessed through portals. Would that be considered at least partial proof that I am what I've said?" Carl asked.

Hayato nodded. "That would definitely indicate something beyond the natural was happening."

Carl opened up a door sized portal to his Warehouse on the wall behind him.

"Would you like a tour?" Carl asked as he stood up and entered the Warehouse portal.

At first cautious, the master's and Miu joined Carl as he showed them his Warehouse. As they toured the farms, each master had a different reaction to different farms. Apachai loved all the little animals. Shigure was very interested in the farm that mined metals. Akisame was very interested in all the new plants and their medical natures. Sakaki was impressed by his farms that produced alcohol. Kensei enjoyed the Chinese themed farms that reminded him of home. Tochumaru, Shigure's pet mouse, went to his happy place when he sampled the cheeses.

"Carl, is it possible for you to provide the dojo with some of the food?" Miu was impressed by the amount of food his farms provided. Naturally so, since she was the one that did the grocery shopping and cooking around the dojo she had an appreciation for just how much the masters ate.

Carl nodded in agreement. "I was pondering how to do just that in a sneaky way that you wouldn't notice, but obviously I failed." Carl joked. "Since you all know about this now, I have no problem providing the food."

After they finished the tour, they returned to the debate about how much he would pay in entrance fees. Despite Carl's best debate and negotiations skills, he only managed to get the masters to agree to accept 1,000,000 yen, as that would represent 100,000 yen per year he planned to be there.

The masters also had their own pride and in Carl's opinion they lacked understanding in money matters. Or they really didn't understand just how important their instructions were to him. Carl would happily have signed off on the entrance fees being 100,000,000,000 yen. It's not like he had to scrimp and save for that amount, and he wasn't about to be stingy with his future masters in the martial arts. Those skills would be very important in his future jumps.

It was probably the only time Carl had been part of a negotiation where he was trying to pay more and the other side demanded less, completely flipping the roles of negotiation.

Finally when the negotiations were over, Carl was exhausted, and the agreement was signed, Carl opened the **Entrance Fee** envelope and pulled out a bank card with the pin number on a sticky note attached to it. He handed the card to Miu, who was the responsible one in charge of their Dojo expenses.

"You mentioned earlier that we would have another disciple. Who is it, and when will they come here?" Hayato asked.

"Well, Miu met him today." At Miu's blank look, Carl laughed and expanded. "On the way to school he was rushing because he was going to be late when you tossed him. He left behind a book, and he is in your class. The thing is, right now he is the lowest of the low, the weakest of the weak."

"But keep an eye on him over the next couple of weeks, Miu. Some things should be happening in school soon that cause him to desire to get stronger. If he's given half a chance, he can really make something of himself. His determination, life philosophy, and never give up attitude help him become a great martial artist. With the help and shaping of the masters of Ryozanpaku, of course. But, since he's a complete normie right now, he's got to go through the next couple weeks to give him the determination to seek to change. Otherwise he'll probably continue to shrink away."

'There.' Carl thought. 'If Kenichi still can't stand up and become a disciple here with Miu's recommendation and my glowing review, then he just isn't destined to in this life.'

Carl saw that the masters were interested, and willing to wait to see their future disciple.

Once the entrance fee was taken care of, Carl was assigned a room to stay in, where he gratefully fell asleep.

He woke early the next morning to Akisame Sensei pulling him out of bed for morning torture, er…exercise. Carl was forced to do a torturous series of exercises, with failure to accomplish them giving a reward of pain.

One of the exercises was straight out of the manga. It was a modified horse stance designed to build up his foundational strength. Carl's feet were tied to a board so he couldn't move around, his thighs were tied to his calves so he couldn't stand up straight. He had to hold two water jugs at shoulder height straight out from his body to improve his grip strength and his shoulder strength. Under his crotch there was a burning incense stick that would burn his balls if he dropped down. Tied to his upper arms were straps with blades on them that would stab him in his sides if he let his arms down. On top of his head and on each thigh was a bowl of boiling hot water that would burn him if he didn't keep steady.

The time spent in that pose felt like hell. Every time Carl started to lose his posture, pain would be the result, forcing him to resume his pose. His muscles burned from the exertion, making him want to give up, but if he failed to hold the pose, he got actual burns or blade stabs from not persisting.

'Is this willpower training alongside physical training?' Carl wondered. 'It's not like smart masters wouldn't have multiple reasons for any action. But this is a damn sight more sadistic than "Wax the car, Daniel-san", so there's another aspect this training serves. Twisted amusement for my sensei!' Carl thought as he saw several smirks on the faces of the masters when they watched him.

After that exercise, a rope was tied around his waist, attached to a tire that Akisame Sensei would sit on as Carl ran around the neighborhood while being whipped by Akisame Sensei to go faster. "Mush! My dead grandmother could go faster than you!"

It was torturous. It was insane. But it would turn him into a Master martial artist in the shortest time possible. And Carl had willingly walked into it. So he did his best to persevere.

The morning torture was finally complete, and they arrived at the breakfast table. Battle was joined as the Master's ate fast. Carl knew it was coming, so he fought for his food. He naturally failed. Thankfully Miu saved some food for him after the masters left.

"Ah, Miu, thank you for breakfast." Carl groaned in happiness after eating some food. After finishing, he pulled out his phone. "I forgot to ask you, what food items do you want to regularly stock the kitchen with?"

And as Miu showed Carl the storage shelves, and explained how much food they ate every day, Carl clicked away on his phone app, approving the automatic restock option on the Dojo's kitchen. Now that Carl was a member of the dojo he had access to that function even though he didn't own the property.

After Carl finalized the option, Miu was surprised at seeing the shelves restock themselves of all the food needed like magic.

"Oh, I like that!" Miu exclaimed when she saw that the food automatically restocked.

"Yup, very handy to have." Carl agreed.

"Oh no, I've got to go to school now so I won't be late!" Miu cried after looking at the time.

"Have fun." Carl shouted at her back as she rushed off.

When Carl turned around to find something to do, he came face to face with Akisame Sensei again.

"Well, Disciple. It's time to stretch." He said with a small smile.

"Yes sensei." Carl replied while following along and being put in another torture device designed to increase his flexibility. Due to his body mod perk of Flexibility, he was already at the limit of flexibility for a normal human. But Akisame Sensei was determined not to settle for that. He seemed driven to increase Carl's flexibility to beyond human capability, so Carl didn't get out of the torture.

After the stretching, Akisame Sensei introduced a move to him, and set him to practicing it while his sensei turned to do his own thing. Carl wasn't sure what it was, either research, running his medical clinic, or building more torture devices. Carl wasn't sure if Kenichi would thank him or not for giving Akisame Sensei two extra weeks to prepare "training aids" for him, but that was hardly Carl's problem.

After lunch, Akisame Sensei set him to studying some texts that would increase his knowledge of martial arts, the human body, and other such useful topics.

Eventually Miu returned home, they had dinner, and then a final workout of the day, leaving Carl absolutely exhausted.

Every day for the next two weeks followed the same schedule. The exercise and training pushed Carl to his breaking point, and beyond more than a few times. And when Akisame Sensei would give him a massage or chiropractic adjustment to help him heal, and he was reinvigorated and able to train once more, Carl just kept doing the best he could to work hard.

After two weeks of training, Carl really saw the huge difference it made between being an amateur and studying on his own, like he had in the past, to having an actual master train him. Thinking about it actually kind of made him ashamed how proud he had been of his title "Elite Trainer" in the Pokemon world.

His pokemon had grown strong, but it was more because he was able to find the pokemon with great potential, rather than his skill in training. His ability to bring the best out of them was nowhere near master level. Which Carl was only realizing now, when he had the privilege of seeing a real master at work.

It also made him realize that his magic abilities were largely self trained as well. Maybe in a future jump world he could find a true master to teach him how to really utilize magic. Instead of being satisfied with what he had accomplished and only training to stay at the skill level he was at, in the future he should really be working on pushing himself to grow stronger and get more skilled. There was always a mountain beyond the mountain, as the saying went.


	15. HSDK 2

After two weeks and a couple days, Kenichi finally showed up at the dojo, and it was hilarious. The 15 year old was so _skittish_. The introduction that Carl walked through happened the exact same way for Kenichi. Carl assumed it was a little play the master's put on for their amusement and to see what prospective disciples were made of.

With the help of his **Probing Eye** Sherlock-esque perk, Carl could easily understand the surface thoughts of the masters, when they were relaxed, from their body language. (When they went into combat mode, they were so controlled and focused, Carl couldn't read a single thing from them.)

Over the next few days as Kenichi would show up after school for training, Carl had to work hard not to laugh at the play in front of him.

In the manga it showed all kinds of gags and jokes. Like Kenichi trying to hang himself at one point because he was afraid of what Akisame Sensei would torture him with next, and Miu would be holding him back from hanging himself, trying to convince him he had so much to live for.

Well, all that stuff didn't really get acted out. It was all contextual from body language. Carl could see it all playing out due to his perk. And he was sure the masters could see it too, because they were just that good at reading their opponents that Carl was sure he and Kenichi were open books to them.

So he got to see the masters of Ryozanpaku treat Kenichi like a silly toy because whenever they poked it, ie went overboard with Kenichi, he had the most satisfyingly _funny _reactions. To the casual observer Kenichi would just look blank faced. But to Carl and the masters, his body language was an entire play. Kenichi might as well have been wailing his head off at the daunting tasks, because that's what it looked like to them.

And like a dog with a squeaky toy, the masters couldn't help but play with him because he always squeaked so satisfyingly for them.

Carl tried to bury that thought deep, deep inside and never let it see the light of day. He was sure he was unsuccessful, if the following intense torture session conducted by Akisame Sensei was any indication. Akisame Sensei wasn't vindictive, nope, not at all.

So now that Kenichi was part of the dojo, Carl had a fellow sufferer in the afternoon workout sessions.

Carl's new schedule was pre-breakfast warm up. After breakfast torture, followed by technique practice. After lunch, study biology and martial arts texts until Miu and Kenichi arrived, then get tortured along with the older boy. Have dinner, then practice his techniques until it was time to go to bed.

When Kenichi first met Carl at their torture sessions, he thought that he would have a fellow torture victim to sympathize with about how the masters were crazy and over the top.

Carl saw that it would comfort Kenichi a bit to have someone agree with him, so of course Carl didn't play along. He acted like everything was perfectly natural and Kenichi was the weird one for questioning the oddity of it.

Carl just wanted to mess with his head a bit for fun, but seeing Kenichi's reaction to finding another "weirdo" was so satisfying that Carl couldn't help but keep the gag running. It lightened Carl's mood while getting tortured, and helped Kenichi to toughen up.

'Yup, I'm totally doing it for Kenichi's sake. It will help him build character.' Carl thought in a "serious" tone of voice, before laughing out loud for no reason. Judging from Kenichi's face, randomly laughing during their torture session cemented the "weirdo" label he stuck on Carl in his mind. Which made Carl laugh even more.

Akisame Sensei seemed to get the joke and enjoyed it too, judging by his smirk. That's what happens when multiple people have such high observation skills, they can have conversations and even tell jokes completely silently.

'Damn I love my new perk. No wonder though that the actual Sherlock was kinda going crazy. To him, it would be like everyone he saw was shouting their inner most thoughts. It would be like a telepath not being able to shut the voices out. Looking at people would be so distracting because he just wouldn't be able to shut it off. And most importantly, no one else could communicate properly with him.'

After a couple weeks, Kenichi showed up at the dojo with a swollen face and bruises from a fight he had lost. Carl was amused to see Miu getting really concerned for him. 'Yup, those two are going to be getting together.' Carl laughed in his mind. 'It's just a matter of time.'

"Oh, you think so?" Hayato asked out of nowhere, causing Carl to jump in startlement.

"Uh…" Carl didn't know what to say.

The giant grandfatherly man continued to stand next to Carl and watch as Sakaki explained to Miu about how a man needs to take care of certain things in order to retain his pride as a man, especially in front of a woman.

"Well, if he continues to get stronger, he's got a chance." Carl finally answered. "Of course, he's going to have to do quite a lot to impress her male relatives and adoptive uncles in order to get that chance. They certainly don't set the bar low."

Hayato laughed boisterously as he stroked his beard. "Indeed, young man, that is so."

"Well, looks like it's time for me to get to my practicing." Carl excused himself as the various martial masters started getting into helping Kenichi learn to overcome his fear. Sakaki Sensei then showed Kenichi a technique that he could use to fight the guy who beat him up.

As they continued practicing, Carl, Kenichi, and Miu would spar against each other to practice the techniques they were taught. Carl always lost to Miu, and Kenichi always lost to both Carl and Miu.

Miu had been raised for years by martial arts masters, so it was no surprise she was as good as she was.

Even though Carl had piddled around for many years with an amateur's understanding of Jujustu and never rose above amateur level, he still had many years worth of training and experience on Kenichi. So even though he was two years younger in body, he was still ahead of Kenichi in both body strength and technique acquisition.

Carl felt that being in the dead last position was good for Kenichi, as being at the bottom increased his hunger to grow. Kenichi never got the impression that he was naturally talented, so he needed to use hard work to substitute for talent.

And having someone chase Carl from behind, always struggling to catch up and surpass him, pushed Carl hard. He didn't want Kenichi to pass him up, so he had to work at it and never slack.

It helped that Carl didn't have to go to school and could train all day. Carl planned that after a few years he would spend some time with the school books, memorizing everything he needed to learn to pass the school exams there in Japan, and take the tests when he was that age. He was sure that with his perfect memory he could get some decent scores on the high school tests.

He just didn't want to waste so much time in school when he could be training instead. Unlike Kenichi who had a lifetime here, he only had ten years to get as good as he could. And someday his life may depend on the skills he learned here.

And while schooling didn't really matter to a drop in like him, he would be here until he was 23 so having an official identity, an education (at least on paper), and background will let him get around better in a modern society setting. After all, purchasing plane tickets and dealing with customs in the modern setting required an identity.

But Carl wouldn't have to worry about that until he was closer to 18, so he had nearly 5 years before he worried about taking the tests. For the time being, he focused on his training.

About a month after Kenichi began training at the dojo, while he was being tortured in the stretching machine by Akisame Sensei and Miu, Kenichi's little sister Honoka showed up at the dojo looking for her brother.

Honoka Shirahama was a short 12 year old middle schooler. She had the same brown hair color that Kenichi had, and she wore her hair short.

She busted into the dojo just when Miu was pressing down on Kenichi's back to stretch his flexibility. Kenichi was in both heaven and hell. Heaven from having Miu's large breasts pressed against his back. Hell from the pain of the torture device from Akisame Sensei.

Carl had been training his techniques, following the exercises that Akisame Sensei taught him, when Honoka busted into the dojo. Carl paused his training to watch the little ball of energy as she was surrounded by the masters of Ryozanpaku, and tried to grab her beloved older brother and help him escape from the "Big boob enchantress" (which is what she called Miu) that brainwashed her brother.

It was an amusing scene for Carl. Especially because even while making a fuss and nominally being against the girl that her brother was entranced with, she didn't forget to give the care package to the group for taking care of Kenichi.

When Carl saw Honoka running off after her whirlwind introduction, Carl turned to Akisame Sensei. "I'm going to escort Kenichi's sister back home and introduce myself to his family, sensei, if that's alright?"

"Fine, go introduce yourself to Kenichi's family."

Carl smiled at his sensei, and ran off after the 12 year old girl as she ran off from the dojo. Carl was easily able to catch up to her. He had only been training at the dojo for a little under two months, but his strength had been increasing swiftly. Much more swiftly than at any other time he'd exercised in the past 30 years of three different worlds. And he had already started off as Usain Bolt fast due to his body mod.

Carl guessed that he had been progressing so swiftly because the world he was in now was focused on Ki and martial arts. Just like the BtVS world had been focused on the supernatural and magic, the Pokemon world had been focused on pokemon abilities, and the Farmville world had been focused on farms and growing things.

Because the HSDK world was focused on Ki and Martial Arts, and Carl now had super dense Ki running through his body thanks to perks, he was able to progress at breakneck speed in his body training.

Once Carl caught up to the girl who was physically only 1 year younger than him, he settled down to walk at her pace, staying just a few feet behind. While Carl looked at her, she seemed to be lost in her own world of imaginings, if the constant mutters and head shaking was anything to go by.

Carl decided not to employ his **Probing Eye** perk to analyze Honoka, and simply interact with her normally. Just because he had an ability didn't mean he always had to use it. There was a reason Sherlock was so unhinged. Carl didn't want to have the same issues, so he would be selective in its use, instead of having it on 24/7.

After following the girl for a few blocks, Honoka suddenly spun around and pointed dramatically at Carl. "Why are you following me!" She yelled.

Carl noticed out of the corner of his eye how several passerby slowed their pace as they watched the sudden drama happening in front of them.

"Hi, nice to meet you, sister of Kenichi. My name is Carl, a fellow martial arts student with your brother. Nice to meet you." Carl simply grabbed her pointing hand and shook it like he was introducing himself.

"What?" Honoka sputtered.

"I thought I would escort you home and meet Kenichi's family at the same time. Maybe answer some questions while I'm there?" Carl offered.

Some of the older passerbys watching gave a laugh at seeing the 12 and 13 year olds in front of them be suitably dramatic in their interactions. Carl even heard a couple mutter something along the lines of "Young people these days" and "Ahh, the passion of youth".

Honoka was looking somewhat conflicted, but since Carl didn't have his Sherlock abilities active, he wasn't sure why.

"Fine!" She finally muttered, whirling back around. "Follow me." She said, almost resentfully.

Carl resumed following her. "So, you and your brother get along good?" Carl asked.

"Yes! My brother is the best!" Honoka exclaimed, getting really into her topic. "He's brave, and sticks up for me! And we do lots of things together!" Then the girl's enthusiasm waned. "At least we used to. Now he disappears all day every day. And today I find out it's because of that big boobed Kitsune that has him enchanted!" She muttered angrily.

Carl almost laughed out loud, turning it into a cough at the last minute. He glanced sideways at the young girl, eyeing her flat as a board appearance. 'Nope, she's not jealous at all.' Carl wisely refrained from saying anything to avoid turning her ire on him.

"That's Miu Furinji, the granddaughter of the owner of Ryozanpaku Dojo." Carl mentioned. "She lost her parents when she was young, and was raised by her grandfather, traveling around a lot. She seemed to be really taken with the idea of a younger sister. She seemed almost jealous of Kenichi for having such a cute younger sister." Carl teased her.

Honoka blushed. "What do you know, stupid!" She angrily retorted.

Carl simply shrugged. "Not much, really."

Carl's unresponsive answer left Honoka hanging. They lapsed into silence as Carl continued to follow along.

They soon arrived at the Shirahama household, and Carl was introduced to Honoka's father, Mototsugu, and mother, Saori.

The introduction went well until he mentioned he was from Ryozanpaku, the group that Kenichi was always spending time with all day. When Mototsugu found out that Carl was from the group of "Brainwashers", Carl was almost introduced to Sebastion, Mototsugu's shotgun. If not for the intervention of Saori, Carl may have had to defend himself strongly.

Despite how entertaining the dramatic acting was, Carl wasn't willing to trust Mototsugu not to accidently shoot him while his emotions were running so high. Thankfully, Saori came to the rescue with a pan to her husband's head and calmed the situation down.

"Father and daughter both. They simply feel things so strongly they sometimes go overboard." Saori sighed as she apologized to Carl. "They don't mean anything bad by it, they simply miss having Kenichi around. They simply adore that boy."

Carl nodded in agreement, looking over to the corner of the room where Mototsugu and Honoka were wailing about "losing Kenichi to the brainwashers".

'Those two are definitely Father and Daughter.' Carl amusedly thought. Their antics were entertaining, as long as they weren't grabbing shotguns.

"Kenichi does seem like a likeable person. How about having Honoka come by some afternoons to hang out at the dojo." Carl offered a plan. "If she's able to hang out with the people at the dojo, she can satisfy her desire to be close to her brother, make new friends, and be able to report back to her parents. I'm sure Kenichi has been kind of closed mouthed about what he does at the dojo, which is probably why Mototsugu is acting so dramatic. He simply feels like he's losing a large part of his son's life. If he gets some stories here and there, it may lessen the separation anxiety."

"In fact you two should show up too. The martial arts masters are interesting, accomplished people." Carl then began to regale her some of the basic information he knew about the skills and talents of those at the dojo, which impressed Saori.

"Well, maybe some time in the future we'll go for a visit." Saori finally said. "However, I think for now we'll give Kenichi his space." She threw a side glance at her husband. "Every young man needs space to grow into their own man, after all. And Kenichi seems to be doing just fine at finding his own way."

Matotsugu slumped down on hearing her pronouncement. He knew he wouldn't get a chance anytime soon to go to the dojo and "reason" with them.

"Honoka, on the other hand is welcome to join her brother there after school." Honoka cheered, easily abandoning her dad since she got permission to hang out with her big brother.

After a bit longer chatting with Kenichi's family, Carl excused himself and made his way back to the dojo.

His meeting with Kenichi's family had, for some reason, caused Carl to think about the concept of family. He had his family back in his original Earth that he left behind when he was snatched up for the jump chain. He wondered if he would ever see them again.

He had his girls and friends from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world. He had worked especially hard in that world to preemptively keep them safe. They had definitely been his comfort as he struggled to adjust to a new world, unfamiliar territory, and deadly dangers.

His second set of parents in the Pokemon world, and his girl there, Serena. His pokemon that were more than friends.

The many workers that he had hired in the Farmville world had been decent friends. They weren't ever really close, but they had been important to him. He had felt responsible for them after providing them with a place to work and live.

And now, in his current world, he had Ryozanpaku. In less than 2 months he had grown quite attached to the people at that small dojo.

Would he be able to gather everyone together one day?

Carl soon arrived at the dojo, and put all those extraneous thoughts aside as he once more focused on getting stronger.

* * *

Even though Carl was determined to become a master of Jujutsu before delving into other martial arts, it didn't mean he could dictate what the other masters got it into their minds to do. As they had all been giving advice and training to Kenichi to overcome different things, Carl got roped into the lessons too.

He learned some punches from Sakaki Sensei. He learned some movement and arm swings from Kensei Sensei. He learned to dodge from Apachai Sensei. Seriously, Apachai didn't know how to hold back. He absolutely learned how to dodge.

And currently, he was learning the way of the sword from Shigure Sensei.

Just because Carl's body and perks were all predisposed in this world for unarmed fighting, didn't mean he _couldn't_ learn armed fighting. And Carl could see how disappointed Shigure Sensei was that Kenichi seemed to want nothing to do with her beloved blades. For some reason Carl just didn't want to leave the sexy sword mistress feeling depressed.

So Carl volunteered himself to learn at least the basics from her. And he found he quite enjoyed it.

Learning the basics consisted of being given a dagger, Shigure Sensei wielding a dagger, and being told to try to land a hit.

Carl knew he had no chance of actually scoring a hit. And he also knew that Shigure Sensei had enough skill and control that she could be sure not to damage him too badly. So he did his best to keep his eyes open, stay light on his feet as he moved around for positioning, and tried to learn from a master how to attack with a blade.

Carl did his best to pay attention to Shigure Sensei's commentary.

"Opening here."

"Weak stance there."

"Your swing is too slow."

"Sloppy angle."

Carl received many nicks and small cuts from Shigure Sensei to imprint her lessons on him. And so Carl was learning how to wield a blade. He didn't learn the blade as fast as he picked up any unarmed techniques, because of his perks, but Carl was determine to keep at it.

And Shigure Sensei responded to his determination by continuing to teach him.

The day Carl made up his mind to learn the sword skills of Shigure Sensei, it had finally dawned on Carl that he may need those blade skills in other jump worlds. That he shouldn't turn down any training from such skilled masters as these. Who cared if his technique was pure Jujutsu?

His base fighting style would be Jujutsu, yes. But if he grafted on other techniques and skills onto his base fighting style? Then it would just be more tools for him to work with. And he would learn to use those skills as he trained his body up.

And wasting the opportunity he had to learn from a genuine Master of Blades? That would be incredibly stupid.

After he thought through the issue, Carl finally realized why he had been so gung ho for only studying Jujutsu. He didn't want to copy Kenichi.

In the manga Kenichi had learned from all the masters of Ryozanpaku and built his style. Carl was afraid of being seen as a copycat. He wanted to forge his own path, different from Kenichi.

Once Carl examined his feelings and realized that what was holding him back was just silly pride and stupidity that wouldn't help Carl in his pursuit of the martial path, he was determined to get rid of that obstacle.

If he limited himself because he was afraid of maybe, possibly being seen as a copy of someone else, then that problem with his heart and attitude would forever hold him back. It would limit and shackle his martial arts. With that kind of attitude he really would place himself in Kenichi's shadow. It would become a self-fulfilling fear.

After Carl worked out what the issue was in his mind, he realized there was only one solution. He had to abandon the weakness holding him back and embrace learning everything from all the masters at Ryozanpaku.

Even if he learned the exact same moves as Kenichi, and went through the same training, they were two different people. They had different attitudes, different goals, and wildly different life experiences.

Two such different people would never be able to develop the same style of combat.

So what was there to be afraid of?

The best solution Carl could come up with for this shadow on his mind, was to throw away the fear and embrace his martial spirit. He would learn from every master at Ryozanpaku. He would throw himself into everything he could learn. He would find his own style. Ignore everything else and become obsessed with Martial Arts. Learn everything, and make it his own.

From that day on Carl began to obsess. He made the effort to throw away doubts and speculations about future jumps. He carefully packed away doubts and remembrances of his past jumps. The only thing that existed for him was now.

* * *

A couple of weeks later when Kenichi came to the dojo dragging Takeda the Boxer and Ukita the Grappler with him for treatment from Akisame Sensei after another win under his belt, Carl was reminded that he too needed to find opponents his level to fight against if he wanted to grow stronger.

Only fighting against Miu or Kenichi wouldn't help him grow as much as if he sought out skilled opponents that had different styles that wouldn't hold back against him.

And part of his plan prior to becoming a disciple at Ryozanpaku involved a certain alien looking high school student named Niijima Haruo. It was time to contact him.

Carl approached Miu that afternoon.

"Hey, Miu. Do you have Niijima's contact information?" Carl didn't see any reason to beat around the bush.

"Yes." Miu pulled out her phone. "What did you want it for?"

"Oh, I could use his help with something. I've heard he's good with finding out information, so I'm going to ask him for some help." Carl answered as he called up Niijima.

"Hello? Who is this? Who gave you my number?" Niijima answered the phone.

"Hello, my name is Carl. Miu Furinji gave me your number. Say hi Miu." Carl requested while holding the phone over to her.

"Hi, Niijima. Carl is a friend and fellow disciple at our dojo. He said he wanted your help." Miu helpfully explained before giving the phone back.

"So, what do you want?" Niijima asked once Carl got the phone back.

"How about we meet to discuss that." Carl responded. "I promise it won't be a waste of your time."

"Fine." Niijima then gave him an address to meet.

"How about we meet at a different location instead." Carl then gave him the address of his office building. "Are you available now? Good. How about we meet in 30 minutes. Okay, see you then." Carl hung up.

"Thanks Miu. I gotta go meet Niijima now." Carl called as he ran out the dojo.

Carl arrived at his office building and sat down on a planter in the front of the building as he waited.

When Niijima arrived, Carl finally understood why everyone called him an alien. Niijima had a very narrow face, long Spock-like ears, long gangly limbs, and sharp fingernails.

"So, what do you want?" After introductions, Niijima got straight to the point. Even the tone of voice Niijima talked in was somewhat strange, further alienating him from normal people.

"Straight to business then. I've heard several things about you. That you are good at information gathering. That you are ambitious. You want to build an organization, and you are considering using Kenichi, if he gets strong enough, to help you gain a foothold in the area. With a strong fighter, you can keep the petty gangs from moving in on you as you establish yourself."

Carl was of course using his **Probing Eye** perk on the young man.

"Is seems you aren't too bad at information gathering yourself." Since the **Probing Eye** perk was based on Niijima, he was likely getting as much information from Carl as Carl was getting from him by observation.

"I get by. But it's not my focus. I'm learning martial arts to get strong. But in order to do that, I need opponents. Opponents that will push me further than what only sparring can accomplish." Carl explained. "And since you want to build an organization, I figured that if I help you in your goal, you'll help me find opponents to fight."

"Okay, you've got my interest." Niijima said. "But just how are you going to help me build an organization?"

"Well, an organization needs a number of things. Management, location, personnel, and operating funds, for example." Carl watched Niijima closely when he mentioned each item. "It seems you are not worried about management, since you plan to train up your future subordinates yourself. Personnel will come when the other building blocks are in place. So right now you are in need of a location and operating funds, which I can help with." Carl commented, watching how Niijima's interest was piqued at his mention of providing those two.

"Location?" Niijima asked, and before Carl could verbally answer, Niijima looked at the building they were meeting in front of. "Here?"

"Indeed. Want a tour?" From Niijima's slowly spreading smile, Carl could tell he was interested.

Carl gave Niijima the grand tour, pointing out all the good points that would help him to attract his subordinates to his organization. After some discussion about the nature of the organization that Niijima would build, and how he would run it, Carl invested 800,000 yen into shares of Niijima's future company/organization. As Niijima got his information brokerage business going, and started making money, Carl would receive dividend pay as part owner.

Once their business was concluded, and Carl was assured Niijima would still drag Kenichi into his future Shinpaku alliance, he left a copy of the keys with Niijima before leaving. The building itself had several copies of the keys secured in the security station, which was convenient.

Carl returned to Ryozanpaku and continued training with renewed intensity in preparation for his future fights. He was actually getting excited about the challenge.

After a couple of weeks, Carl received his first email from Niijima with the details of a target. He was a 14 year old delinquent who loved fighting in the neighboring school district. Daisuke had pretty much beaten up every other fighter his age in the area. Carl was excited.

After getting the afternoon off from training, he pulled his motorcycle from the Pokemon world out of the warehouse, and rode to headquarters. There he picked up Niijima and one of his followers, Eiji, to join him as he challenged Daisuke.

Carl followed Niijima's directions and soon came to the hang out of the punk Daisuke. He moved to the door and knocked politely. No need to be rude. He was simply here for a fight, not a grudge match.

The door opened and a 16 year old punk warily looked out at the three of them.

"Is Daisuke in?" Carl asked. He read the young man, and knew that Daisuke was in.

"Who's asking?" The punk challenged.

"The name is Carl. Now, is Daisuke in or should I come in and wait for him?" There was etiquette, and then there was punk lingo. Obviously Carl couldn't be a pushover or weak when talking to punks, or else he would get nowhere with them.

"What business do you have with Daisuke?" The punk asked.

"Just pass this letter to him. It's his decision whether he'll be man enough to meet the challenge or not. I'll be waiting for 15 minutes." Carl stated while handing a challenge letter to the punk.

While not really necessary, the fight challenge letter was an honored tradition in this world. It served notice that the challenger, in this case Carl, demanded a fight for [fill in the blank] reason, and at [fill in the blank] time at [fill in the blank] location.

After 10 minutes, the door opens and Daisuke comes out while glaring at Carl. A dozen other young punks follow him out the door to spectate the fight. The 16 year old punk is a head taller than Carl and very muscular. Even a fully grown weightlifter would be envious.

'Something about this world is just so focused on the physical development of people. I mean, this 16 year old looks like he's got more muscles than world class weight lifters from my original world.' Carl thought.

"You think you've got what it takes to take me out, punk?" Daisuke growled.

"That's what the fight is for, to see who is better." Carl casually stated.

Carl didn't want to overestimate where he was in the development cycle. He'd only been training at the dojo for a bit over two months, so at best he was probably only considered a low class disciple. So starting with the stronger street punks and low class disciples seemed to be the way to start.

"Fine, it's your funeral, brat." Daisuke spit to the side in contempt.

While they moved to a nearby grassy area for their fight, Eiji pulled out a camera to film the fight. Carl wanted a record of his fights so he could have his master's critique him and work with him to improve. Despite their normally easygoing manner (when not training him) they were hugely competitive and didn't like losing. And they didn't like their disciple losing either, so he definitely felt the pressure to win. His senseis would never let him live it down.

The fight began and Carl soon found out that his physical conditioning had improved beyond what he had expected. He found that compared to masters or Miu, Daisuke was slow. He still got an unexpected blow in here or there, due to using tactics that Carl wasn't expecting or had ever seen. But for the most part, Carl dominated the fight using his Jujutsu to redirect force and use Daisuke's attack power against him.

After Carl proved that he could win at any time, he switched his style up and started using what the other masters taught him to practice against a fighter with a totally different style. Only three blows from his Muay Thai techniques put Daisuke down for the fight.

'Well, that was much easier than expected.' Carl thought.

After staring down the punks that followed Daisuke who wanted to jump them, and then helping the young punk get patched up, Carl, Niijima, and Eiji left.

"Well, looks like my training has progressed well." Carl commented to Niijima when they arrived back at headquarters. "I'll need a copy of the video to review with my senseis at the dojo. And try to find some stronger opponents for me. Also keep me posted about the fights that come Kenichi's way. I have a feeling I might find some people to fight amongst them. Good thing that guy seems like a trouble magnet, it'll bring in the opponents." Carl chuckled.


	16. HSDK 3

Over the next couple of months, a few things around the dojo changed. Kenichi moved in full time so he could be more thoroughly trained by the masters. Carl was quite amused by his antics. The boy was simply smitten with Miu and couldn't help but make a fool of himself regularly. Carl sometimes wished he could conjure popcorn out of nowhere.

So he cheated and made many bags of popcorn that he set near his warehouse entrance. The next few times Kenichi made a spectacle of himself, Carl grabbed the popcorn and handed it out to his senseis while they enjoyed the spectacle.

The next thing Carl would have to do is figure out how to get poster boards prepared with scores and embarrassing judgement calls to wave at Kenichi after his antics were over. Being ranked as a 1/5 failure at attempting to woo Mui would cause Kenichi to make some faces that Carl was sure would be hilarious.

Every two to three weeks Carl would receive an email from Niijima with information on his next target. He would pick up Eiji and his camera and go have a bout. Carl's instructions to Niijima were to not limit his opponents to just unarmed fighters.

So over the two months he had one opponent at a Kendo dojo, one Karate disciple, one Jujutsu, and another street brawler.

After fighting a master level swordswoman, the speed of the disciple class kendo swordsman didn't seem that fast to Carl. The style of kendo his opponent practiced threw Carl for a loop for a while, making it difficult to anticipate the blows. But Carl soon got used to it, and began turning the tide against him.

Carl was amazed once more at how much the laws of this world catered to martial arts. Half a year of training in this world under master class martial artists improved him more than 30 years of amateur practicing on his own in other worlds.

Just a few months of training under a master of blades increased his skill to the point he could take out practioners who had trained for 6 plus years.

The toughest opponent for Carl was the Jujutsu disciple, Hideo. Carl limited his moves to Jujutsu to really test himself out, and it was an uphill battle. Carl loved it.

Miu and Kenichi both had eclectic fighting styles that made use of moves from many different styles, so Carl also used anything goes. But fighting a straight Jujutsu student, Carl limited himself to only Jujutsu. During the match, Carl would finally maneuver Hideo into a hold, only to get reverse joint locked in a moment, and Carl would have to scramble to escape or reverse the hold.

The battle lasted a good 9 minutes, and was exhilarating for both Carl and Hideo. Carl managed to eek out a win, but it was a close thing.

Once the match was over, Hideo accepted his loss with good grace, but took a page out of Might Guy's book and declared that Carl was his eternal rival, and he would be back for a rematch soon.

Carl didn't take his words seriously at first, but he soon found that like clockwork, Hideo would seek him out once every month to have a rematch for the rest of the time he was in the world.

After the third fight in a row that Carl won, he started to gift Hideo with a video copy of each of their fights so he too could review his moves and improve. After that, the matches started getting closer and closer, and sometimes Carl lost, which motivated him to train harder.

The school year ended, and the Ryozanpaku dojo took a trip to their island training. Carl thought it was hilarious how Kenichi thought he would get out of training to go have a vacation on an island.

The boat they took was built by the dojo, and it was powered by peddling with both arms and legs to turn the rotor. Carl and Kenichi of course had first crack at it, due to their Senseis wanting to turn it into a training opportunity.

Carl tried his best to last the distance, but he ran out of steam after only 30 minutes into the journey. He still had a long way to go until he was master class. Once Sakaki and Akisame senseis took over, the boat moved faster than a speedboat the rest of the way to the island.

Carl really enjoyed his time on the island, catching fish, cliff jumping, running through hot coals, being used for target practice, swimming with sharks. It was a fun "vacation".

* * *

About a month after school started back up, Carl finally took his first step in manipulating his Ki. He was finally able to grasp it. It took nearly a year to even find it in his daily meditations. Of course sometimes he was so worn out from being trained by his senseis that his daily meditations were nothing but passing out for the night.

But Carl had persisted, and he finally found his Ki. Being able to touch the Ki energy made Carl pleased with his progress. He was really, truly, progressing well. Even though he could only kind of feel it at first.

After a couple more months of exploring his Ki, Carl starting getting a good grasp on it. He had traced the flow of Ki in his body, and found that its center was about where his heart was. He could now play with the Ki in his body a bit, or knead it, as the local martial arts masters called it.

He couldn't do much more than move it about within his body, but even that was enough to really increase the pace at which he progressed in his training.

Now that he was able to identify his Ki center and flow clearly, he was also able to separate out the feel of his magical energy and start learning how the magic flowed through his body. He soon discovered that his magic core was centered in his head.

Adding in what he knew about the cultivation novels from his original world, Carl guessed that the center for his soul would be located just below his navel. It was what the novels called the dantian. But Carl also figured he had no opportunity to find it or do anything with it until he went into a Cultivation world.

Once Carl showed Akisame Sensei that he could access and play with his Ki, he started receiving instructions on how to utilize Sei Ki, which was also the type of Ki that Akisame Sensei used.

Upon reflection, Carl realized he was more surprised than he should have been to discover the way Akisame Sensei came up with to train his Ki was to increase the rigor of his training. In the immortal words of Sensei, "If training doesn't accomplish anything, even more training is necessary."

Ki came from the body, was built up through the body, and only through thoroughly training and understanding every millimeter of his body could he understand and manipulate his Sei Ki. At least according to Akisame Sensei.

Thankfully, by kneading his Ki and having the amount of Ki that flowed through his body increase during the extreme exercises, Carl's strength, speed, agility, and endurance began to really increase quickly. His recovery period was shortened as well. The use of Ki to aid his training speed was self evident.

During this several months long period, Carl watched as Kenichi fought his way through the ranks of the Ragnarok gang, and occasionally found a good match to fight. Most of the Ragnarok gang was just street punks, though. Not even disciple level.

Kenichi and Naruto were two characters from mangas that Carl had read about in his original world that had a peculiar attribute particular to them. They had a certain charisma and certainty in their beliefs that just seemed to reach out and touch the hearts of many of their opponents.

It didn't always work out, and some people were so set in their ways that they always stayed enemies. But for those it did work on, it had a curious effect of turning enemies into friends.

And many of the members of Ragnarok, after being defeated and leaving the gang behind, were feeling somewhat friendly towards Kenichi. Even in defeat they didn't really have hard feelings for him.

So Carl shamelessly took advantage of the circumstances provided by Kenichi.

He visited the former members of Ragnarok with Niijima and invited them to tour the facilities and listen to their recruitment spiel.

Ikki Takeda, the boxer, after having his left arm healed, found a master in James Shiba to teach him boxing and underground boxing. He felt indebted to Kenichi for saving his life and having Akisame Sensei heal him so he could regain the use of his left arm and resurrect his boxing career. By joining the group, he gained access to a wonderful dojo where he could train and test his skills against others in the group in sparring on a regular basis. Takeda became a Captain of the Shinpaku Alliance.

Hibiki Kugenin, also known as Siegfried, was the Fifth fist of Ragnarok, but his main passion was composing music using his battles as inspiration for his melodies. Through joining the group he also gained a place to practice and develop his style, and being a Captain of the Shinpaku alliance, he was always available to join the battlefield to gain more inspiration for his melodies.

Kaname Kugatachi, also known as Freya, the Third Fist of Ragnarok was a weapon user of the Kugatachi Style. She favored a jo staff for her main weapon. She had joined Ragnarok to learn techniques from Ogata, a member of Yami, but was left disappointed when she never even met him. Carl managed to persuade Shigure Sensei to occasionally stop by the Dojo owned by Carl to give a few pointers to Freya. And so Freya became a Captain of the Shinpaku Alliance.

Kisara Nanjo, also known as Valkyrie, was the Eighth fist of Ragnarok before becoming a captain of the Alliance. She was completely obsessed with cats, to the point that she modified her Tae Kwon Do to include cat movements that Niijima named Nya Kwon do. She even modeled her behavior after cats, being fond of lounging around like a cat, and being just as independent. She liked having a nice place as a hang out, watch videos, and train.

Renka Ma was the daughter of Kensei Ma. She originally came to Japan to convince her father to return to China and the organization he had built there. But after meeting Kenichi, she decided she would stay and participate in the Alliance as a Captain while trying to get close to Kenichi and compete against Miu.

Yuma Chiaki, otherwise known as Thor, was the Seventh Fist of Ragnarok before joining the Alliance as a captain. His fighting style was Combat Sumo, which suited his tall and large frame. He had dreams of making a combat capable Sumo style, and so having a dojo to train at and opponents to spar with was enough enticement for him to join.

Natsu Tanimoto, or Hermit, was the Sixth Fist of Ragnarok. He repeatedly denied having joined the Shinpaku Alliance, but since he hung out with and trained with the members all the time, everyone just left him to his tsundere attitude. He only really admitted to enjoying the presence of Kenichi's sister Honoka, who reminded him of his own sister who passed away to disease years ago.

Kozo Ukita, or Ukita the Thrower, was good friends with Takeda and resumed his Judo career. He joined the Alliance as a Vice Captain to hang out and practice at Carl's dojo.

Kaoru Shiratori was Kisara's Lieutenant in Ragnarok, and also practiced Tae Kwon Do. She followed Kisara into the Alliance as a Vice Captain.

With the Captains recruited, Carl left the rest of the recruiting effort to Niijima, while he continued to spend his time training, sparring with the members of the Shinpaku Alliance, which was the whole reason Carl recruited them, so he could have more sparring partners, and occasionally seeking out other disciple class combatants that he could challenge.

* * *

Over the next several months Carl found that Ryozanpaku started running into more and more members of Yomi. Yomi was Yami's disciple group. After Kenichi had dismantled Ragnarok, the members of Yami had informed their disciple group about Kenichi and sent them after him to test who was the stronger.

Carl figured the competition and rivalry between Yami and Ryozanpaku was so high, even the disciples couldn't help but get swept up in it.

Kenichi had it pretty tough at the time, he even had to defend his beloved Miu against Sho, a disciple of the masters of Yami who had fallen in love with Miu at first sight.

As part of Sho's plan to steal away Miu and prove to Kenichi that Kenichi couldn't protect her, he sent an invitation to Ryozanpaku for the Desperate Fight of Disciples Tournament that would take place at a southern island.

When the member of Ryozanpaku were at the docks, about to leave for the island, the members of the Shinpaku Alliance showed up, wanting to join in the tournament.

The high strung Kenichi didn't want to endanger his friends, so he had intended to leave them behind. Carl wouldn't let that stand, as he felt it was up to each individual whether they would risk their life and pride on fighting against the best. So he made some preparations.

When Hayato Furinji wouldn't let the members of the Shinpaku Alliance on board the boat, Carl didn't worry or protest. He simply kept quiet to let the play go on.

In his bag was a tracker that Niijima could follow on the boat that Hermit was going to be bringing by in a few minutes. That way Carl could ensure they wouldn't get lost on the way.

This tournament and the opportunity it provided was too good for the Alliance to pass up. For Niijima, it was to let the world know the name "Shinpaku Alliance". For the other members, it was a chance to support their friend, Kenichi, and to test their martial arts against other opponents.

Carl didn't worry about undermining the master's decision in this particular area by allowing the Alliance to participate in the tournament. As Kisara said at the meeting Carl called to tell them about the tournament, "Everyone has the right! The right to fight for what they believe in!"

If Carl blocked their ability to go to the tournament, despite how much they desired to go, it would only engender ill feelings on the part of his new sparring partners and friends. This was something they wanted, something they needed to prove themselves.

Even the masters of Ryozanpaku had gone through similar trials in their youth as they struggled and fought their way to their current status as masters.

It's only right that the masters in training of the Shinpaku Alliance get to go too.

* * *

Carl was impressed by the fortification of the island of despair. The place was well defended with huge walls and high tech. He momentarily felt a little nervous about helping the Alliance members to arrive there because of the defenses, but he pushed it down. He was confident in their abilities to survive.

He also knew that due to his help and sparring in the past several months, they were all stronger now than they would have been without his participation in this world. So they should be just fine.

They arrived at a large old fashioned gate. The gate itself was probably 20 feet in height, while the walls were closer to 30 feet.

When the gate opened and Carl saw the resort accommodations he was impressed. To call the resort luxurious would be to downplay it. Even during his time as an heir to a large company in the Pokemon world, he hadn't seen such opulence. It certainly redefined what he thought of as "wealthy".

In front of the resort was a large pool for the many nearly naked women to play at. And a few naked women to sunbathe on the side of the pool.

Kensei and Kenichi went bug eyed at the scene, while the rest of the masters had a bit less lecherousness driving their actions.

They soon entered the resort, and found many female employees helping with their bags, pampering the masters, and providing lots of food when Apachai asked for it, and booze when Sakaki requested it.

Carl decided to follow the example of his senseis and enjoy the food and service while he could. He could only shake his head at how tightly strung Kenichi was.

"Silly Kenichi, if you were worried about things like that, you should have brought a supply of food with you. Since you didn't, and you don't want to be weak for the fighting tomorrow, just forget about your worries and eat up." Carl attempted to advise him.

"But…How can we trust the enemy not to poison us?" Kenichi finally asked.

"They…probably won't be…so petty." Shigure deadpanned while eating the food Apachai asked for.

Since Kenichi didn't relax one bit, Carl decided to just ignore him and enjoy himself. Worrying about how much Kenichi was worrying would have been a full time occupation.

Later that night the group joined the masked party for the introduction to the no holds barred tournament. The extremely violent tournament attracted the rich, drug cartels, and other groups of people with money to spend and a desire to see a death tournament.

Spotlights lit up the stage, and an announcement introduced the Executive Producer of the tournament, Laughing Fist Diego, before a tall well built luchadore leaped over the crowd, doing a couple of flips and landing on the stage.

"Ah, a true showman." Carl muttered.

Diego was introducing the tournament, when his mic cut out and a familiar voice cut in. The enormous screen on the wall behind the stage lit up with a video of Niijima and two members of the Shinpaku Alliance on screen, with their faces covered. They demanded a place in the tournament.

Soon enough Diego, who was a master martial artist, found Niijima and his crew from where they were hacking into the feed.

Once they were found out, the Shinpaku Alliance members jumped out, ready to defend themselves from security.

There was a tense moment in the standoff, before Sakaki sensei rushed in and started bopping them on the head for being reckless.

Carl couldn't help himself, he just started laughing at the sight.

Diego stormed up in front of the security guards and yelled at Niijima and the Alliance members. "You worthless brats! You completely ruined my show!"

Carl could see the Alliance members getting tense.

"I really like you guys!" Diego laughed while giving them a thumbs up. "Trespassing is a man's romance! Your methods are pretty good, pointy ears!" Diego laughed while pointing at Niijima. "Fine! I approve of your entrance into the D of D tournament! Although in this tournament there is always people who die. Try not to be one of those guys." Diego turned away, laughing loudly.

Sakaki Sensei just chuckled. "Well, whatever happens is no longer my concern."

"Apa!" Apachai agreed.

"Welcome to the feast." Carl laughed the Alliance members joined them openly.

Soon after Carl watched as a tall, well built young man introduced himself to Kenichi as Spartacus of the Pankration Team. It seems that certain groups wanted to get a handle on the disciple of Ryozanpaku that was making such a name for himself. Since Carl was always just acting as backup for Kenichi, it seems they didn't really pay much attention to him.

'Man, this world is ridiculous. We've got 16-18 year old being so built they would make Arnold jealous.' Carl thought as he watched Spartacus walking away. Carl looked down at his 14 year old body. Due to the training regimen of Akisame Sensei, while he had muscles and supreme definition, he would never be bulky. 'Thank goodness.' Carl thought. 'Due to my body mod from the jump chain I was already at least Usain Bolt fast, and I've only improved since then. I'm guessing I'm edging into the High Class Disciple rank physically. Wonder how much longer it'll take to get to the Expert rank, let alone the Master rank.'

Shrugging off the idle thoughts, Carl brought his attention back to the little party and continued to enjoy himself.

* * *

The next day Carl joined the group as they made their way to the arena. The stadium was perfectly circular, with 9 tiers of seating box seating. The tournament was for the ultra rich, no way would they settle for sitting in normal stadium seats when they could each have their own comfortable box cabin.

In the center was the square stage where the fights would take place. The 20 year old and younger participants all waited on the stage for the announcements and the start of the tournament.

Niijima pulled off his cape that replaced the Shinpaku Alliance Banner and had one of his subordinates waving it around. Carl was amused and actually kind of admired the teen's determination. He knew what he wanted, and went all out to get it.

Diego began announcing the start of the tournament and the rules.

"Now, the Desperate fight of Disciples, D of D, begins!" He orated into the microphone. "This huge tournament has my heart and soul in it. Please enjoy my work. Let's briefly talk about the rules of the tournament. It is really simple, 5 people make a team. To win all you have to do is defeat all of them!"

The Shinpaku Alliance members began looking at each other while thinking about the rules and teams.

"Winning teams are advanced to the next round. It is OK for one man to defeat all 5 members of another team. If a person has enough confidence in himself, then there is no need for a 5 man team. But with fewer people will only lower the chances for winning." Diego laughed for a bit. "Finally, please make a superb show!"

After everyone settled down into their seats, Diego continued.

"Let's begin our first match. Our first team's member has no name. Even their nationality is unknown. They are simply known as Black Force."

Carl looked across the way. There were five men wearing combat boots, black military fatigues, a harness across their chest, and berets. They looked quite eager and bloodthirsty for their match.

"And their opponent is the troublemaker of our event, and the team who has absolutely no idea how to survive this contest, Shinpaku Alliance."

After some discussion, Niijima chose to send Mizunuma. Mizunuma was the second most bullied student after Kenichiin Koryou High School. After seeing how Kenichi fought to escape his fate, Mizunuma also struggled hard to advance his Karate. He was determined to grow strong.

Wearing his white Karate gi and wearing his glasses, he looked particularly small and weak against his large muscular brute of an opponent.

When the start was given, the Black Force member exploded forward, throwing punches at Mizunuma to throw him off guard, before slipping behind him. He grabbed Mizunuma in a hold that would let him break his neck.

Before the black force member could capitalize his advantage, Mizunuma yelled "Back machine gun!" and somehow began pummeling his opponent with a barrage of back hands over his shoulder. The amazing thing was that a punch with such an awkward leverage pounded the Black Force's face in, stunning him and allowing Mizunuma to escape the hold.

Unfortunatly, Mizunuma let his guard down and was punched in the throat. As he was gasping for air he was knocked down by a punch to the face. The Black Force member seemed to take great sadistic delight in working Mizunuma over with kicks to the ribs.

When member of the Shinpaku Alliance wanted to intervene and save Mizunuma, a huge circular area around the stage fell down, making a near impossible to cross moat to prevent them from helping Mizunuma.

In desperation, the Alliance tried throwing in the towel, but Diego ruled that the match would continue. The more hotheaded members of the alliance had it pointed out to them that despite being pummeled relentlessly, Mizunuma still had a focused gaze of determination. He hadn't given up, so the match would continue.

In the moment the Black Force member was about to give a finishing blow, Mizunuma took the opening, kicking his opponent in the balls as hard as he could. The Black Force member curled up like a shrimp, cradling his aching member.

Stupidly, Mizunuma didn't follow up on his advantage. When he was about to celebrate, the Black Force member jumped him, continuing to beat him up.

"He's the type that forgets about pain when angry." Sakaki explained to the Alliance, referencing the Black Force member. "It's a wide world. There are people tougher than you could believe. You've been loafing around." He chided.

Mizunuma eventually was ruled to have lost. But even when he couldn't move, his fists were clenched in determination. He hadn't broken, and he hadn't given up. Even though he couldn't win, he still had the determination and grit to fight.

"He didn't give up, cower, or run away. Which is itself a win. A win against his weaker side. His doubtful, fearful side. This is a win for Mizunuma in the long run." Carl judged.

After Mizunuma was taken away by the medics, Tazuna stepped into the arena chuckling. "You're going to get hurt if you step into a rules-free coliseum without any actual power." At the Thor's protest, Tazuna continues. "Relax. I'm not talking about Mizunuma. I'm talking to you, blockhead." Tazuna stated to Member J of the Black Force while poking him in the chest.

"What?" Was the reply from Member J. Apparently the man didn't understand enough Japanese to understand what Takeda had said.

The fight began, and Member J began pummeling Takeda for a few rounds, until Takeda called for a time out. Strangely enough, large bald man stopped, allowing Takeda to take off his shirt.

Underneath his shirt was revealed a strange contraption of heavy duty springs and coils that restricted Takeda's ability to move. He quickly stripped it off, and threw it behind him to Thor.

Member J merely scoffed at Takeda, and leaped forward throwing a punch that Takeda dodged by a centimeter by leaning back. Takeda then crouched down, and leaped forward like a frog with a double fist punch to Member J's face. Member J fell backwards into the moat, unconscious.

After fishing the losing member out of the moat, Member J's own Captain handed him a gun. "We did not come here to play games, and losing is not optional. So you just have to fix that mistake of yours."

Member J then put the gun in his mouth, preparing to suicide. Kenichi reached him in time, knocking the gun away.

"Are you trying to end your life just because you lost once? This doesn't have to be the end of your martial road, just because of one loss! If that's the case, I would have tried to end my life 100 times already!"

Apparently he had been faking not understanding Japanese before, because he suddenly seemed moved.

His teammate wasn't satisfied though. Laughing, he picked up the gun. "Then let me do it for you." He offered before aiming the gun. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, he dodged the attack of Thor from behind him.

Since Diego didn't rule against the battle, Thor continued to attack and the security guards simply stood by watching.

After a flurry of strong attacks that the Black Force member dodged, Thor was about to unleash his final, most powerful attack, when Freya interrupted his momentum.

"You're pretty fast for a big guy, Thor. But as a fellow weapons wielder, this fight is mine." Freya stated, pointing out the blade wires on the Black Force member's gloves that would have torn up Thor if he continued.

They moved their fight to the arena. Just as they were about to start the fight, the battlefield changed. Pillars everywhere lifted up, making the fight a close combat battle, with Freya at the disadvantage due to it restricting her ability to use her jo staff, and the Black Force Captain's ability to use the pillars to set up razor wire traps.

"Man, how much money did they sink into this high tech arena?" Carl muttered as he watched the battle.

Freya didn't have much room to utilize her jo staff, and the enemy's razor wire traps made it difficult for Freya to close the distance. But Freya kept her cool as she maneuvered around the arena, occasionally picking up cuts from the razor wire.

Freya took her jacket off, and prepared herself. It was pointed out that she didn't actually get cut beyond the first two cuts, only her clothes were damaged by the traps set up by her opponent. So she had been able to adapt herself to the traps and avoid taking damage.

Freya suddenly charged forward, flipping and dodging the wires, before attacking the enemy in a flurry of blows from her jo staff.

Just when it looked like she had him defeated, he used his wires to jump to the top of the pillars and begin attacking anew from a distance. Freya was almost caught in a decapitating move, but managed to slip out of it with the use of her staff.

Freya continued to dodge and block his attacks, then used her pole to vault herself up to the top of the pillars as well, and swiftly subdued him, knocking him down and stopping her attack that would have crushed his throat and killed him with her pole centimeters from his throat.

"Hey, woman. You could have killed me, why didn't you?" He asked her from his place on his back.

"You will never understand it, will you? I don't care about this." Freya blandly stated.

"I have lost. Kill me!" The captain of the Black Force demanded.

"I refuse." Freya stated as she turned to walk away.

"It's over! The match has been decided. The winner is Freya!" Diego yelled in excitement.

"Fine…I will do it myself." The captain declared before looping his razor wire around his head so he could decapitate himself. Just before he could pull the wire and suicide, Freya caught the wire, stopping him.

"You fool! Why are you so eager to die?" Freya exclaimed.

"Let go, otherwise your fingers would be cut." The captain declared, when a microphone came flying in and hit him in the head, knocking him down. Diego had knocked him bloody with the microphone.

"How shameful! The loser obeys the winner! Now make room for the next battle. Get out!" Diego yelled.

"Oya, oya, what a straight theory." Hayato muttered.

"How primitive." Akisame disdained.

"A while ago he was happily watching the fights out of the ring…" Kenichi trailed off.

"To sum up, he's a very moody referee." Miu airily affirmed.

Back on stage, Freya was glaring at the defeated Captain. "This seems to be the rule at this place, where the loser obeys the winner. I'll say it only once. Live on!" She declared before walking off the stage.

And with the defeat of the Black Force's Captain, the victory went to the Shinpaku Alliance.

A few minutes later, the next two teams prepared to go up on stage. On one side was Muay Thai Taifu Team's Gaien Oosugi verses the Mysterious Teenager Garyu X.

Carl couldn't believe his eyes. Hayato Furinji, Miu's grandfather was standing on the stage in a mask, posing as Mysterious Teenager Garyu X. He didn't even bother covering up his blonde beard.

"Hohoho. Please be gentle with me." Hayato said to his opponent.

Carl just started laughing, especially when Kenichi started yelling about Garyu X being the elder, Hayato. Diego of course allowed the match to continue.

Miu just muttered "Granpa sure is naughty. He seems to like to demonstrate his skills…"

Apachai just pointed to an obviously wooden dummy with a wig on it next to him. "Apa, but the elder is here all the time."

Carl just laughed more.

"Kenichi, why are you so mad?" Akisame asked.

"N-nothing!" Kenichi answered.

"Hmm, you're obviously thinking of something strange there Kenichi." Carl commented.

After easily defeating the first opponent, Hayato pointed at the Muay Thai team, and yelled out "Stop playing around and come forth!"

"What's going on with Garyu X? He seems to be addressing the leader?" Diego's commentary was ongoing.

"Wrong!" Answered Garyu X. "I am addressing the guy behind him! Kicking Demon Robusaki Gorobe, I mean you!"

A Master Class combatant was hiding amongst the Disciple Class team, waiting to wreak havoc on the fights.

Now that he was exposed, Gorobe beat down the disciples on the Muay Thai team. "A bunch of useless brats. I told you not to let me stand out too much." He spat on them before speeding to the stage.

Diego commented, "It seems like a Master Class fighter is hiding under the participants."

"It is an honor to meet the invincible superman." He greeted Garyu X. "As he said, I'm 51, a Master Class fighter. How did you know?" He asked.

"It doesn't matter how good you can change your appearance. I can still hear every cell in your body." Garyu X-er…Elder Hayato Furinji stated.

"Although I don't have the chance to win the millions as the champion of the D of D, the head of the Invincible Superman is worth 100 times more!" Gorobe yelled while leaping to attack.

"Wrong! It's worth a million times more!" Yelled Hayato before smashing Gorobe with one fist, sending him flying up to the balcony where Diego was commenting from.

Diego caught Gorobe by catching his face with one hand, holding him at arm's length.

"Because all the member of Team Muay Thai Hurricane can no longer fight, the Mysterious Teenager, Garyu X wins!" The announcer stated.

Garyu X sped off the stage so quickly he left an after image behind.

"Oya, that Garyu X is really cool, right?" Hayato asked the group from beside Apachai, startling all the young Disciples who hadn't seen how he had moved, he was so fast.

"When did you come back?!" Exclaimed Niijima.

"When? I was here the whole time…"

"You liar!" Kenichi yelled.

Niijima chuckled. "Garyu X…is going to retreat after his mission is done, am I right? This is a tournament for teenagers after all…"

"What?" Hayato asked. "Garyu X is a teenager at the spring of his youth! Of course he is aiming for the title of the Champion!" Hayato yelled full of Youth! Before straightening up and stroking his beard. "At least I think that's what he wants." He commented much more calmly.

"Well, good luck to Garyu X. We won't let him have the championship without a fight!" Carl declared, playing along with the elder. He didn't have any reason to be embarrassed by the old man's antics. He wasn't Carl's grandfather, and Carl thought it was hilarious.

"Quite right, as it should be!" Hayato agreed with the battling sentiment of youth.

Next up was the match between Ryozanpaku and three youths from Taichi, Bagua, and Shin Yi schools from China. Diego declared that it would be a 3 vs 2 fight.

"What the heck? Am I invisible?" Carl asked, looking over at Akisame Sensei. "Aren't I on the team too?" Carl began wondering if he'd been too passive since arriving here. Maybe Diego thought Kenichi and Miu were the only disciples of Ryozanpaku?

"Well, you are a couple years younger than Kenichi and Miu, and they are the youngest of all the people competing. So, maybe?"

Carl sighed and resigned himself to not fighting. Was the plot overtaking him and not going to let him participate?

One of the opponent team was a black haired girl with her hair in buns, Bagua Clan Cho Yin Lin, a blonde haired averaged build young man, Taichi Clan Gaku Shin Ten, and a taller black haired man with an eye patch, Shin Yi Clan Yo Tekai.

Carl sulkily sat down with his arms crossed as he watched the fight.

The three opponents did a good job at first of splitting Kenichi and Miu up and attacking them as individuals.

Eventually Kenichi and Miu had a bonding moment of trust building, and really began working together.

'I guess this is why the plot rails kicked in. The world wants them to have their moment that builds their relationship of trust and care. Whatever. I'll just have to find someone to fight somewhere.'

Kenichi worked together to help Miu take out the first two opponents. Finally there was just the blonde male left. Kenichi then challenged and fought him 1vs1. It was one of those defining fights for Kenichi. One where he had to dig deep into himself, find his determination, not give up, and put together all the parts his teachers had been giving him into one coherent whole.

It was a wonderful thing for the masters to see their disciple blossom on the battlefield.

And with Kenichi pulling a win out of his ass, he passed out.

The rest of the matches took a long time, so the first day of the tournament ended just like that.

So Carl spent the evening training furiously, trying to work off his irritation and extra energy from not being allowed to fight.


	17. HSDK 4

In the morning Carl heard the news that most of the Shinpaku Alliance was in the hospital. Apparently last night Sho had showed up and tried kidnapping Miu to bring her back to Yomi.

When Carl heard the news, he clenched his fists tightly. He'd missed a perfect chance to fight!

"I'm supposed to have a perfect memory, so how did I not remember Sho's attack?" Carl muttered to himself. He had read the manga based on this world years ago, and with the **Savant **perk he should have had all that knowledge readily available in his mind.

While Carl ate breakfast, he pondered the situation. He delved into his memories to try to understand why he'd been blindsided and missed out on the attack the previous night. That would have been the perfect time to jump in to interrupt the plot and have a good fight against a decent opponent.

"But what happened? It's like I was selectively blind." Carl muttered to himself. "Sure, my memories prior to getting the **Savant** perk are fuzzy and incomplete, cause the memories degraded in the time before getting the perk. But I really forgot that much about the plot?"

Carl spent some time thinking about it, and realized that he really had forgotten a lot of what happened between the current time and the end of the manga.

"So, I can't really rely on any prior knowledge of this world to give me a leg up. Because I was a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the memories were much more prominent. But I had only read History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi once, and apparently forgot a lot."

Carl's introspection was interrupted when it was time to return to the arena.

When Ryozanpaku was slotted to fight, Carl was again forced to sit on the sidelines of the tournament and watch Kenichi and Miu fight Garyu X, er..Hayato.

Being forced to sit out and simply watch, Carl finally figured out that this tournament was something Hayato allowed and maybe manipulated to teach his granddaughter and her potential suitor Kenichi certain lessons about the realities of the martial arts world, and how their current level just wasn't enough, and how to progress from there.

Carl, frankly, pouted a bit at being left out again. 'Aren't I a disciple too?' He thought.

After some time, Carl stopped pouting and feeling left out and simply watched, entranced, at Hayato's fighting abilities. Even thought he only used 0.0002 percent of his power, he dominated the fight. Hayato was able to split his attention in two, fighting with a different style in each hand. It's like he had two brains, one each in control of each half his body.

Carl focused on the fight, and started pondering his own situation. He realized that aside from seeking out small fry to fight, he had been totally relying on his masters to pull him up to master class. He only did the exercises they said, he never continued on his own when they didn't assign training exercises.

In short, he had been coasting and enjoying watching the story play out in front of him. He decided he really needed to break out of this rut and really push himself.

The match between Kenichi and Miu vs "Garyu X" soon ended. Kenichi and Miu had proved themselves to Hayato and received some instructions via a special skill that Hayato had to ensure that only the recipients could hear.

Garyu X then faked getting a call from Garyu Pink and forfeited to the Ryozanpa disciples before disappearing from the arena by jumping straight up above the arena, then air jumping away.

"Superhuman Master Class abilities." Carl muttered as he watched the Elder fly away. "So cool." He knew Hayato was a Legendary Master, 2 ranks above that of master class, so he was even more overpowered than most masters.

Carl's attention returned to the arena as the next match was announced. The Shinpaku Alliance vs Capoeira Team. Looking around Carl didn't see the Shinpaku Alliance.

"Where are they at?"

The Capoeira Team began performing some music and dance number as an introduction. Carl narrowed his eyes at the display. The Capoeira Team didn't show any emotions as they performed, like they were just going through the motions.

"If Siegfried saw this display he would be mortally offended that they put no heart and soul into their performance." Carl commented to himself, thinking of the musically obsessed Captain of the Shinpaku Alliance. "Wonder how his training trip is going?"

A short time later, Niijima, Ukita, and Kisara showed up at the arena. They were the only uninjured members of the Shinpaku Alliance.

Carl appreciated their rock steady gazes. Even though they were down several members, they didn't plan to give up.

"An opportunity." Carl muttered to himself. "Sensei, since I keep getting sidelined in Ryozanpaku's fights, I'm going to go join them for a round." Carl said to Akisame before he stepped up next to the trio.

"Oh? Aren't you part of Ryozanpaku's team?" Niijima asked when he saw Carl was standing with them.

Carl snorted. "I kept getting sidelined so Kenichi and Miu could show off. I haven't gotten to fight once! So this is a perfect opportunity for me."

Carl could see that Ukita was moved. Kisara just snorted a "whatever." Her tough girl act always amused Carl. He had seen her as playful as a cat before, so he knew her toughness was just a habit. But like a cat she refused to acknowledge those times where her playing impacted on her dignity.

Just as the match was about to begin, Carl heard the sound of anti-air weaponry firing. Looking up, he saw a private airplane fly overhead. Just before it was hit and destroyed, a single person bailed out of the plane.

The figure fell past the missiles that were flying up, and at the last minute he opened his parachute, landing hard and rolling to stand. Opening his arms in a showmans fashion, he sang his introduction.

Carl joined the applause of the audience at the spectacle. Siegfried had joined them just in time for the next match.

After greetings were exchanged the match began. A 5 vs 5 team brawl.

The Capoeira team had four males and one female. Kisara chose her opponent to be the female. Carl headed straight for their Captain. Niijima had a hide and seek battle with a black haired fighter in a turban. Niijima wasn't really strong, but his hide and seek abilities were excellent.

Carl soon lost track of the other members of the Shinpaku alliance and he devoted all his attention to the fight in front of him.

The Capoeira style was not one that Carl had fought against before. It was an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combined elements of dance, acrobatics, and music.

Carl had his hands full with his opponent. The Capoeira captain was very acrobatic, frequently dancing around, spinning away from punches and kicks, and generally using movement to avoid being pinned down.

But as Carl fought him, he gradually got used to the rhythm of the style. He began to see how the style used the shifting movements to distract him and the circular motions to redirect and return the force of attacks against him.

The principles behind the style wasn't unknown to Carl, he was a disciple of Jujutsu that used the enemy's movement and force against them afterall. He was just used to more compact and direct movements and attacks. The roundabout circular attack patterns had only momentarily confused him.

Within a few exchanges, Carl adjusted and soon used a series of kicks to the stomach to weaken his opponent's core and slow him down long enough to lock his movements in some joint locks, and knocked him out.

When Carl was finished, he looked around to see how the rest of the Alliance members were doing.

Kisara was just finishing up her fight, knocking the girl she was fighting out with a series of kicks while Niijima and Siegfried, who were uninjured, and Ukita, who was bruised up, watched. Apparently their opponents had given them even less trouble than Carl's opponent had.

"…sleep." Siegfried said before collapsing where he stood. Apparently cutting his training trip in Tibet short and running to the island, almost getting blown up, and fighting a battle had worn him out.

Carl looked over at the exhausted sleeping man. "Well, he's got good timing, I'll give you that. He waited until after the battle to sleep."

Things started happening quickly after that match.

Sho appeared on the stage to fight Kenichi.

"The battle for Miu's love, begins!" Carl muttered in amusement.

The military of many nations attacked Despair Island, determined to end the underground tournament.

While Kenichi continued fighting with Sho while Miu watched, Carl joined the Shinpaku alliance in seeking out their injured members to protect them while the battle raged.

Shigure Sensei escorted them along the way, and that was when Carl got to see his weapons mistress sensei slice apart a tank with her sword.

"Amazing what Ki can do." Carl whispered, awed at her ability. Shigure Sensei soon left them to make their way to the docks while she moved to attack the enemy. Carl realized that if they stayed in danger on the battlefield, they would just be a bother to his masters, as they would be forced to limit their actions to protect them.

Before they arrived at the docks, their way was blocked by a large man with a strange visor over his eyes.

The man, Fortuna, who was the owner and organizer of the tournament, started going on a crazy rant about how valuable the children who had the potential to become masters were, and that if they were valuable, then they belonged to him.

"Become my children! Fortuna's children!" Fortuna yelled, as if that simple statement was all the convincing they would need.

Carl and the Alliance had no desire to be his children, so they attacked, hoping to subdue him and continue making their way to the docks.

But it turned out that Fortuna was a Master Class combatant, and despite Carl's best efforts, the Alliance members were once more beaten down. They had not completely healed from their previous injuries, and so they couldn't fight like they normally would.

Which left Carl taking a beating all alone for a bit. One disciple class versus master class, the outcome was obvious. Just when Carl thought he couldn't hold on, another combatant showed up, taking the pressure off him.

Hermit made his appearance out of the blue. With reinforcements, the members of the alliance gained a second wind. All of them joined together with Carl and Hermit in fighting Fortuna while Niijima called out some directions to the group on how to attack.

Niijima's strategic mind and keen eye for detail led the group to attack in such a way that it neutralized Fortuna's defenses, and maximized their strength. They attacked as one, all together. The synergy of their attack was enough to defeat Fortuna.

Several disciples defeating a master was definitely a worthy accomplishment.

All that was left was the mopping up operations by the military as they dismantled Fortuna's empire.

* * *

As they were leaving Despair Island in the dojo's boat, Carl reflected on what he'd learned at the tournament. He thought about what he'd seen and experienced in the short two days.

Over the past year and a half he had slipped into the mindset of a disciple, one who was completely reliant on his master. He had turned incredibly passive in many ways. He depended on the masters of Ryozanpaku to guide him, teach him, and tell him what to do.

During the tournament, Carl had awoken to the realization that he had completely subsumed himself into the disciple mindset. Seeing Shigure freaking slice a tank apart with a sword had really made him aware of how far he still had to go.

It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, though, to have the mindset of a disciple. When he was learning from a master, if he didn't have that mindset, that unquestioning trust, his training would be slowed down as he would always be questioning everything his masters told him, instead of just doing it.

But there at the tournament when Carl had seen the abilities shown off by the masters, he had suddenly woken up from his complacent mindset. He'd suddenly remembered, with great clarity, that he was on a jump chain. That he couldn't always rely on his masters in the future.

It had been nice for a while to just sit back and let someone else be in charge for a while. To not have to think about what to do. To not be on guard against enemies because he knew the masters of Ryozanpaku were there to shield him. To let the story go on as it was meant to be.

But he had been fooling himself all along into thinking that the reason he hadn't worked to change any of the story was because he didn't want to interfere. When the truth was, that with his level of power and skills, he really couldn't dictate events or change anything significant.

A few fights here or there, sure. But the overall actions of Yami, Yomi, and the masters of Ryozanpaku? He didn't have the power to do so.

Even his magic rituals to do a sneak attack was near useless for him. Unless he could get something of the target to focus the ritual he was out of luck. And if his target was a Master, Grand Master, or Legendary Master, he didn't have a ghost of a chance at getting the necessary materials to target them. Not as a Disciple class.

In this world, unless he became at least a Master Class Martial Artist, he really had no power to enforce change or deter enemy actions.

And that realization woke him up to the knowledge that he'd been fooling himself all this time. He'd been thinking that a little bit of foreknowledge actually meant he had power.

'Knowledge is only power if you can make use of it. If you can turn that knowledge to meaningful actions. If you can't change anything, knowledge just makes you more aware of your weaknesses.' Carl thought as he determined that he would work harder. 'The answer to your dilemma is training.' Carl paraphrased Akisame Sensei. 'If that doesn't work, it's because you didn't train hard enough. So do even more training in the future.'

And training is what Carl did. He tortured himself with Akisame Sensei's devices that built his base physical abilities. He worked hard to imprint every technique he learned from the various masters into his body, so he could do the moves even in his sleep.

He spent time learning about the human body and medicine so he could actually use his **Martial Arts Medicine** perk.

He focused on applying his martial skills to every aspect of his life. Walking, drinking tea, eating dinner, even breathing. With the help of his **Civilian Skills** perk, _everything_ he did was martial arts. So everything became training.

He no longer bothered to schedule meditation time to practice kneading his Ki. He simply learned to do the meditation while doing other things. He played with is Ki while body training, technique training, taking a bath, or even brushing his teeth.

He started learning how to turn training from just something you do, to something you _live_.

And beyond focusing on the **Unarmed** aspect of the perk that Carl chose before entering the world, he spent time learning the way of the blade from Shigure Sensei. With an unending supply of metal and alloys from his farm, she taught him everything about blades.

How to make them, how to balance them, how to sharpen and care for them, how to live with them, and finally, how to make them a part of him.

In short, Carl lived martial arts.

* * *

One of the results of the DoD tournament was that a few members of Yomi showed up at Kenichi's school. For some reason Kenichi freaked out about it. But that was just Kenichi. He was always high strung.

Carl was happy because he now had new sparring partners around. Ethan and Rachel Stanley were siblings, but they had very different styles. Ethan practiced Kalarippayattu, an Indian martial art, and he was very serious and straight forward in his fighting attitude.

Rachel practiced Lucha Libre, a Mexican wrestling fighting style. She had a few quirks, like being just as focused on providing a "show" for the audience in her matches as she focused on the actual fight.

Boris Ivanov was a very military oriented Russian who practiced Combat Sambo, while Tirawit Kokin was a Muay Boran / Muay Thai practitioner.

After Carl met with the four and had a few sparring matches, one of the Yomi members asked Carl just why he would be stubborn and not join Yomi.

"You want to know why I don't want to join Yomi?" Carl asked as he thought about it for a bit. Should he, shouldn't he unload his reasoning? He went with he should.

"It's cause from what I've seen Yami breeds a bunch of freaking emos! Seriously, your philosophy has the most emo people around who just don't seem to get much enjoyment out of the martial arts!"

"It's like you send all your disciples to a little emo factory downtown where they are molded into sad little kill bots who don't enjoy what they do. I love martial arts. Especially the heart pounding excitement when I'm fighting a strong opponent. When I'm in battle, and winning or losing is a blades edge away, I feel so alive!"

"And then there is the camaraderie and fun when hanging out after a fight. The friends I've made, makes life fun. The superpowers of being able to freaking run around a city shouting "Extreme Parkour!" while bouncing around 5 story buildings like a chaos monkey on crack! I've had so much freaking fun with it!"

"But you guys are different. It's like you guys don't even know how to enjoy the amazing gift you have! You're all so stuck on some philosophy debate and fixated on killing people that you've freaking never learned how to enjoy life!"

"In short, your Emo Organization is the last thing I would consider joining!" Carl concluded.

'They seem suitably shocked at my rant. Time to make my escape.'

"See ya next time!" Carl called out before exiting with haste.

* * *

Time started speeding up for Carl now that he was totally focused on training and the occasional trip with Kenichi to fight the battles he just seemed to fall into. While Carl followed along the pace set by the Plot, he didn't mind too much. The battles were good for Kenichi was good for making friends that he could spar with.

Carl really enjoyed their groups run in with the Yomi Weapons Division. With his **Hidden Weapons** perk Carl always had at least a dagger on him, even though he rarely used it. He could also quickly grab a sword from his Warehouse with a bit of misdirection to hide the existence of his portals.

So running across members of Yomi that specialized in weapons was a delight for Carl, so he could practice his blade skills.

Through the fight, Carl began to really integrate the sword into his Jujutsu base style. Being aware of joints, how they allowed an opponent to move, and using his blade to guide the enemy and use his force against him was actually pretty fun.

The plot continued, and Carl and the Shinpaku Alliance continued having run ins with Yomi. They traveled to Okinawa, hunted Yomi as they tried to steal some data disc. They traveled to the Tidat Kingdom when Miu was kidnapped yet again.

They returned to Japan, and continued to have fights with members of Yomi that seemed to come out of the woodwork. Carl was loving it.

And the conflicts with Yomi and Yami finally reached a climax in a large scale battle where Yami is attempting to launch a missile that will plunge the world into war. Ryozanpaku and the Shinpaku alliance fought against Yami and Yomi, struggling to stop there plan.

Carl was in the thick of battle, subduing as many Yomi combatants as he could. Fighting alongside his friends and sparring partners.

After the battle was over, Carl heard the whole tale. The discover that Miu's father Saiga Furinji hadn't killed his own wife, but was trying to get revenge on the man who did. The culprit was Senzui, who had been masquerading as Saiga the whole time.

Senzui's plan had been to arrange a missile launch that would plunge the world and the different nations into huge war, creating chaos that would allow Yami and the Kuremisago Clan to experience true freedom in the ensuing conflict.

After fighting Saiga, Senzui managed to use the remote activation device to launch the missile, and all hope to prevent war seemed lost. Until Hayato Furinji attached himself to the missile as it launched. Carl and the entire group watched the missile rise into the air with the Elder clinging onto it. When it was a couple hundred feet in the air, the missile exploded prematurely, preventing the outbreak of war.

Everyone was shocked though, thinking that Hayato had died in the explosion. At least until they saw his figure gliding down from above, laughing boisterously. He had escaped the explosion and turned his coat into a makeshift parachute to slow his fall.

Once the culprit for planning and causing so much chaos, Senzui, was subdued and behind bars, things settled down. The members of Yomi and Yami didn't disband, but they stopped working so hard to destroy Ryozanpaku, and just turned into semi-friendly rivals in the Martial Arts that had a slightly different philosophy.

Carl was pleased with how everything turned out, because he could always find a good, clean, fight from a member of Yomi or Yami in the following years wherever he traveled.

After two and a half years of hard training at Ryozanpaku, Carl reached the Expert Class. He continued to train at Ryozanpaku dojo with occasional training and fighting trips, for the entire 10 years he was in the world. He liked the people too much to not hang out with them, even if technically as an Expert he was no longer under tutelage of his masters.

After seven years of training at Ryozanpaku, Carl attained Master Class.

Thanks to the training and attitude Carl's masters at Ryozanpaku instilled in him, his training never stopped. He kept trying to go higher, get stronger, and learn better skills.

In the end, Carl didn't make much of an impact on changing how Kenichi's story would have gone, but Carl wouldn't have it any other way. He made lots of friends, training partners, and experienced a lot.

That was, in Carl's opinion, the beauty of the philosophy of the Life Giving Fist in the world of HSDK. When asked about his opinion on the two philosophies, Carl's response was the following.

"If you love the martial arts and you love fighting, you'll never run out of opponents by following the Life Giving Fist, and you will continue to grow stronger."

"Those who follow the Death Giving Fist have the wrong idea. Yes, killing your opponent would prove that you were better than them at that particular instant, but it doesn't make you stronger. You have gained not one iota of strength by killing your opponent. The struggle to win, the struggle to triumph, _that_ is where you learn to get strong."

"How many times in your life have you been defeated and made your escape from your opponent. You went and trained, you bled, you cried, you pushed yourself beyond human endurance, and you got stronger. Then you went back and defeated your opponent. See? You got stronger through your own effort, not by killing someone."

On the last morning of his ten years in that world, one of Carl's Eternal Rivals found him for another fight.

"Ah, Hideo, my old rival. I wondered where you had got to. Unfortunately, we don't have time for one more fight, I shall be leaving this world in a few minutes." Carl said while pulling out a bottle of Sake. "Come, have a drink with me, for I shall be leaving soon."

"That's why I'm here, I figured I'd give you a farewell."

Carl had at some point in the ten years of challenges become good friends with Hideo and shared his secret of world jumping. Hideo was one of the few that was on the list Carl would come back for if he could.

Strangely enough, Niijima was also on that list. Carl could always use an information gatherer expert in his world jumps.

Hideo poured a cup of Sake, and held it up in the air. "To my Eternal Rival. May you find a larger stage in the world to come."

Carl also raised his glass, then drained it.

The world went dark. His time in the world was over.


	18. The Warehouse 4

Carl opened his eyes. He was once more in his bed in the warehouse between worlds. Carl stretched as he got out of bed, thinking about his time in the world of History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi.

After taking a shower, he moved downstairs to his kitchen and started fixing breakfast as he sipped his Root Beer. This morning he chose a hearty meaty breakfast. Several rashers of bacon, sausage, and hash browns alongside a 6 egg ham, cheese, and mushroom omelet.

With the Metavore body mod, alongside his Master Class body, he wouldn't even have to worry about cholesterol, let alone getting fat from eating so much in one meal. And he still looked like a runner or swimmer, not a bodybuilder.

After having some time to ponder his current mind and attitude now that Carl wasn't in the HSDK world, he had come to the conclusion that his mind, attitude, and behavior had been greatly affected by the philosophies he'd picked prior to world insertion and the fact that he knew about Kenichi's story line.

"I mean, even in my first world jump I was more than willing to kill enemies to make sure that my people were safe. I never even considered letting them go to get stronger. Was it because they were vampires and demons that I didn't hesitate to kill?"

Carl made himself comfortable on his couch in the entertainment room as he sipped his root beer and pondered the issue.

"But in the Pokemon world, one of the first things I bought when I had a chance were some firearms. And I didn't hesitate to kill Lysandre when he threatened to kill everyone who opposed him in the Kalos Region. I just couldn't take the chance that he would succeed. So it wasn't the fact that they were human that caused me to hesitate to use my more lethal abilities."

"But the moment I got into the HSDK world, because I chose the Life Giving Fist philosophy I never even considered killing people, not even as a preventative measure against anyone who was scum. So, I don't think it was because they were human. It must have been the influence of the world on my mind."

"So that's something else to watch out for. Being caught up in the world influence. Being caught up in thinking I need to not interfere in how the story goes. It was so insidious that I didn't even realize it was happening at the time, I just went with the flow. I hope the next world gives me something to shore up my mental defenses so I don't fall into the flow of the original world's story again."

Carl gulped as he thought about how much worse it could get if he didn't have the mental strength and fortitude to swim against the world currents in some of the worlds out there. Like the worm world, for example. The shards that give people their powers there _encourage_ conflict. And that is coming from some multidimensional being planting said shards in people's brains. So the influence feels like its coming straight from their own brain.

If he were to lose himself in a world like that, he might go around being reckless and getting himself killed.

So he definitely needs some firmer mental defenses.

Carl paused his self reflective narrative as he pondered his next decision concerning his warehouse cp.

"After my first jump world in the BtVS universe, I got 150 cp for the Warehouse modification, and I spent all that. After each subsequent jump I've gotten 10 more cp, so now I have 30 cp. Spere 037 suggested I wait until after my 15th jump to spend anymore points, which makes me think I'll get something good that will allow me to recruit the people I want, since that was the concern most on my mind."

"Whether or not that will pan out that way, I don't know. But each Stasis Pod is 20cp, a return to a world I've visited before is 20 cp. So the minimum cp I need to recruit Cordelia, Harmony, Amy, Marcie, and Fred is 120 cp. And it would only be two more worlds after that until my 15th world, so I may as well wait before recruiting anyone to see what the 'big gift' is, since I decided I wouldn't recruit anyone until I could get my first girls in here."

"So, the question I need to ask myself is, if and when I get a chance to start recruiting people to my jump chain, should I recruit the people of the HSDK world? On the one hand, they are powerful martial artists and very smart people who I like a lot."

"On the other hand, killing enemies is sometimes very necessary in many of these jump worlds, and I don't know if they could adapt to that after living their whole life by the don't kill philosophy."

"In most of these worlds, the enemy doesn't care about the more noble ideals of life being sacred. They just want to kill or enslave anyone who doesn't follow them. And killing evil monsters that would kill innocents is the only way to stop them, sometimes. Punching the Reapers in the Mass Effect universe until they give in, for example, would just be a stupid idea that would get everyone killed."

"The Life Giving Fist philosophy of the HSDK world affected me more than I thought it did while I was there and let me fit in, but now that I'm no longer being affected by that world, I see things differently. I still don't think killing an opponent in a martial competition makes you stronger, but as for monsters that would kill with no remorse I have no problems with ending them."

"So…I guess I'll decide later whether or not to go back for the people of the HSDK world. I don't really have to make a decision right now, especially because I have no idea what I'll get after the 15th jump."

Once Carl's decision was firmly made to deter making a decision until later, he made his way back to his room. He opened up the terminal that Spere 037 had left him for modifying his base body.

"And select, select, select. I worked damned hard to get this Master Martial Arts body up to par. There's no way I'm losing it the next time I'm de-aged again." Carl commented as he selected the **Master's Body,** **Sei Ki, Unarmed, Martial Arts – Jujutsu, Hidden Weapons, Probing Eye, Etiquette, Civilian Skills, Martial Art Medicine, Enhanced Ki** perks to add to his base body.

Even those perks that were more about utilizing knowledge also had a bit of reflexes and physical aspects necessary to utilize them. So even if Carl's body was de aged, changed, or had any added on perks stripped away, the physical skills and reflexes should stay with him through the change.

After running through the double checks and finalizing his selections, Carl once more passed out as his perks were imprinted onto his body mod.

* * *

Waking up again in his bed, Carl chuckled at the thought that he spent more time in his Warehouse between worlds unconscious than he did awake.

Now that adjusting his body mod was taken care of, Carl decided he would relax for a few days before he went into the next world. Previously he had been somewhat anxious to get going and get his girls back. But now he knew he had at least another 11 jumps before he could get them. 110 years.

"What's a few days compared to a century? Thankfully I got that **Savant **perk for a perfect memory. If I started forgetting about them as the years go by I might start doing something crazy to try to fix it."

So Carl took his time, leisurely making himself a simple lunch of sandwiches. Sitting down in the entertainment center, he ate his lunch while watching a movie.

After the movie, Carl went on a tour of his Warehouse. According to the description, his Dojo should now be attached to his Warehouse as a place where he could go to get some exercise and training in.

Carl soon found the dojo, and spent a few minutes moving some of the training gear Akisame Sensei had made for him to the dojo. Before Carl had left, he had asked Akisame Sensei for some training gear to help him continue training, so he could go beyond Master Class to the Grand Master Class.

Once everything was settled, Carl enjoyed a light training afternoon on his newly placed equipment.

Once finished with his training, Carl wandered to his farms, and soon found his new additional farm. The reward he got from completing the Farmville world was that each jump he would receive a new additional farm. It started out at 100m x 100m, and would grow an additional 20m x 20m each year for the next ten years, maxing out at 300m x 300m.

Upon arriving at the new addition, Carl found that there was another artificial intelligence helper there that was already clearing the land and preparing it for planting crops. Carl checked the interface and saw the options he had for what to grow on the farm.

Since Carl had most of his basic foodstuff needs already met, he just had the farm grow an assortment of vegetables and grains that it would sell off after the stockpile accumulated. He left the A.I. farmer to take care of Carl's farm, and returned to his house to relax some more.

Carl spent the next few days in a relaxed manner, mentally adjusting himself from his last world as he prepared for the next. After three days, Carl felt it was time to go ahead.

Standing in front of the terminal next to his house with 2 days left on the countdown, Carl was ready for the next world. Pressing on the screen and accepting that he wanted to jump early, Carl finally found out what the next world was.

* * *

**Sword Art Online**

* * *

**SETTING**

[Sword Art Online is a world actively curated by Kayaba Akihiko and his subordinate AIs. By abusing a property of the Virtual Reality equipment, he is holding ten thousand players of the game - who will die if their HP reaches 0, or someone attempts to tamper with their VR equipment – hostage until such time as the one hundred dungeon bosses are killed.]

[It is his playground and fantasy come to life. He's running around as a player in secret, metagaming and using admin commands to prevent his own health from dropping below 50%. He is playing favourites, his designated heroes receiving special perks or advantages.]

[If someone disturbs his 'story' too much, he will react unpredictably. Though he cannot kill players with his admin controls, he has control of game balance and through broad reforming of the world, and control of quest lines, the world serves as his weapon against elements that he can't tolerate.]

[All that said, he's weird. He might enjoy the unexpected element and what it does to his story – and part of that story is that he dies in the hundredth dungeon, as the final boss of Sword Art Online.]

"Great. It looks like I'll be in a video game for the next ten years." Carl commented sarcastically. "And if I accidently ruin the weirdo's fun time, he'll turn the world against me. Does it say who he role plays as so I can avoid him? No? Damn." Carl continued reading.

**CARDINAL**

[An AI that seeks to preserve game balance, managing quests, item drops, monster difficulty, and a thousand other things besides. Surprisingly canny – it is not unknown for it to turn player organized events into XP awarding quests. It also understands the idea that certain players are outliers, not to be used to judge the capability of the rest of the player base.]

"Wonderful, I'll have an AI looking over my shoulder for 10 years. And it said that the AIs are subordinate to that Kayaba jerk, so he'll probably have this Cardinal AI report to him. So right there it means I can't talk about the jump chain anywhere in the game. Can I even access my Warehouse while I'm stuck in a video game? Damn, probably not." Carl cursed.

**STATS**

[It's an RPG, but it only tracks two stats: Strength and Agility. Everything else is either a Skill – like regeneration (battle healing) – or simply not tracked by the system – like individual intelligence or sociability. Players start with a 5 in each stat and can eventually level up to the point that they can block the blows of towering monsters without losing ground, and toss those same enemies across rooms.]

"And all my advantages from having a Master's Body are gone, just like that. I never even considered that I would be stuck in the freaking Matrix and not even have my basic body mods available." Carl was liking this world less and less.

**SKILLS AND THE SYSTEM ASSIST**

[Sword Art Online tracks just about everything you can do in the game as Skills, and as your ratings increase, the game will guide your motions to meet the standards of your skill numbers. Displaying skill above your ratings is a sure way to get Critical Successes.]

"I sure hope it's not forceful with this 'assist'. After training with the Masters of Ryozanpaku, I'm pretty sure my skill will be high enough for crit hits."

**OUTSIDE SYSTEM SKILLS**

[What Sword Art Online can't track as skills are called Outside System Skills, emergent skills and techniques from the mechanics. Not quite exploits, these are minor exploits that arise from displays of pure skill.]

"That's nice and vague and yet it gives me hope that the matrix will let me use techniques from my own training."

**HOW DO PERKS WORK?**

[You have a special super duper Virtual Reality helmet. It will essentially allow you to Astral Project into Virtual Reality and use the full breadth of your powers.]

"You had me worried there!" Carl laughed. "I get all my powers inside the matrix? Hell yeah!" After feeling happy for a bit, Carl sobered up. "I'll still have to watch out for the stupid AIs and Kayaba though. If he sees me do something crazy or gets a report on it, I'll probably have a hard time as he tries to kill me."

[Be warned that part of Sword Art Online is functionally conceptual effects – there are 'Immortal Objects' that cannot be physically harmed (including Kayaba's player avatar, unless he should decide to deactivate that feature), objects with infinite weight, and most cities are no damage zones where players cannot accrue damage or die.]

"Well, there goes that idea of sleuthing out who is Kayaba and ganking him when he least expects it. He's functionally immortal until he chooses to not be." Carl snapped his fingers in disappointment.

"But wait a second? If he basically shanghais 10,000 people who die from the game or having their helmets messed with, and he's playing the game too, that means that his body will be sitting around. Even if he can go in and out of the game, I'm sure the government can track him down in the 10 years we'll be playing. Why wouldn't the government unhook him when they find him?"

"Are they afraid that if they mess with him, then all his hostages would die? Talk about a PR nightmare that no government official would touch with a 100 foot pole. No wonder he can get away with it for 10 years, even after they find him."

**THE MIND IS ELSEWHERE**

[You're going to be motionless for a long time. Outside forces will not conspire to harm you. Rehab post game will also be a rapid process, even before any perks you might apply. Expect it to 'naturally' take somewhere between a week and a month to regain any fitness you lost.]

**LOCATION + TIME**

[The Jump begins just as Kayaba teleports the players of Sword Art Online – including yourself – to the Official Tutorial, where he outlines the terms of his Death Game.]

Carl hummed to himself in thought. He would be jumping straight into the game, no chance to do anything else, like, not put the virtual reality helmet on. Carl shrugged in acceptance. Not like he could do anything about it.

The table and dice appeared again in front of Carl when he selected the option. He rolled a 7. "That's good, age 20 is the oldest I'll be in any of these jumps to start with. Being stuck as a 14 year old for 10 years in a game would be kinda…annoying."

Carl then looked at the origins available. Drop in 0 cp, Player 50 cp, Beta 50 cp, or Accomplice 50 cp. Each origin would give the discounts for the perks under that origin.

Carl first crossed out the Accomplice origin. The idea of being a party to Kayaba's sick game, and being a boss that killed people, just didn't appeal to Carl. Sure, he could just sit there and let the players kill him while pretending to attack them, but he was pretty sure Kayaba would be watching and might alter the deal to screw him over if he didn't play his part to the fullest.

Looking at the perks, to see which ones he wanted to purchase, Carl saw two in the Beta player section that he felt like he had to have.

**Like Riding a Bike** 300 cp – Your skills never deteriorate. Ever. Not for any reason, but especially not disuse. Further, you can easily adapt them to new circumstances: recreate your favourite spell in a different Jump's magic system, translate your sword style to hand to hand, etc.

**APM Intensifies** 600 cp – More than just god like reflexes, you're also able to process input fast enough to take calm, deliberate action at any speed.

With those two priceless perks, Carl chose to be a Beta player. That would discount them to 150 cp and 300 cp.

One of the issues that Carl had been pondering about his jumps was how to make sure that he never lost his martial arts skills if, in future jumps, he focused on magic, for example, for a decade. That would be a decade he would be getting rusty in his martial arts skills. But with this perk, he was guaranteed to not get rusty, as well as being able to use his old moves in new jump worlds easily.

And with his Master Class body, he already had godly reflexes. But Spere 037 had told him how adding more perks built up his power and skills even more in a linear progression. So adding another perk for amazing reflexes would keep boosting him higher.

With the Beta origin, Carl also got the perk **My Quest Senses Are Tingling** for free. You gain a supernatural sense for when someone needs something done. Further, you get a broad sense for what rewards there might be (major monetary reward, minor artifact reward, increased reputation, etc) and the danger of the task before you even suggest you'll do it for them.

Carl then chose **Roleplay** 100 cp: You may construct identities, effortlessly separating 'their' powers, knowledge, relationships, etc. Never again accidently use your water magic when you're pretending to be a fire mage, or slip up by mentioning knowledge your role could not have known.

And **Environment PK** 300 cp: The world around you is a weapon, make no mistake. Both the environment and the monsters that inhabit it. You have unnatural skill and luck at manipulating the world to kill your enemies for you. Unless caught in the act, it is vanishingly unlikely you will be held accountable – it will simply be an unfortunate accident.

Carl felt that those two skills could be useful in the future. Especially if he ran into Kayaba during his sojourn into the game world, with **Roleplay** he could make sure not to alert Kayaba to the fact he was on to him. It would help keep him from making him an enemy until it was time to kill him on the 100th floor.

And since Kayaba made use of the environment to kill players, having control of the environment as well would help Carl even the battlefield. Plus, if the **Environment PK** perk carried on to other worlds, Carl could only imagine where he might find a use for it.

With only 100 cp left, Carl chose to get a Teleport Crystal and a Healing Crystal that would respawn on him or in the warehouse 24 hours after use. After reading the description, Carl determined that he would have access to the Warehouse while in the game.

He wasn't sure how that all worked. He would be astrally projecting into a virtual reality game but have access to the physical warehouse and goods inside. Carl finally just shrugged. Jump Chain magic, what can you do?

With everything finalized, Carl accepted jumping into the world early. Right before blacking out, he heard an annoying voice say, "Link, start."


	19. SAO 1

[AN: Any mistakes I make in faithfully recreating the circumstances of any of these jumps can be taken as evidence that Carl isn't in the Canon timeline, that he's AU. It may or may not be changes I make deliberately or by accident. Either way, I hope it to be a fun read for people, as I am enjoying writing it.]

* * *

Carl Smith was super stoked. His grandfather was too busy with his business partners the past few days to notice that Carl had been ditching college classes to hang out in front of the electronics store where people were camping out to buy their own copy of Sword Art Online. It felt like a holiday party, the atmosphere of excitement.

Unlike his new friends here in Japan, he no longer had parents to keep track of his daily activities, and his Grandpa was working hard with his counterparts in Japan to land a contract for his company to more widely distribute SAO to North America. So he had the freedom to do as he wanted.

His parents had died when he was 5, so he didn't have a lot of memories of them. Ever since they died in a car crash, it had only been him and his grandpa. And sometimes his grandpa was just too busy with the company that he built to notice some of Carl's extracurricular activities.

After the revolutionary Nerve Gear had been released in the market back in May, Grandpa Max had seen how revolutionary it was, and how it would change so many markets. He also spent hours rhapsodizing about what it could do for training people who had dangerous jobs without risking their lives for the training.

"Just think of how much more trained the doctors and nurses can be with this gear!" He had went on an almost angry rant one night. "If this had only been available years ago, those hack doctors wouldn't have caused the death of your parents!" He had almost growled, before coming to his senses and realizing what he'd said. Looking embarrassed at losing control, he'd locked himself in his room for the rest of the night, and never visited the topic again.

But Carl could tell he was still just as passionate about the subject. So, in order to try to get in on the action before it became too established, they had moved to Japan back at the end of May. Carl started up classes in College in Japan, and made a couple of friends who were also gamers, while his grandpa, bless his heart, was working to make contacts and contracts to be in on the development and distribution rights of SAO and the Nerve Gear.

Because of the family situation of his friends, and how they couldn't get away from college for three days to camp outside the store, Carl was the only one who managed to get a copy of the newly released game, thanks to having luckily scored a Beta testing slot. He would totally have bought his three new buddies their own copy, to be paid back later, but the stores would only sell one copy per customer, and he didn't want to have to pick only one out of the three to give it to.

Plus, he was only hanging around to enjoy the atmosphere. Getting away with actually camping out for three whole days was something even his grandfather would notice and get after him for.

He had watched it be a real fight for the campers to get their own copy. By 2022 practically everyone played at least mobile games, even if they didn't go for the more hardcore computer or console games. And SAO only 10,000 copies being sold opening day. So those campers had to be on guard that they didn't get shoved out of line or moved back so far that they couldn't get a copy.

Carl thought it was an odd marketing strategy to drive up everyone's desperation to buy the game. Nothing got people fired up and willing to throw money at something like the label "Exclusive" or "VIP". Everyone wanted to be special, and if it only took a fistful of dollars and some wait time, well, many were willing to pay the price.

Because of his grandpa's connections, Carl had been lucky enough to score a Beta copy of the game, and he had played all summer. Which is why Carl had been so excited about the official release. During that month long Beta test, Carl had seen how important grinding levels was for a player to get strong and stay on top. He was hoping to make some friends that he could adventure with, maybe form a guild.

Once a player fell behind the front runners, they would never catch up. And Carl was determined to stay on top. Unlike some other games, in SAO professional gamers couldn't have some intern switch out with them to grind their levels for them while they worked on other skills. The nerve gear only allowed one person to log onto one character. It resulted in a straight 1:1 ratio of individual work to reward.

Carl had worked hard to learn as much as he could during the beta testing, and like his grandpa was fond of saying, "Hard work always gets results".

It was November 6th, and today SAO was finally about to start, in just 10 minutes. Carl put his phone on the charger, smirking. He had just texted his three new friends "Hay, 15 minutes until start of the most epic game ever. I'll let you losers know how much fun it is!"

Carl just laughed as he watched the return texts filled with jealousy and hate pouring in. They were some decent guys, and seemed like fun friends, even though they had only known each other for a few months.

Carl switched out his regular clothes for sweats. If he was going to be playing the game the rest of the day and most of the night, he was going to be ready and in his sleeping clothes. One of the amazing things the nerve gear did was allow the user to play a game all night, and log off in the morning, as refreshed as if they had slept all night. It was like a substitute for R.E.M. sleep, so the user didn't go crazy from lack of sleep.

Carl put on his Nerve Gear. He'd gotten his sweet Special Edition helmet from Grandpa's contacts, back when the Nerve Gear first came out on the market. To date, he hadn't seen anyone posting pics online of gear similar to his, so Carl was pretty happy that he had a seemingly one of a kind.

Now that Carl thought about it, maybe part of the reason for the limited release of the game was to make sure the servers didn't crash on opening day. That would be a huge black eye for the game, if it was unplayable on the first day.

Carl saw that the time his 1:00 pm. He hit the button to log onto SAO, and suddenly he was standing in a town square in the game.

Carl looked down at his body. He had always been really fit, fast and strong, so he had made his game avatar the same body shape and everything as he was in real life. He only changed the facial features a bit so he wouldn't be recognized in real life if he managed to piss someone off in the game.

There were always people who were dicks about things like killing monsters they thought they owned, or getting to a treasure chest first when they saw it at the same time. Some people just lost their rationality and forgot about the game so they could harass whoever pissed them off. Similar to cases of road rage, they would just fixate on their target and forget everything else.

'Well, no use piddling around here in town.' Carl thought as he saw more and more people arriving. He quickly checked his inventory and saw that he had the basic starter armor and sword and a few coppers.

Carl knew the devs had tried giving the currency a new name, "Cor" or "Col" or something to be unique, but come on. They are in a fantasy setting of swords and knights. The lowest currency is obviously copper.

Carl started jogging in the direction of the nearest field for monsters, ignoring all the players that were logging in for the first time. He could tell who the newbies were because they were spending a lot of time rubbernecking like tourists.

Carl soon made his way to the west fields, where the monsters available were mainly neutral mobs like boar, deer, and cows and such.

Unsheathing his sword with a flourish, Carl began attacking the poor xp on hoofs. After his first slash, Carl was shocked at the bloody splash from his cut that landed on him, but didn't stop attacking despite his shock. Another two slashes and the cow was dead.

Carl stared in shock at the bloody scene in front of him. "Did they slip me an adult version of the game?" He wondered aloud. "Sweet!" A huge smile rose on his face, before he pressed on the cow's carcass to initiate looting.

After he looted a couple raw steaks and the horns from the cow, its body and the bloody splashes disappeared, leaving him spotless once more. "This game gets better and better. So realistic!" Carl crowed in joy, before he continued hunting.

Carl was just finishing his 13th murder of the poor xp animals, when he came across two more players near him. Looking closer, Carl saw it looked like one was tutoring the other in combat, SAO style.

"Idiots and noobs." Carl muttered as he moved away to find more free range xp. "If the one is a beta tester, he's an idiot wasting his advantage by helping the noobs instead of grinding. And if the other is a noob, he's being a lame moocher by not figuring it out himself. The only thing he could do that is worse than that is to sit in the town square begging for gold. Better stay away from them, I might catch their idiocy."

When he saw the noob on the ground from getting crotch rocketed by the boar, Carl was positive he wanted nothing to do with them.

A few hours later, Carl was in the midst of killing his 135th mob, when he was engulfed in a flash of light. He heard a faint, yet annoying voice whisper "Link, start" before he was assaulted by a flood of memories rushing into his mind.

Carl suddenly remembered his other life, as a Jump Chain jumper. The past memories of his original world as well as the four previous jumps rushed into his mind. Or rather, they were unveiled from where they had been locked away while he lived a normal life until this moment.

Carl still hadn't figured out if he really just arrived in the world at this moment, or if he was de-aged to a baby, had his memories locked, lived a normal life, and then had his memories unsealed just a moment ago.

But based on his experience in the Pokemon world and the existence of the parents he remembered growing up with in that world, Carl leaned towards the idea that he was de-aged and grew up in the world. The other option was to assume he was some kind of cuckoo bird, planted on the people at the moment he arrived in world.

Even if he was some kind of cuckoo planted at the moment of birth, he still had all the memories of growing up with them. Which made them family. Sometimes family was more than just blood, it was about shared memories, and the decision to _be_ a family.

Once Carl finally got some perspective on his newly unsealed memories, he started looking around. He had been teleported to the town's main square, along with every other player in SAO. The enormous square was packed.

People were freaking out, trying to figure out what was happening. Some people were talking about how they tried to log off earlier, but the option to log off was gone.

Before anyone could get too freaked out, up in the sky a blood red hexagon "WARNING" notification button started blinking, attracting everyone's notice. Woops, they were getting more freaked out at the eeriness of the scene. Now that Carl had his memories back, he knew from the Jump document that this was the moment when the asshole Kayaba would reveal his death game to the players.

So Carl resigned himself to waiting through the dramatics and histrionics of the gamers. Looking at the exits to the town square, where some players were pressing against an invisible force field, let Carl know he couldn't make his escape from this scene anyway.

The blood red hexagon started multiplying across the sky, making a dome over the town square. The "WARNING" notification in the red hexagon was alternated with "System Announcement".

Once the sky was covered, actual blood started leaking from in between the hexagons. Carl heard more than a few people scream in fear at the sight. It was definitely creepy.

The blood never reached the ground. Instead it flowed together and shaped itself into a giant 70 foot tall human figure in a blood red cloak. Carl couldn't make out a face, just darkness beneath the hood, but he knew it was Kayaba. Kayaba spread out his arms dramatically in greeting.

"Attention players. I welcome you, to my world." The cloaked giant intoned in a voice that spread to all 10,000 players. "My name is Akihiko Kayaba. And as of this moment, I am the only person in control of this world."

Carl noticed the dramatic pause that let the people around him make some comments.

"Nice entrance."

"Is that really Kayaba?"

"I'm sure most of you have already noticed an item missing from the main menus. The logout button." Kayaba continued. "Let me assure you, this is not a defect in the game. I repeat, this is not a defect. This is how Sword Art Online was designed to be."

Carl snorted in faint contempt when he noticed the faint, barely noticed, background mood music playing when Kayaba was talking. Talk about dramatics.

"You cannot log yourselves out of SAO." The reverb enhanced voice of Kayaba stated. "And no one from the outside will be able to shut down or remove the Nerve Gear from your head. If anyone attempts to do so, a transmitter inside the Nerve Gear will discharge a microwave signal into your skull, destroying your brain and ending your life."

"What are you talking about?" One girl cried out in fear.

"Come on, that's such BS!" A dude in the crowd disdained.

After letting the crowd freak out for a bit, Kayaba continued. "Despite my warnings, the family and friends of some of the players have attempted to remove the Nerve Gear. An unfortunate situation, to say the least. As a result, the game now has 213 less players than when it began. They've been deleted from both Aincrad and the real world."

"As you can see, international media have round the clock coverage of everything, including their deaths." Kayaba had several web pages appear floating around him so the group could see the reality of the situation he engineered.

"At this point, it's safe to say the likelihood of a removal of the Nerve Gear is minimal at best. I hope this brings you a little comfort as you clear the game."

"It's important you remember the following. There is no longer any way to revive someone within the game. If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be deleted from the system. Forever. And the Nerve Gear will simultaneously destroy your brain."

Looking around, Carl saw that everyone was in deep shock and fear. The realization that they were in a death game was only beginning to dawn on them.

"There is only one way for a player to escape now. You must clear the game." Kayaba brought up a holographic representative map of Aincrad. "Right now you are gathered on floor one, the lowest level of Aincrad. If you can get through the dungeon and defeat the boss, you can advance to the next floor."

The multilevel map had 100 floors, with a cylinder shaped shaft representing the dungeon being the way to the next floor above it. The dungeons appeared to be randomly located on each floor.

"Defeat the boss on floor 100, and you will clear the game." Kayaba gave the victory conditions. "Last but not least. I've placed a little present in the item storage of every player. Please, have a look."

Carl went ahead and pulled out the item, which was a mirror. "What's the mirror for?" Carl wondered, just before it shone in bright light, engulfing him in the light.

He didn't feel anything change on him, but when he looked around, all the players around him had changed their appearance. Apparently they all reverted back to their actual appearance.

One pair of players near Carl, that previously looked like a ridiculously good looking male and female couple had a little spat.

"Wait a minute! You're a guy!" The young and short roundy accused.

"Hey, you're not 17!" The skinny guy that had been masquerading as a girl counter charged.

Carl couldn't help but snicker at their situation. "A little bit of role playing never hurt, right gentlemen?" He couldn't help but joke at their expense.

Carl could afford to laugh, he was still himself. A 6 foot tall, slim muscled 20 year old. He hadn't been hiding behind a fake skin, so he wasn't disoriented by suddenly having his mask stripped away.

"Right now, you're probably wondering 'why?' Why would Akihibo Kayaba, developer of Sword Art Online and Nerve Gear do this?" The giant figure looming over the players casually stated. "Ultimately, my goal was a simple one. The reason I created Sword Art Online was to control the fate of a world of my design. As you can see, I have achieved my goal. This marks the end of the tutorial, and the official start of Sword Art Online. Players. I wish you the best of luck."

And with that, the giant figure once more turned into blood and oozed up in between the cracks of the blood red dome. The dome abruptly disappeared, bringing the view of the cloud filled sky and the sun back.

Seeing the barrier disappear from around the town square, Carl casually walked out of the town square just as many of the players got over their paralysis and began screaming, pleading for Kayaba to let them go, and just generally losing their heads.

"Like Agent K said. A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals. Better to avoid that stampede." Carl muttered to himself as he began jogging away, once he was out of sight of the newly formed mob.

Sure, the town will keep actual violence and damage from being done by or to the players while they are in a neutral area, but Carl still didn't want to deal with the drama. The only way to get out of this virtual world before ten years was up was to defeat the boss on the 100th floor.

Carl finally made his way back out to the West Field, where he had been grinding before, when the sun was setting.

"Okay, first things first." Carl muttered. "How much is this astral projection helping me."

Carl then began a series of calisthenics so he could see how well his Master Martial Artist body translated to the game. After a few minutes of running through his moves and running and jumping around, Carl determined that he could move as fast as he could when he was outside the virtual world, when he was training in the HSDK world, with has Master Class Martial Arts body.

"Okay, so I can move just as fast, I'm just as strong, and can attack just as fast. Now how much damage can I do?" Carl focused on a wandering cow. Pulling his sword, he moved like lighting, appearing next to the cow and slashing it once. Blood spilled, and the cow aggroed from the strike, but didn't die. Carl easily avoided the cow's counterattack, and slashed the cow twice more in an instant before the cow died.

"Damn. It looks like, while I have all the physical abilities of a master martial artist, the game AI determines damage based on my character's stats." Carl opened up the menu to his stats. "5 strength and 5 agility. And I've only filled up about 13% of the XP bar. So I probably have to kill about 1000 of these boars and cows to get to level 1 and get more stats to do more damage."

"And while I could probably go start killing off the dungeon bosses by myself, that would bring me to the Cardinal's attention as a serious outlier. Which would bring me to Kayaba's attention as an anomaly in his perfect world. One that he'll probably try to kill. Not to mention, that I only get that World Seed if Kayaba dies while happy with his story."

Carl paused in thought for a while, considering his plan of attack. "The problem with trying to make sure Kayaba dies happy is that I have no idea what might set the crazy bastard off. And there are so many players that it's not like everything is up to me to make him satisfied. For all I know, all the more adventurous players could get themselves killed and everyone just turtles up in a city and never tries to beat the bosses, which would piss off Kayaba."

"So, I have to fix it into my head now not to worry too much about Kayaba and what some player who might piss in his sandbox might do. If the worst happens, and I don't get a World Seed to grow my own dream world, oh well. Easy come, easy go. I've already benefited hugely from the perks I've already gotten in this world."

Carl opened up his menu, and went to the options. "Now that I think about it, I don't like the freaking Skills Assist." Carl muttered as he turned off the Skills Assist. "It felt like it was trying to jerk my body into a weird attack direction."

"I've got a virtual world to practice my blade skills on all kinds of monsters. Shigure Sensei would be disappointed with me if I didn't practice and polish my abilities for these 10 years with fantasy monsters. And without the Skills Assist to ruin my practice, I can actually make use of this time to improve while going wild." Carl grinned.

"So, the plan is to grind my level up, explore the world of Aincrad while practicing my blade skills on 'real, live monsters', and join the raids when they attack the bosses. Become a badass in the game by getting lots of lootz, completing lots of quests, and just have fun. I can do that."

Carl saw there was an auto loot option that wasn't toggled on before. Flipping it on, he grinned maniacally as he saw the cow disappear. "That will save a lot of time." With his tier 4 senses, Carl could easily see in the dark. He had the stamina of a Master, and he was too fast to be hit by the mobs around him. He saw no reason to stop grinding.

Targeting the next XP mob, he rushed forward and slashed it to death before it could do anything. Seeing a popup box in front of his face, Carl frowned. He opened up the options menu once more and disabled the pop up box. If he wanted to know the information, he could look in his combat log. Now, with nothing to distract him, Carl began his first night of grinding.

* * *

The next morning as the sun was coming up, Carl walked out of the forest he was decimating over night. There had been dog size spiders, bats, owls, and even the odd goblin or two. He had looted a few coppers, a crappy knife, and a pair of better boots off the goblins. The animals didn't have copper, unfortunately, but he did get various animal parts.

He had already leveled up to level 1. Carl doubted there was anyone else around that had his abilities, so he was sure he would always be ahead of the curve.

Looking around once he exited the forest, he saw a little town called Odwin. Carl entered the walled town by the front gates. He saw the towns people were already up and about. According to his memories of the Beta testing, the NPCs followed a human schedule, so they closed down their shops and slept at night.

Carl made his way to the market, where he started selling off many of the various animal parts he'd looted. After he gathered his small stake of coppers and silvers, Carl made his way to the trade skills trainers.

There were a variety of job skills in SAO that a player could pick up. Cooking, alchemy, gathering herbs, mining, skinning, leatherworking, fishing, and many others. Similar to real life, a player wasn't restricted in what skills they could pick up, but they needed to put in a decent amount of time if they wanted to get good at any skill.

Carl was just happy that Kayaba didn't try to make bags and inventory space more realistic. Everyone had an infinite inventory, and weight didn't matter.

Carl found the Cooking trainer and quickly learned the skill, including some of the basic recipes. He then bought some spices and began cooking the beef and pork that he'd looted off all the cows and pigs he'd killed.

Even though it was a game, the players still had to eat to replenish their stamina. Hunger was programmed in to let them know when they had to fill their bellies. Carl wasn't sure how him being in the game astrally would affect him, but he had been feeling hunger, so learning the skills to assuage that hunger seemed like a decent idea.

Once he'd cooked all his food, he chowed down on one of the steaks, relieving his hunger.

Carl then left the cooking trainer, looking for the various trainers to teach him how to gather resources. Mining, herb gathering, woodcutting, fishing, and skinning were more than enough for him to spend some time on each to gather more in game resources. After buying the necessary tools for each profession, Carl moved on.

Carl then began talking to all the NPCs in the town. He soon found that they were at least semi-decent VIs. If Carl talked too much, or seemed to be pestering them, they soon decided to ignore him for a while. He found three quests to clear out some mobs around the town to make it safer for them. Carl accepted, and soon left to hunt down the mobs.

He spent all day hunting, not needing a rest just yet. By 4pm Carl had long since fulfilled the quests, and moved back to the town of Odwin to sell the junk he'd looted and turn in the quests.

Carl had gotten a pair of gloves that increased his defense from the first quest. A dagger that improved the quality of leather skinned for the second. And for the third, he received a hat that increased his agility.

Carl wasn't terribly impressed by the quest rewards, but they were on the first floor near the starter town. So it wasn't like he could expect anything epic yet. Carl went through the town one more time, speaking to each of the NPCs he found. Carl found three more quests on his second sweep through.

After getting the three quests, Carl left the town behind, and searched for the mobs he was tasked to kill. By midnight he had finished the three quests he'd picked up.

Carl then moved to the forest outside of the small town, and after double checking that there was no one around, he opened up a portal to his Warehouse on one of the trees big enough for him to slip through, before shrinking it down small enough that nothing could get through.

"Ahh, what a busy day." Carl stretched to relax his muscles from the long grind. He took a shower, fixed some dinner, and then crashed in his bed, sleeping for a solid 5 hours. He could have kept going longer without stopping, or just meditated in place of sleep, but taking some downtime for sleep was a comfort because of how familiar and comfortable it was.

Even though Carl mostly thought of the whole experience as an adventure, there was no getting around the fact that he too was a prisoner in the game with everyone else. That plus the sudden awakening in the town square had stressed him a bit, and taking the time to relax for a bit would help him recenter himself.

The next morning when the sun had just risen, Carl was already up, eaten, and entering the gates of Odwin to turn in his quests. This time he got a pair of leather pants that increased his strength by a couple points, a necklace that increased luck, and a shirt that had no purpose other than looks.

Shrugging at the rewards, Carl continued seeking out quests and hunting monsters for the next couple of days until he couldn't find any more quests in the town. Each evening after turning in the quests, he would spend some time with his crafting professions that he picked up to make use of the crafting materials he'd picked up.

He had picked up a number of very useful skills from his 10 years of interacting with the masters of Ryozanpaku. Blacksmithing from Shigure Sensei, mixing medicines and tinctures from Akisame Sensei, woodworking from Apachai Sensei, leatherworking from Sakaki Sensei, among others.

So since Carl had an idea of what the actual skills were like, when he used the methods he had learned previously, like crafting a dagger, the AIs noticed his already present skills and started awarding him plenty of crafting levels to start matching his crafting levels with his actual skill.

Since Carl had been using his own skills and techniques for fighting instead of using the ones supplied by the AIs, he hadn't been leveling up combat skills. But he had noticed after the second day that his critical hits were increasing. Apparently the AI finally noticed how good his martial arts were and adjusted his critical hits to match his actual skills. Which was nice, because the mobs were dying faster now that every hit was a critical hit.

Now that Carl was finished up with the quests in the town, and he saw players starting to show up in the area, Carl moved on from Odwin and hunted his way cross country until he came to the next town, where he repeated his questing and hunting habits, while leveling up his skills.

Every few days Carl would move to a new area, as he continued hunting and training. He would occasionally meet a group of players as they moved around, and talk with them about the news around the area.

There weren't any forums available from inside the game, so no one knew what the news from outside was. Carl on the other hand had access to the world's internet through his Warehouse. He very briefly considered putting out some pamphlet or newsletter to keep people aware of what was going on outside the game, but swiftly rejected the idea.

It was hard enough on people to focus on their survival and living the game without becoming obsessed with the news. And, more importantly, it would alert Kayaba to the fact that someone was able to go around his blockade of information. Carl just didn't feel like dealing with that headache, so he left well enough alone.

Carl did find out who was the person who was publishing guides to killing mobs and grinding levels though. He contacted the individual and offered to send her information that she could include in her newsletters to help people survive.

There wasn't any real way to judge just how many people had died in the game so far, aside from if Kayaba released the information. Everyone was whispering that more than a thousand people had already died within two weeks.

Carl was skeptical about that number, and felt it was an exaggeration, but he couldn't verify it, and it seemed to be believed by everyone. There was just this aura of palpable fear that lingered over every player Carl met. He could tell that most of them didn't believe they would live to make it out.

A big reason for that was that in the beta tests, there had been many articles and videos online of people telling about their experiences. They had talked about how hard the game was, and how many times they had to respawn before they could beat some enemy or boss.

After a month, with everyone in the beta test working hard and with many deaths, they had managed to clear 8 floors. But in this game, no one was willing to risk their lives to advance so recklessly, so their pace was slowed to a crawl. And after nearly 1 month, they hadn't even gotten to the boss room, let alone cleared it.

So many people didn't think they would be getting out of the game. They thought they would be stuck in the game for life, or probably die as they tried to get stronger. That attitude of defeat and despair without even trying was palpable whenever Carl returned to the starter town.

Lots of the players were only doing the bare minimum to keep themselves fed, they were too afraid to really level up. Many other players satisfied themselves with the crafting professions, because that would be much safer.

Some of the more business minded tried to set up businesses that dealt in buying and selling equipment for players. It was slow going, because the only way to get the in game currency was through quests or grinding, and so the businesses had to employ players to grind to provide items to sell.

The unfortunate results were that once the employees started gaining levels from their grinding, they started wondering why they were just hired hands that got a pittance of the profit when they were doing all the dangerous work. So they would break off from the groups and go their own way, leaving the attempts at forming businesses to founder.

And then there were the kids that were aged 8-12. They really shouldn't have been able to get into the game, but they managed to sneak it past their parents. They were the worst off, once the mirror reverted them to their original appearance. They were smaller, and not able to move as fast or dodge as easily as the adults.

Carl couldn't really judge yet whether the game would make the players faster and stronger as they leveled up, because adding a few strength or agility to him was like adding one more piece of hay to a stack. Hard to judge the results.

But if the game did add strength and speed to a player character as they leveled up and gained stats, then the kids could end up being just as tough as the adults, if not even better. Because they would make smaller targets for the mobs to hit while doing just as much damage.

But for the time being there was a group of adults that was making sure the kids didn't go out into the wilds and risk their lives. Carl thought it was some kind of nonsense. There wasn't really much keeping the kids there except their habitual obedience to adults.

Carl thought it was nonsense that the adults were trying to "keep the children safe". Helping the kids to grind and level up would keep them a lot safer than sticking them in an orphanage in town and relying on the charity of others to keep them fed.

Carl would probably stick his nose into the situation if it didn't get better in a month or two. Relying on the kindness and charity of people who felt like they were trapped was a difficult prospect at best. It would be better if the kids learned to rely on themselves.

But currently, Carl was headed to a meeting that some group of adventurers had called. They claimed they had found the boss room, and wanted to organize a group to kill the boss and clear the level.

Carl arrived at the meeting spot, and saw that a few people were trickling in. The meeting was being held at what looked like a stage for putting on plays. The stage had a half circle of stone audience seating. There was a few free standing pillars at the top of the seating. Standing on the stage, waiting for people to arrive, was a 20 something man with long blue hair.

'So, he dyed his hair in real life?' Carl laughed. 'Looks like he might be stuck with that look for 10 years!'

Eventually, people stopped trickling in. Counting the numbers, Carl was surprised there were only 33 people present. He would have thought beating the boss would be a bigger deal for people. Maybe the guy in charge didn't have the best network?

The blue haired guy with a sword on his hip and a shield on his back standing on stage clapped his hands to get everyone's attention.

"Okay, people. Now that everyone is here, let's get this meeting started. I first want to thank everyone for coming. Good to see you. My name is Diabel. And in this game," Diabel pounded his fist on his chest armor. "The job I rolled is knight!"

"Dude, there's no job system in the game!" One audience member yelled out while several others laughed at Diabel's role playing.

"So, is this meeting a joke too?" Some other dude asked.

Carl could tell that Diabel was a little frustrated. "You guys want to hear this or not?" He demanded. The audience finally quieted down. "Right, then. Here's the deal. Today, my party found the boss room at the top of the tower." Diabel paused for dramatic effect. "So, what we need to do is defeat the boss and make it to level 2. Then, we tell everyone in the starter town that it is possible to beat this game!" Diabel dramatically stated. "The fact is, this is our duty as the most capable players here to give them hope! Don't you agree?"

Carl looked around at the group of players, using his probing eye. He couldn't get a read on everyone as they reacted to his statement before adjusting their attitude, and each person Carl read had a different reason for wanting to take down the boss. Diabel seemed to really be into the knight persona that he was building for himself, and he really felt it was his responsibility to lead the way.

One person in the audience starting the slow clap, and the rest joined in to show their support for the idea they would fight the boss as a group.

Diabel seemed happy he was successful so far. "Right. Now we need to figure out how we're going to beat the boss. First off, let's split into teams of six. A typical party doesn't stand a chance against a floor boss. We need a raid group made up of multiple parties."

Carl just sat back watching. He was going to be his own party.

Once everyone made their teams, Diabel started again. "Alright, looks like everyone is teamed up. Next-"

"Hold on a sec!" Yelled a voice from near where Carl was standing at the pillars at the back. Carl looked over and saw some red haired dude with spiky hair and a soul patch under his lower lip standing there looking all angry. The red haired dude started jumping down the audience seating in a way he thought was dramatic, but just looked silly to Carl.

"My name's Kibaou, got that?" He aggressively introduced himself while glaring at the audience. "Before we take on the boss, I wanna get something off my chest. We all know about the 2,000 people who have died so far? Well some of you need to apologize to them right now!" Kibaou yelled while angrily pointing at the audience.

Carl sighed. What was this idiot on about?

Diabel interrupted. "Kibaou, I think I know who you're talking about. You're referring to the ex-beta testers, right?"

"Of course I'm talking about them! The day this game started, the beta testers vanished. They ran off leaving all the rest of us high and dry. They grabbed all the good hunting spots, and they grabbed all the easy quests for themselves. They were the only ones getting stronger in here. This whole time they've ignored us like we were nothing. Hell, I bet there's some of them here. Come on out, beta-testers!" Kibaou growled. "We should make them kneel down and apologize to us. And we should make them give out the items and money they got." Kibaou folded his arms self-righteously and declared "They can't exactly expect us to trust them when they don't trust us."

Right when Carl was about to talk, he heard a chocolate smooth voice call out from the front rows. "Can I say something?" A large, bald, black man with a double headed axe on his back strolled up to the stage. Looming a head taller than Kibaou, he looked him over.

"Hey, my name's Agil. Kibaou, right? I wanna make sure I'm on the same page. You say the ex-beta testers should be blamed for the rookies deaths because they didn't help them. And they should apologize and give up their winnings. I leave anything out?"

"No, you didn't." The angry blaming voice Kibaou used made Carl want to smack him around.

Agil pulled a small book out of his inventory and showed it to everyone. "The item store hands this item out for free. You got one too, didn't you?"

"Sure I got one. So what about it?"

"You know who was handing these out? The ex-beta testers." Carl chuckled at the critical hit Agil got on Kibaou's argument. Agil turned to the audience. "Everyone had equal access to the information here, and yet many players still died. Now I'm not here to point fingers at anyone. I'm here because I want to figure out how we're going to beat the boss."

Agil then calmly looked at Kibaou, to see if he had any more to say. Kibaou didn't, so he just sat down and pouted. Agil calmly took his seat too.

Diabel then went on to introduce the 1st floor boss, Illfang the Kobold Lord, and his minions the Ruin Kobold Sentinels, and the strategy they would employ. "As for the distribution of loot. Money will be distributed equally. The XP will go to the party who defeats the boss. And whoever rolls an item, gets to keep it. Any objections?"

Carl stood up and walked to the front of the audience. Everyone was staring at him, wondering what he was going to say. "I don't have an objection, so much as on observation. I was one of those beta testers. I noticed-"

"I knew some of you jerks were in the audience!" Kibaou roared out while jumping to his feet and getting in Carl's face. "It's because of people like you that Jo- I mean the newbies died! You need to kneel and apologize to them, right now!"

Carl flicked Kibaou's hand that was pointing in his face away. "First off, no. I'm not going to go apologize for something that wasn't my doing to assuage your anger. If you want someone to give penance, go find Kayaba. He's the bastard that trapped us in here." Carl calmly stated. From Kibaou's slip of the tongue, he could guess that someone close to him had died. But that didn't mean Carl was going to put up with him spilling his grief everywhere.

"Secondly, I provided a lot of the information that comes with that guide as I acted as a pathfinder for the rest of you, so you knew what to expect when going hunting."

Carl sarcastically smiled at Kibaou. "And thirdly, I distinctly remember the mobs of people who formed immediately after the tutorial ended who wanted to hang the beta testers, under the assumption that they were accomplices of Kayaba. Can you really blame them for disappearing on you, when people like you were stirring up a lynch mob? Idiot."

Kibaou's flush of shame was amusing to Carl. He turned back to the audience. "No, it's no surprise most beta-testers wouldn't admit it, after the rampage the mobs went on. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't quite a few beta-testers who are among the 2,000 dead because they mentioned to someone that they were beta-testers. 'Oops, accidents happen.'" Carl darkly proclaimed.

"So, yeah, like you said, trust goes two ways. And people who like to stir up mobs have already proven they aren't trustworthy. No matter how 'righteous' they like to pretend their anger is." Carl pointedly said.

Seeing that his words, and more importantly the looming glare from Agil kept Kibaou's mouth shut, Carl continued.

"Now, despite the danger I put myself in by declaring I was a beta tester, I didn't do it to get attention. I did it to point out a fundamental flaw in your plan, and a possible amendment. You see, from my time beta testing the game, and being stuck in it now, I've noticed many changes in mob behavior and attack patterns. The information in the guide is only accurate from what people remember of the boss in beta. So I wanted to point out that the information may not be 100% accurate."

Carl noticed many of the people had uneasy looks on their faces at his pointing out this information.

"Now, one of the things I've done in my time here is experiment with ways to make group fights safer. Or at least give us more tactics to use." Carl pulled a bow and arrow that he'd crafted out of his inventory. "There is no strict job classes here, which also means we don't necessarily have to stick to only swords." Carl notched the arrow, and let it fly, hitting the pillar in the back. "If we spend a week or so training up a cadre of archers, we would have more people that can launch attacks from a distance, cut down the mobs, and give us a better chance of victory."

"Hmm, an interesting idea. But I don't think it's workable." Diabel interrupted. "First off, no one is trained in archery. It would take too long to get them good enough that they would be sure to hit the boss and not us. Second, the people really need a victory now, not later. Third, we can at least try fighting the boss now. I think we've got what it takes to take him down, with everyone's help."

Carl was a little shocked that Diabel shut down his proposal so readily. He used his observation skills to read Diabel's intentions, and found that he wanted to be the one to kill the boss. As far as Carl could tell, it was a mix of him wanted the fame from killing the first boss, wanting the special item off of landing the killing blow on the boss, and a genuine desire to give hope to the people stuck in the game.

Carl also saw that there was still too much general dislike for beta testers, so the raid wasn't going to side with him over Diabel after he revealed his hated beta tester background. Even though Carl read that Diabel was secretly a beta tester too, which is why he knew about the last hit benefit that would get the recipient a nice unique item from the boss.

"Well, judging by everyone's reaction, they aren't willing to wait another week and try my idea. Let's do it your way, then." Carl shrugged as he graciously withdrew his proposal.

"Then we'll leave for the boss at 10:00 tomorrow morning." Diabel announced. "Get some good rest so you can be 100% for the fight tomorrow, when we bring hope back to the people!"

Carl laughed and cheered along with the rest of the group. No matter if Diabel has some other, selfish, motives, he also strongly believes killing the boss can help everyone gain a ray of hope. Carl couldn't help but get behind the sentiment, because he too had seen the despair most people were operating under.

After giving a friendly wave to Agil, Carl took off to avoid being tailed by anyone with a grudge against beta testers. If it came down to it, and someone tried to kill him away from the safe zones of the town, Carl wouldn't hesitate to knock them flat. Depending on the person, he might only disable them. But if they were murderous thugs, he might just end their game right there.

It was an attitude that was different from the Life Giving Fist philosophy of his last world, but more in line with how he had been before that world, and more in line with his usual modus operandi. To end threats to himself and the people he cared about.

After giving everyone the slip, Carl used his parkour moves to arrive on top of some tall buildings, where he opened a portal into his Warehouse out of reach from the players. After entering, he shrunk the portal and relaxed for the rest of the evening, crafting items while having music or movies playing in the background.


	20. SAO 2

The next day, Carl watched from the rooftops as the group met up and made their way to the town's edge. Carl heard plenty of comments about the "dirty beta tester that ditched us" as he watched out of sight.

He sighed at the stupidity of some of those people. They knew how beta testers were hated. Did they really expect him to go traipsing around the town without a care and let the bastards follow him, gather intel about his habits and whatnot? Maybe get a chance to "show him who's boss"? Idiots.

Before they left the town, Carl slipped ahead of them and waited outside the town's gates, casually leaning against a tree like he had been waiting there the whole time.

Carl wasn't too petty to admit to himself that he enjoyed the way some of the people who had been badmouthing him guiltily started when they saw him.

'Badmouth me behind my back, will ya?' Carl laughed inside. 'I'll show you what's up in this fight.'

Carl then joined the end of the line as they trekked to the dungeon. He would likely sense it if anyone made a move on him, but no sense giving them the apparent chance of a free attack being behind him offered if they were so far gone from reason as to actually attack him in front of everyone.

As they were walking, Carl noticed the two party members directly in front of him. One was a girl with a cloak covering up her head and shadowing her features. Carl guessed she had some run-ins with pricks who liked her looks and tried to "protect" her for favors.

The other was a young teenager who was a head shorter than Carl who looked quite nervous. Carl could tell he wanted to ask him something, but was hesitating to ask.

"Go ahead and ask, dude. Don't hold it in." Carl finally stated after watching his nervous back and forth behavior ticks.

"Why'd you admit to being a beta tester? You know they are just going to blame you for everything that goes wrong and despise you. So why?" The kid finally asked.

"You remember what I said at the meeting, about things being a bit different than in the beta?" Carl asked, and noticed that the kid had also been a beta tester. The girl was just listening to the conversation, curious.

"Yeah. So?"

"Well, I know I'm not the only beta tester around. And judging by what was written about the boss, the other beta testers are relying pretty heavily on what they learned in the beta. But that can only get them so far. Normal games get things changed, reshuffled, and rebalanced between the beta test and the official release. After seeing how cruel and clever Kayaba is, you think he wouldn't tweak his game so people couldn't totally rely on prior knowledge?"

"I guess you've got a point there." The kid admitted.

"Yeah. And another thing, I don't listen to random people and their guilt trips. The fact that people died in this game has nothing to do with me. That blame lies solely with Kayaba. No matter how much you try to help people, you can't be responsible for other people's lives. You can only be responsible for your own. If they can't protect themselves in this death game, they're better off going to a safe zone to live. If they make the choice to go into danger, it's no one else's fault if they bite the dust." Carl commented.

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Carl could tell the kid wasn't fully convinced. But that's teenagers. Well, people in general, really. Unless they work something out for themselves, they wouldn't be fully convinced.

They soon arrived at the boss room. Opening the 20 foot double doors, they saw a dark room that lit up when they entered. A 3.5 meter tall pot bellied Kobold lord sat on his throne, eyes glowing, with a long handled single blade ax resting on the floor next to him.

Illfang the Kobold Lord grabbed his ax in one hand, and had a buckler shield in the other as he leapt forward and roared at the raid that intruded on his territory. Three minions appeared wearing plate armor, with large maces they held in two hands.

The four Kobold charged across the football field sized hall, roaring as they came closer.

Diabel pointed with his sword, "Commence attack!" He yelled.

The group split up, different squads keeping each of the enemies occupied. Diabel sat in the back, directing the group's movements and when they would block or switch out.

Carl joined in one of the groups killing a minion, moving to his side and slashing the kobold up. The kobold only needed a few hits before it died.

After a few moments Carl heard the boss loudly roar. Carl looked over and saw Illfang toss aside his ax and shield. Carl then heard Kibaou snidely say, "Looks like the guide book was right" as he looked over at Carl in a challenging manner.

Suddenly Diabel charged in, yelling "Stand back, I got this!" Contrary to the plan where everyone in the group should surround the boss, it looked like Diabel was determined to get the last hit bonus.

Carl could read from Diabel that he let his greed overtake him, wanting to get the killing blow to get the extra nice loot.

The young teenager that Carl talked to earlier yelled a warning. "He doesn't have a Talwar! This isn't like the beta, get out of there Diabel!"

Illfang pulled out his No-Dachi and jumped, bouncing off the wall and ceiling before coming down like a ton of bricks on Diabel, slashing him good and flinging him through the air. While Diabel was in the air, Illfang moved to get a second slash on him, and was about to hit him when Carl appeared in front, blocking the swing of Illfang's blade from taking Diabel's life.

Carl then proceeded to slash the last of the health off the boss, getting the final blow.

The raid was still standing there, stunned from the sudden drama and danger that almost took Diabel's life, and would have endangered theirs.

Suddenly, the fact that they won and killed the boss occurred to them, and the group started cheering and celebrating. Everyone was hugging each other in relief. Carl just kind of smiled at their good cheer. He looked over and saw the teenager he'd talked to early giving a health potion to Diabel.

Diabel got up a moment later, and looked at Carl with a complicated gaze. On the one hand, he didn't get the final attack bonus and special item. On the other hand, Carl just saved his life. So he just stood there quietly, not sure how to act.

Agil, the girl, and the teenager then came up and congratulated Carl on finishing off the boss.

"Today's victory, is all thanks to you." Agil stated. The raid cheered Carl on, relieved that the fight was over.

"Well, everyone did their part. I just finished him off." Carl modestly claimed. He already won, getting some special armor piece. No need to rub it in people's faces.

"Stop cheering!" A loud voice angrily yelled out, ruining everyone's good mood. The group turned back and looked at Kibaou, who was glaring at Carl. "Admit it, you knew what the boss's technique was going to be. That's how you stopped it. Why didn't you tell us? People could have died!"

Kibaou's friend agreed in a seriously whiney voice. "It's cause he's a beta tester! He knew all about it but didn't tell us! He knew, but he kept it from us! And, I bet he's not the only beta tester here. Come on, show yourselves!"

Carl just started laughing at the idiots. "Yeah, you guys are idiots. You're still hung up on that, as if anyone who was a beta tester wasn't in the same exact death game as the rest of you idiots. I already told you the game now is different from when it was in beta, but you idiots didn't listen to me. Beta testers have the same exact chance of death here. And blaming your cowardice and idiocy on others doesn't help everyone trust each other and help us get through this death game. Stop trying to target people who aren't responsible for your situation, idiot."

"Yeah, if that's the case then how did you know the boss's attack path? Huh? It's cause you're a dirty rotten cheater!" Kibaou yelled.

Carl laughed even more at the idiots.

"Why are you laughing!?"

"Because, dimwit. I don't need to cheat." Blatant lie. If he didn't have skills from other worlds he would be in the same situation they were. But hey, since they were his hard earned skills, it really wasn't cheating, now was it? "Everything I've told you is the truth. The game now is different than the beta. The reason I could react to the boss's attacks, is that before entering the game, I was already a master swordsman."

Carl moved, not anywhere near the fastest he could, but enough so Kibaou could see him coming but not do anything about it. Carl soon rested his sword against Kibaou's neck in open threat. "It has nothing to do with being a beta tester."

"I'm." Carl moved to the next idiot in line who was calling him a cheater, resting his sword against his neck before he could do anything,

"Just." Carl targeted the next idiot, resting his sword on his throat for a moment before moving on to the next one.

"That." And on to the final idiot who was Kibaou's friend gulped loudly when the sword was laid against his neck.

"Good." Carl emphasized the last word. If these idiots didn't get the message that there are some people you just don't fuck with from this demonstration, then they were hopeless.

Carl sheathed his sword on his back, smirking at the still shocked players. "I've been practicing my swordsmanship since I was knee high. So, yeah, I could read the boss's attack because of skill. If you idiots want to survive this death game, you're just going to have to git gud, scrub."

Carl had all his memories from this life of being a gamer. And gamers respect skill above all else. Not to mention they were in a life and death situation. He may not be able to change Kibaou's stubborn idiocy, but everyone else there who had seen his skill should be thinking that having him along for boss raids was the correct choice if they wanted to survive. And if they were smart enough, they should be rethinking their unreasoning anger against beta players.

Carl then started walking off, casually waving farewell at the group. "The name is Rondo." Carl gave them his in-game name for contact purposes. "I'll be available next time there's a boss raid. Until then, I'll be researching more info for the guide books. Don't call me if you're an idiot. Otherwise, thanks for the raid, guys. Good hunting!"

* * *

Carl climbed out the exit onto the 2nd floor. The exit was on a towering cliff, giving Carl a beautiful view of the land in front of him. From what he could see, the land was mostly a series of mountains, cliffs, and valleys.

Carl saw there was a series of stairs and switch backs leading down to the valley where there was a town. He knew from his time in the Beta that the town was Urbus.

Carl had been stuck in dungeon stale air for a few hours, so he took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air in appreciation. Once he felt like he had cleansed his lungs, Carl began making his way down the trail.

He figured he had a few minutes until the rest of the raid group followed him to the exit, so Carl bound down the switch backs in a series of jumps that would have broken anyone else's legs. Once he got enough distance that he could be sure no one in the raid would be able to catch up, he slowed his pace to enjoy the walk.

Upon arriving at Urbus, Carl first went about collecting quests and taking advantage of being the first person to arrive in the town. What Kibaou had said the day before about beta testers had been about 1/5th truth. The beta testers did take advantage of their knowledge to get to the quests and hunting grounds first.

But there were many reasons Kibaou was just an idiot. First of all, most of the quests were repeatable by everyone. There were only few unique quests that could only be done a single time by a single person.

The hunting grounds that Kibaou complained about have respawning mobs, so the first people there only have a slight advantage. The people who come behind still get mobs to hunt so they can level.

People like Kibaou were just bitter and jealous of other's success. They try to use moral sounding arguments to take advantage of and steal from others. As evidenced by his desire to steal the money and equipment of the beta players so he could benefit. Through that one demand his real self and greed was shown.

His grief at the loss of a friend was genuine, but he took advantage of that "moral high ground" to come up with a way to spread his misery and punish others while benefitting at the same time.

So while Carl may be wary of the idiot backstabbing him in the future, he felt absolutely no qualms with continuing his practice of being the first to an area, to a quest, or to a hunting ground. Carl was already fulfilling his moral duty and community service by providing information about the quests, hunting areas, and dangers to the information broker, Argo, who was the one who put out the information guides that people like Kibaou benefitted so much from.

After Carl was done sweeping through town, he found an out of the way place to enter his Warehouse. He went to his laptop and quickly wrote up a report of the boss encounter. He made special note of the boss's level, 5, and the deviation it had from the Beta test. His report was made much easier to compile because of the **Data Book** item he had gotten from the HSDK world that automatically recorded information of every mob or boss he encountered.

Carl noted the raid's average level, 7, and mentioned that in the future the bosses were likely to get even tougher and that it would probably for the best if the raids had at least 5 levels on the raid boss to be safer.

He then exited his Warehouse and mailed off his report to Argo. He had a deal with Argo to provide her his reports and she would send him any information of note she gained from other players. Carl's information alone had made sure she was the top information broker around, so it was a lucrative business deal for her.

In order to make a profit and ensure she could keep being an information broker, she had different tiers of information available for payment. She would constantly be moving information from one tier to another. The information would eventually end up on the free tier after a certain amount of time.

She knew that the information would eventual get out into the public anyway, and that there was a fine line between profiting from information and profiteering from information. The basic information about how to survive was free from the very beginning, but other important information that players needed to get an edge and be head of the pack would cost them.

Carl was already level 12 from his near constant questing and grinding. The mobs in SAO never stopped giving xp, no matter how high level one got. But as one got higher in level, the amount of xp a level 1 mob could give a level 50 would be so negligible that it would basically be a waste of their time.

The highest level mobs on the first floor were only level 5, so despite Carl's near constant grinding, his leveling had been slowing down more and more as he leveled. Despite his leveling speed slowing down, Carl kept up his routine for a number of reasons.

First was his martial arts practice. Even though the low level mobs didn't give him any challenge, he made grinding into a training trip. Especially because the game mechanics made it so Carl could only do so much damage to the mobs. If this was real life, Carl would be one-shotting all the mobs. But since the damage was limited by his level, gear, and stats, he could practice against enemies that survived the first hit in many cases. It was good practice for him.

Next was all the item and crafting materials he gained from his near constant training. One of the effects of being astrally projected into the game, was that he had to actually learn the skills he was training. The crafting system only gave him the recipe or plans, he had to actually make the item, instead of relying on the system to do it for him. So he was becoming much more skilled in crafting. And he was becoming rich from selling all the products.

Carl wondered if some of the players in the beginner town might start buying the many bows and arrows he had crafted and left with merchants after they read his report on the first level boss. It would be interesting to see a ranged class become more popular. Not everyone had the guts and determination to get up in a monsters face in melee. It would give many of the more timid a chance to do something with themselves.

Carl finally looked over the special item he won from the boss, the Coat of Midnight. Looking at what it did, Carl was pretty disappointed. It only increased a player's ability to hide. Other than that, it just looked like a black trench coat. So it did pretty much nothing for him.

'Eh, not my style.' Carl thought as he was looking in a mirror at what he looked like wearing the coat. "And I don't want to pick up some weird nickname like the emo swordsman because of always wearing black. Should I sell it?" Carl wondered as he unequipped it and stuck it in his inventory. "It's a unique item, and I've got an infinite inventory, might as well keep it. Or throw it in storage in the warehouse. I can always hype it up and auction it off later."

With several quests to do, Carl quickly left the town and moved into the nearby mountains. He first had to round up some goats. Carl had long since stopped wondering about the odd quests the towns folk gave him. Round up goats? Sure. Milk some spiders in the forest? Why not? Gather some river mud? Eh, okay, sure.

When Carl arrived at the location given to him by the herder with a broken leg, he saw half a dozen goats standing on top of a large rock formation, just out of reach of the eight wolves that were looking for dinner.

Carl drew his sword and charged in. Those goats weren't going to save themselves!

Several moments later, Carl finished off the last of the wolves. He pulled out the special whistle given to him by the herder, and blew on it. The goats easily leaped down from the rock formation they were on, and followed him back to town where he showed them to their pen.

Carl's reward was a large sized soup cooking pot. At first, Carl was annoyed at getting something so simple. His quest senses had told him he would get a nice tool for one of his crafting professions, and only got what looked like a simple pot.

But then Carl read the description, and was pretty happy with the results. The cast iron looking pot could fit as much soup or stew inside as needed, and would perfectly cook it. Not only that, but the more Carl used it, the higher tier it would get. It would absorb a portion of the aroma of everything cooked in it, and that would enhance the flavor of all future soups and stews cooked in it.

"Now that's some Toriko level gear! Hell yeah!" Carl was excited. Toriko was an adventure cooking manga. The basic idea is the world is a gastronomic dream.

In the Toriko world animals and plants all had super high levels of energy they pack in. The higher tier, the higher the energy value and the better the flavor of the food. And the more a martial artist eats, the more powerful they get because they consume that energy to fuel their rising strength.

With this cooking pot, his stews and soups would just get better and better. Carl couldn't wait, he found an out of the way place, and entered his warehouse. He pulled out the ingredients for a hearty stew, and soon had it cooking on low heat. He could leave it for hours before coming back to it when it was ready.

Carl decided that he would always keep a pot of stew brewing. Even if he just took the stew and sold it, it would continue to upgrade his pot.

"The journey of a thousand pots of stew…" Carl began the joke, but soon trailed off. For one, there was no one there but him to enjoy it. Second, it wasn't really a great joke. If there was no Cordelia to slap his shoulder, or Fred to snort laugh at the silliness of the joke, or Fiona and Rhona to get excited about getting to eat delicious stew, it really wasn't worth finishing the joke.

Shrugging off the momentary feelings of gloom, he soon left his Warehouse and continued questing.

* * *

Crouched behind a rocky outcropping so he wouldn't be seen, Carl watched the movements of the large herd of bovine monsters in the valley below him. They were grazing in circles around the single tree in the middle of the valley.

The item that was his target was resting in the higher branches of the tree. He needed to retrieve the item and return it to Ben the villager in the small village a couple of kilometers away.

The only problem? The quest asked him to sneak past the bovine monsters. If he failed to sneak past them, the quest would fail.

It was time, the bovine monsters were in position.

Carl swiftly moved to the next outcropping of rocks that would hide him. Success, no moos of alarm.

He waited 5 seconds, then low crawled to a bush that would keep him from view for the 2 seconds needed as the strangely aggressive cow moved past. Carl then sprinted for the small depression in the ground, reaching it just moments before he would be discovered.

This was the part that he'd had problems with three times already. From here, he kept being spotted from different directions. This time, though, he tried a distraction. He threw a rock high in the air. It came down on the other side of the bull that kept spotting him.

The large bull snorted, pawed the ground a few times as he turned around to investigate. Which allowed Carl to finally reach the tree without being spotted and begin climbing. A few moments later, and Carl had reached his objective.

He placed the child's kite in his inventory.

That's right, the quest that had been giving him such a hard time required him to retrieve a child's kite. He wasn't allowed to kill the cows. He couldn't be seen, or "the cows will stampede our little village."

Carl snorted. He'd already been seen three times and the cows had done no such thing. But that was quests for you.

Carl made it back to the ground before the bull was done investigating the noise from his earlier distraction. He swiftly flitted across the ground from hiding place to hiding place, and made it out of the valley unseen.

Success!

Wiping the imaginary sweat off his brow at the quest completion, Carl traveled back to the little village. Looking around at the NPCs rustic lifestyle in the mountains, Carl wondered just how self aware they were.

There was only so much computing power available. If all of the NPCs were not just running on rote programming, but developed self awareness, this world would soon crash.

Carl had seen small interactions between NPCs that Cardinal, the world's main AI, had set up a pretty decent imitation of human emotions and interactions. It was good enough to imitate human emotions in some cases and touch the heart strings of the players.

Case in point, when Carl returned the kite to the quest giver, seeing him hand it over to his son and the son's apparent joy at getting his kit back touched on Carl heart strings. He knew it was all a staged play, but it looked so real.

Carl received his reward, a blueprint on how to build kite's.

It didn't seem like a very important quest reward. It wasn't even as useful as getting gold, let alone epic weaponry.

But Carl had already seen in the Beta Test how Cardinal liked to make quest chains. Sometimes at higher levels, Carl had found a quest that made him return to a lower level to do some mundane task before he could advance to get a decent reward.

So it had turned Carl into something of a hoarder. He would complete quests and keep even the seemingly useless rewards. Who knows if they would be useful later? And he had the inventory space for it.

Now that Carl had finished the quest, he returned to the valley with the bovine monsters that kept him from completing the quest three freaking times. He had to run back to the village and reaccept the quest each time he failed. It was seriously a pain.

Looking down at the cows with a scary smile on his face, he slowly drew his sword.

Fifteen minutes later, Carl sighed in happiness. He had a whole bunch of leather, and he'd shown those damned cows the error of their ways! Good thing they had a quick respawn timer, so he could thoroughly enjoy getting back at them.

Carl chuckled at himself. It was somewhat nice being able to go on a rampage against what he knew to be virtual monsters. Just let go and work out his frustrations on them. Whistling a merry tune, Carl made his way back to the hunting grounds he had been leveling at. He had taken a break from the grinding to explore a bit when he'd come across the kite retrieval quest.

Upon arrival at the valley, Carl was a little disappointed to find there were a large group of players already there. The group of 15 players were split into three groups. Two groups of six, and one of three.

When one of the players noticed Carl walking by, he quickly let everyone else know. "Hey, Rondo's here!"

Upon hearing that, the entire crowd of players stopped their discussion to prevent Carl from hearing what they had been talking about and turned to glare at Carl. As if Carl hadn't already heard their whole discussion. His hearing was quite acute.

Carl just ignored them and continued whistling as he moved past, acting like he had no clue what they were up to. But he filed away the information he'd gathered. Apparently, after the first boss's defeat, the raid group had split up and organized itself under two leaders.

One group was following Diabel and his second in command, Lind. The other group was following Kibaou the dumbass. Who was currently trying to stare holes in Carl's back, but was too wary of Carl to say anything. Apparently, Carl had made an impression on the idiot back in the boss room. A sword to the throat would do that.

When they saw that Carl was just killing the mobs in the area, they soon left. They were hoping to kill the Field Boss Bulbous Bow before Carl realized it was there and tried to get in on the action.

After they left the area, Carl stopped killing the mobs and followed. He was curious about what was going to happen. When he arrived at the area, he simply hung back without letting himself be seen.

The three groups were still arguing. Eventually Kibaou got impatient and his group started attacking the Field Boss, causing the other two groups to jump in too. But the whole formation was messy.

The Field Boss, a 4 meter tall cow, had a few different attacks. He would stomp the players, try to gore them, steam breath them, and his most devastating attack was a charge that would knock the players back and stun them for his stampeding follow up. If the players didn't protect the one charged, he would be stomped to death. All they had to do was hit the boss on the head to divert his attention, otherwise he would stomp to death the one that received the charge.

Due to the lack of coordination among the group, and the stubbornness of the two leaders, Kibaou and Lind who both wanted to get the killing blow, the fight turned into a huge mess. The players being knocked back only barely escaped due to sheer luck time and again.

But the infighting was getting worse. They paid more attention to each other than the boss.

And sure enough, Carl saw that one of the players in Kibaou's group was knocked back by a charge, but no one was close by to protect him from the following stampede. He was for sure going to die because of the two main group's infighting.

Carl had been prepared for just such a moment, so he fired the arrow he had prepared. He struck the boss between the eyes just before the boss reached the downed and stunned player. Snorting in anger, the boss turned to where the arrow came from, and saw Carl standing there in the open.

Carl fired another arrow that hit the giant bull on the nose. Snorting in anger, the bull charged Carl, leaving the group of players behind. Carl put his bow away and pulled his sword. He easily side stepped the field boss's charge, slashing him several times as he did. The bull stood twice as tall at the shoulder as Carl, so he could only reach several tendons in the legs and vital points in the lower body. Every swing was a critical hit.

'Thanks for recognizing my skill, Cardinal.' Carl thought.

The players that were running to try to catch up were amazed at the speed of Carl's swings. He hadn't displayed that speed previously in the 1st floor boss fight. They started to wonder just how good was Rondo?

Carl also didn't let the boss recover. He stuck to his side, never letting the bull actually face him, as he continually sliced into the boss. Before the players could reach the boss, Carl had finished it off.

When Carl turned to face the players, he wasn't surprised that Kibaou started ranting about him stealing the boss from them. Lind kept his silence, occasionally glaring at Kibaou, waiting to see how everything would play out.

"Hey, dumbass." Carl interrupted Kibaou. He was really growing tired of the stubborn idiot. "I only stepped in to save one of your party members. But instead of being thankful that a 'dirty rotten cheating beta player' saved the life of your party member, you are mad that I stole the boss from you."

That shut Kibaou up good, but Carl could tell he wasn't self reflecting and adjusting himself to think properly. Carl didn't come right out and say it, but he heavily implied that Kibaou cared more about the loot from the boss than he did about the life or death of his party member.

'Maybe I made a mistake in not getting that one perk.' Carl thought. 'It would be so useful for settling the dipwad once and for all. Maybe. He might just come back later with even more dumb.'

**Let's Not and Say we Didn't**: That's dumb and you're dumb. You possess the amazing ability to point out something is a bad idea and have it stick. Even without explaining your reasons, people will understand if your reasoning is good or bad. Should the idiot persist, they are compelled to reveal their reasoning – which you can then further point out as dumb.

"From what I saw, you guys didn't have control of the fight, you were too busy fighting each other for positioning. That's a good way to end up dead. You had the manpower to kill the boss, easily, if you had all worked together. If you had, I would have just watched the fight play out."

"It was only when one of you was about to die that I stepped in. Remember that this is life and death. Is your pride and greed worth your life?" Carl chastised them.

Carl then turned around to leave. He'd said his piece.

But Kibaou proved how stubborn he was.

"Wait just a damned minute, Rondo! We found the boss and did most of the work in taking it down. Don't think you can just leave with the loot! Cough it up!" He yelled, full of anger.

"Nah, I think I'll keep it as an idiot tax to remind you not to be dumb. Good luck with that." Carl then left without another word. Staying to argue with Kibaou? Catch the idiocy? No thanks.

* * *

Carl was at the southernmost part of the second level. He was exploring the mountain, mining ores and gathering herbs.

One of the things he'd discovered was how magical his Warehouse and attached farms were. He knew he was astrally projected into a digital game. But when he dug out some of the herbs needed to make potions and transplanted them into his farm on a whim, he found that they became part of the farming system.

From then on, he could purchase seedlings to plant in his farms and grow the different ingredients for the potions. Carl then tried the same for his metal farms, and found that the ores also transferred over.

"I should expect nothing less from an op hax system that lets me jump to different realities." Carl commented. "When I go back to the Pokemon world I'll have to gather everything needed to make all the pokemon boosters, medicines, and training supplements."

Now that Carl knew he could add all the herbs and ores to his Farmville farms, he was determined to hunt through all the levels and gather everything to add to it. He was also considering plans to add the fish and other food animals from Aincrad to his farms. There were some rare bird he remembered being on level 6 that made the absolute best tasting drumsticks.

If he could raise those birds on his farm, he would have a steady supply of delicious food. And with the magic of Jump Chain, turning them from virtual to real seemed to be a thing.

And that realization made Carl want to plunder the world of Aincrad for every bit of resource that he could. Which led to Carl wandering the wilds of the tall mountain in the south of level 2, looking for anything rare.

Which led to Carl now looking at the isolated, lonely hut sitting nearly at the top of the mountain. As Carl watched, he saw a hermit puttering around the yard, doing simple chore work. Looking around, he didn't see anything unusual about the area. Nothing to tell him why some NPC was so far away from any village or town.

"Are you going to come in, or just sit out there in the cold?" Came the aged voice of the white bearded old man.

Shrugging at being found out by an AI that was connected to the virtual world he was in, Carl entered the yard. "Hi there, old man. The name's Rondo."

"Ah, yes. Names…It's been so long, I've actually forgotten my own name. You can just continue calling me 'Old Man'." Old Man stated while stroking his beard. He spent a moment looking over Carl. "You look like a strong one. I've got a task for you. If you succeed, I'll reward you with some knowledge. If you fail? Well..." The old man laughed. "You get nothing. What have you got to lose?"

Carl laughed in response to the old man's laugh and challenge. "Sounds good. I'm in. What do you want me to do, Old Man?"

"Follow me to the task. I'll explain when we get there." The Old Man flipped his beard as he turned to walk towards his back yard. After they passed the hut, Carl saw a 2.5 meter tall rock sitting in the middle of an unplanted field. "Your task, is to break up this rock so it can be moved." Old Man said as he pointed at the enormous rock. "Using only your fists."

"Well, that doesn't sound too bad-"

"And you must wear the facial paint of Cat-Man-Do while you do the task. Remove it, and you fail."

"Okay…" Carl trailed off as he watched the old man pull out a pot of paint. He approached Carl and painted three whisker marks on each cheek. Carl could feel the corner of his mouth twitching. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Cat-Man-Do and whisker marks? Was Old Man messing with him here?

Old Man had a suspiciously amused glint in his eye as he returned to the front yard of his hut. Carl sighed. Even if Old Man was messing with him, it was officially part of the quest. Time to get started.

Carl squared up and threw a punch at the tall rock. When his fist hit, only a small quarter sized chip of rock broke off.

"And this is why, in the virtual world, the AI is king. I would have easily destroyed this rock in the real world." Carl complained even as he began raining blows down on the stubborn rock. The sooner he got punching, the sooner he would finish the quest.

Carl narrowed down his focus on the single task before him. Time passed as Carl didn't flag in his efforts. After 50 minutes of pounding away on the stone, it finally broke apart into many pieces, falling to the ground and then dissolving away into motes of light that then faded into nothing. Carl saw the notification in the corner of his eye that said the quest was complete.

Carl reported a successful demolition effort to Old Man. For his effort, he was rewarded with the martial arts skill. Carl thanked Old Man and made his way further up the mountain before checking out what the martial arts skill did for him.

Looking over the description, Carl saw that it would give him a certain amount of multiplication of his damage dealt with his hands and feet, based off his stats.

"If most of our enemies in this game were humanoid, this might be a path people would be happy to take. But most of our fights are with giant monsters. I can't see too many people giving up the bladed weapons in order to punch things to death." Carl laughed.

He might play with the skill in the future to see if he could improve it. But he only really had the confidence to do so because he was already highly skilled and could basically avoid the damaging attacks of the bosses.

With that quest diversion complete, Carl continued his trek over the mountains looking for more crafting materials. Traversing the mountain areas was so easy when he had parkour skills and the body of a master.


	21. SAO 3

A few days later, Carl received notification from Argo about the two groups headed by Diabel and Kibaou and their plans to attack the 2nd level boss. Diabel had founded the guild Dragon Knights Brigade, while Kibaou had founded the guild Aincrad Liberation Squad.

Carl noted that neither side contacted him to join them in killing the boss, despite having ample evidence of his skill.

"Is it because I'm not under either of their banners, and they can't control me that they didn't give me a call?" Carl laughed. "Is it because they want a better chance of getting the final attack bonus and boss loot, and their greed is leading their decisions?"

Argo noted that the raiding parties were already in the labyrinth attempting to defeat the boss, but that she had just completed some quests that gave her information about the floor boss, and she had no way to get the information to them quickly.

The information she received indicated that there were two mini bosses before the real floor boss would appear. Nato the Colonel Taurus was the first mini boss. The second was Baran the General Taurus. And the floor boss was Asterius the Taurus King.

Once Carl received the information from Argo, including what she learned about the boss's attack patterns and weaknesses, he made his way to the labyrinth. The programming of the world was so good that it even allowed for the faint traces left behind by players or monsters, so Carl was able to track the route the group took through the maze.

Carl arrived when they were halfway through the fight with Baran, the second mini boss. Baran was a 3.5 meter tall Minotaur with crimson fur. He wore a thick gold chain around his neck that would make many a rapper envious, and wielded a large battle hammer.

When Carl arrived, he saw Diabel and Kibaou both notice his appearance. They both sent a couple of men to try to delay Carl from rushing in and stealing the kill.

"Tch. So petty." Carl commented to the four men that were attempting to block his way.

"Please understand, Rondo. We've worked hard to clear this boss. It wouldn't be right for you to steal him at the last moment." One of the more diplomatic members smoothly replied.

"Fine, I understand why you're doing it. Guess my fresh intel about the boss fight isn't needed. I'll just wait right here. You can go back to the fight. I won't interfere in the current fight." Carl promised.

He could see the men hesitating, wondering if they could trust him. Carl simply smiled, leaned back against the wall as if to watch a good show, and shooed them away. Since he seemed sincere, they moved back into the fight.

Carl watched Kibaou give him a sneering look of triumph. Kibaou was full of pride in having backed him down. Carl simply chuckled at the man's idiocy and arrogance, not at all bothered.

Soon enough, Baran's health dropped enough to trigger his rage. The group was getting excited, they were almost there!

Once they finished off the Taurus General, the raid group started celebrating, jumping together and cheering. They thought the General was the floor boss. Just when they were at their happiest, the actual floor boss appeared.

Asterius the Taurus King was a 4 meter tall minotaur, with a crown on his head surrounded by his 6 horns. He stomped the ground a few times when he appeared, breathed in as the group began noticing him, and breathed out his lightning attack, paralyzing the majority of players, including Diabel, Lind, his second in command, and Kibaou.

Carl laughed loudly, which was heard by every member of the raid group. "Oh yeah, I bring news of the floor boss. He will appear after the Taurus General is dead and breathe out a paralyzing lightning. Didn't you guys not want me to interfere? I think I'll just wait here to see how you do in the fight."

Despite Carl's words, he was pulling out his bow and an arrow. Aiming quickly, he shot the boss in the head, stunning it for a few seconds.

"Yeah, I'll leave you guys to the fight, since you all seem to not want me here." Carl twisted the knife. He was reveling in the schadenfreude, even if he wouldn't let the boss kill them.

He quick switched his bow for his sword, and dashed forward to engage the boss. There were still a few members of the raid group who hadn't been paralyzed by the boss's attack that had still been paralyzed in fear from being the only ones free to move. They had no confidence they could even survive solo against the boss, so they didn't have the courage to act until they saw Carl successfully engaging the boss.

Carl soon had the boss's full attention. Asterius was armed with a massive hammer twice the size of Baran's hammer. Carl had his work cut out for him with misdirecting the Boss's strikes so none of them landed on the paralyzed members.

Despite his Master Class martial skills, the damage he could actually do to the boss was limited by the AI to what his stats and weapons say he should be able to do. And the bosses were meant to be taken down by groups of at least 30, if not more. So despite all the hits Carl got on the boss, the boss's health was dropping slowly.

It gave the players time to recover from their paralysis, and join him in attacking the boss. Sure, they felt embarrassed at being saved by him, but they still had a boss to defeat, and lootz to possibly win. What's a little embarrassment in front of boss lootz?

Now that the players knew about the boss's paralyzing attacks, most of them were able to avoid it. There were still a few dumb ones who thought they were good enough to just barely dodge it who managed to get themselves paralyzed. Carl called out for their friends to drag them away from the battle to recover, so they didn't chance getting splattered.

When the boss was low enough on health, he went into rampage mode, attacking faster and stronger. Carl continued fighting, not at all bothered by the boss's speed increase. After a few more moments, the boss died, with Carl getting the last attack bonus.

After the boss died, the axe wielding black man that had put Kibaou in his place in the meeting before the first boss come up to thank Carl for his help. He was accompanied by the dark haired teenager boy that Carl had noted was a Beta Tester, and a red haired teenager girl who was previously by his side. Carl noted that they seemed to be an item, having hooked up after the previous boss fight.

"Thanks Rondo, for the help. Despite what the other two guild leaders think, I'm glad you showed up." Agil said.

"You're welcome. Despite not liking them or their attitudes much, I don't really want to see the only people trying to clear the game die due to bad intel or an arrogant attitude." Carl responded.

"Hey, Rondo. I'm Kirito, and this is Asuna." Kirito introduced himself and his girl. "Thanks for the save."

"Anytime. I've noticed you three have some decent moves. Keep up the good work." Carl responded.

"Hey, can we add you as a friend?" Kirito asked, somewhat nervously.

"Sure, call me if you ever need help, and I'll do the same." Carl offered. "So, what are you going to do now?" He asked the three as he watched the two guilds led by Diabel and Kibaou troop out of the boss room without a word to him. 'I guess Kibaou can learn. He didn't even complain about me getting the boss loot this time.' Carl sardonically thought.

"Onward and upward, my friend. We're off to the third floor to start preparing for the next boss fight." Agil casually stated, while Asuna nodded agreement and Kirito shrugged awkwardly in assent.

"Sounds good. Let's go before those douchebags hog all the prime hunting spots." Carl laughed, ignoring the glares Asuna sent his way for his language. His persona in this world of a rich third generation and irreverent gamer sometimes bled through.

The group of four made their way to the exit onto the third floor, joking and getting to know each other. They soon exited the dungeon onto a high cliff, overlooking the endless forests of the third level.

Carl whistled at the sight. "Wonder how many people will get hopelessly lost in that forest."

"More than a few, no doubt." Agil commented, before leading the group down the path.

* * *

[AN: Usually I don't like writing authors notes that interrupt the flow of the story, but I thought this one was warranted, since I'm sure lots of people will be saying stuff like "that's not how things went in SAO". Or at least the imaginary voices in my head are saying stuff. /shrug

First of all, Carl doesn't know the plot of SAO. So he doesn't know that the teenager Kirito is supposed to be the protagonist. Carl just does what he wants. I don't like some of the douchebags characters in the SAO story, so I'm trying to have fun with it by mocking them at every opportunity. Don't know if it works for everyone, but I'm enjoying it.

Second, with the presence of Carl, Kirito didn't need to do his stupid cringeworthy self-sacrificing bit by declaring himself a "Beater" after the first boss was downed to try to get the player base to lighten up on the other beta testers. As a result Kirito got to stay around and hang with Asuna right from the beginning, thus starting their relationship much earlier. As a result he never went through that arc where he led some lowbies to their deaths. So he never went through that guilt trip and confidence crusher.

In my opinion Kirito wasn't a very strong character at the beginning. Before the game ever started he ran away from the responsibility of inheriting his grandfather's kendo expectations. He assumed the role of villain as a "Beater" so that the beta players would get a break from the hate of the regular players, but in my opinion he also ran away from that responsibility by joining a low level guild so he could pretend he was a normal player or something. And then he accidentally led them to their deaths. Whoops Kirito!

He was a typical teenager, with their weird teenager hang ups. Like how he thought that adding people to your online friends list was more momentous and important than it was. What was up with that? He acted like making an online friend was a lifelong declaration of loyalty or something instead of just a way to contact someone in game.

He was basically an annoying young teenager that eventually grew into a decent adult. Despite the mistakes and growing pains, he eventually became a better person that many could rely on.

So I think that by having Carl around, he doesn't feel as much pressure to be the high level, highly skilled player that has to stand in front of everyone, right at the beginning. Like many teenagers, he isn't very comfortable with the spotlight. With Carl around, he can grow up into a responsible person without being too pressured. Afterall, he's got his Waifu Asuna around to help him. She'll keep him on the right path. Now back to the story.]

* * *

The group of four soon arrived at the town close by the exit from the dungeon. Carl soon bid the other three farewell for the time being, agreeing to group up again if there were any group quests around.

Carl appreciated how Agil backed down Kibaou at the meeting before the first boss with his calm logical approach, and he seemed like an easy going guy that he could befriend. And the two teenagers, Kirito and Asuna were adorkable in how they interacted with each other. But Carl felt the need to get out and hunt alone and unencumbered. With his stamina and speed, having to wait for others to keep up would just be a huge pain.

He found himself somewhat annoyed by the guilds, Dragon Knight Brigade, or DKB, and the Aincrad Liberation Squad, or ALS, that pushed for the boss clearing so soon.

He hadn't fully explored the second floor to his satisfaction before getting the notice that they were pushing forward for the next floor. Since they only survived the encounters with Carl's help, he knew they were going to be pushing even more. They felt they had to establish themselves as powerful organizations. They needed something to prove themselves.

Just like any other human, they could have a number of different impetuses, or causes, pushing them. People were complicated like that.

Outwardly and for public consumption was their righteous mantle of Floor Clearers. Their desire to cry out to the normal players "We're clearing the floors for you, so you can get out of this death game. Look upon us and be awed!"

Inwardly, they wanted the lootz and the prizes for being first in everything. And Carl was amused to note, they also wanted to show him up. They wanted to rub their higher status in Carl's face and prove to themselves they were better.

And while Carl didn't care what they thought of him, he realized that if he was going to be keeping on the forefront of things, he needed to be more proactive. He couldn't take the time to properly explore _everything_ on each floor, unless the floor clearers got into a tough spot and couldn't advance.

So Carl set out to do just that. He hadn't really pushed himself hard since waking up his jump memories at the town square when Kayaba started his death game. He'd felt smugly superior to the rest of the players because of his access to his abilities. He didn't feel the pressure like they did, because he knew he could just sit back for ten years in the game if he wanted before getting out.

But a number of things had changed Carl's mind. First of all was the people he'd been interacting with since arriving in the game. He'd almost tasted their despair, and realized for them it wasn't much of a vacation. He felt kind of bad for them, and wanted to help.

The other big impact was realizing that he could transfer the digitally crafted animals and plants into his farm and start growing them for real. That they retained the properties coded into them when they were made real. So now, he wanted to explore every part of this 100 floor world, and plunder – er… add everything to his growing assets.

He was getting more properties and land attached to his Warehouse each jump. Added on with how his powers were growing with each jump, and Carl was feeling like he was really moving up there in the world. He knew, intellectually, that he was still very far away from the power of entities like Spere 037, but he was getting addicted to the feeling of gaining powers and assets from each jump.

And speaking of adding to his powers, Carl realized that he hadn't been practicing the new talents that he had. At most he'd been enjoying **My Quest Senses Are Tingling** to find quests and **APM Intensifies** to leisurely enjoy combat.

But he'd been totally ignoring **Roleplay** and **Environment PK**. Carl decided that he'd start spending more time playing with those two perks.

As he thought about it, Carl realized that like a training trip, each jump world gave Carl 10 years in which to get used to and practice his new abilities. And now with the **Like Riding a Bike** perk, his skills would never deteriorate. So he could afford to spend some time focusing on the new abilities and making sure he was competent in their use.

So Carl made a plan. He first got himself a mask that would keep his identity secret. He then crafted a look and persona for himself. For several hours each day, during the day, Carl would wear his mask, the Coat of Midnight that he got from Illfang, and some other black colored armor that his Rondo persona would never wear.

During his time as Grutter, as he labeled his Black Swordsman persona, he turned back on his systems skill auto assist, and started using the skills that everyone else used. He hadn't leveled the skills up yet, so it was a grind at first.

His Rondo persona was already known for his unusual style of combat and his swift and deadly movements. He used a long sword and occasionally a bow and arrow. So he had to change things up so no one would catch on to his deception.

As Grutter, he was going to be known for using a katana and the chakram he got from the field boss on the second floor. He would act like a ninja. With the Grutter persona, he would practice using the terrain to trip up and attack the opponents and just generally dominate them.

He soon found that his **Environment PK** perk synergized well with his knowledge of hunting and traps he gained from the Farmville world. Which made him especially deadly in such a maze of forests like the third level.

Meanwhile, at night, Carl would revert to his Rondo persona and armor/weapons loadout. And he would go to town on the poor mobs in the forest. Most of the players had to sleep every night to remain alert. Carl only had to spend a couple hours a day meditating to remain in peak condition. So he spent a lot more time grinding and hunting than most, and practicing his two different persona's skills and mannerisms.

The levels of the floor bosses only increased by 5 levels each floor. So the first level boss had been level 5, the second was level 10, and so on. Carl was already level 12 by the time they fought the first floor boss, and he was level 17 when they killed the second floor boss. But he noticed that the average player that showed up for boss fights was only about 2 levels above the boss.

Which meant that the players that were showing up to clear the levels were cutting things pretty thin by only getting a couple more levels than the bosses were. He was sure that would bite them in the ass sometime in the future, when they didn't have the levels, skills, or stats to handle a powerful floor boss.

Carl just shrugged when he thought about it. They weren't his responsibility. They could do what they want, play the game how they want, and tempt death if they wanted. If he was nearby he would lend a hand, but he wasn't going to lose meditation time over it. (Cause he didn't really sleep.)

As Carl spent time in his Grutter ninja persona, he was having a lot of fun. Despite using the system's skills feeling weird, it was very amusing to watch the mobs die to environmental damage or traps he set. Occasionally he would run across members of the ALS or the DKB in the forests. He would have a fun time being a ninja and shadowing them while setting up harmless pranks that made their lives difficult.

Wasp and bee hives that fell on their heads. Itching powder that mysteriously got all over the bushes they had to push through. Globs of mud that somehow got flung into their faces when they stepped on the wrong branch. Carl had a hard time muffling his laughter sometimes.

So what if he was being petty? He had heard all the nasty rumors and slander the two groups were spreading about him to the populace. Just because he set up anti-slander slander to expose the two groups for the power hungry assholes they were didn't mean they were remotely square.

So Carl quite enjoyed himself. If death in this game wasn't permanent for the people, he would have taken to spawn camping the ALS and DKB where ever he found them. A little bit of inconvenience from his traps and entertaining him was the least amount of repayment they could offer for the horrible mental strain they were putting him through by having to defend his good name.

"Pfft, yeah. I couldn't even say that in my mind without laughing." Carl snorted. "Good thing my root beer even protects against headaches that form when dealing with idiots." Carl smiled happily at his mug of root beer. "So good…" He nearly moaned after taking a sip.

* * *

The first floor had taken a full month to clear. Everyone was still dealing with the psychological blow of being stuck in a death game, so their timid and slow clear speed made sense.

The second floor had taken nearly three weeks. They finished off the second floor boss just in time for Christmas, on Christmas Eve. That news had raised the holiday cheer a bit.

The numbers of players involved in working to clear the floors was rising. The two main guilds, ALS and DKB were recruiting many members to contribute materials, time, and crafting to their main raid teams, so the raid teams could focus on leveling up and clearing the floor bosses.

The third floor boss fight happened on the 14th of January. The fight against Nerius the Evil Treant had been difficult, but no one died. Carl once more got the final attack on the boss. He could tell he was pissing off Kibaou and Diabel, but he didn't care too much.

He cheaply sold some of the gear he made or looted from the bosses that he didn't need to Agil, Kirito, and Asuna. They were the only people he regularly partied with, and he wanted them to have some good stuff so they could stay strong.

He had seen a few players attempting to use the bows and arrows he crafted to be ranged members in the fight, and they did decently well. Cardinal had finally recognized that it could be a valid martial path, and started creating skills for archers to learn as well as gear drops. They were still in their infancy, but Carl could see they had potential to add more damage in boss fights.

Bosses were always at least 3.5 meters tall, sometimes taller. Nerius the Evil Treant had been nearly 6 meters tall. So there was a lot of boss to go around above the heads of the front line fighters for the archers to aim at.

With larger numbers of players working hard to level so they could be part of the raid, and even more players fulfilling a support role to keep the raiders stocked and able to focus on fighting, the speed at which the players cleared the bosses began to pick up.

They soon cleared the fourth floor boss on January 31st, 2023. Wythege the Hippocampus was a horse type boss, 4 meters tall at the shoulder. He used his speed to try to break up the player's formations. The archer squad really proved their worth in that fight, keeping up a continual harassment of the boss while he ran around, looking for an opening to charge at. There were many crafters that had picked up an arrow making skill to keep the archers supplied, and mobs and bosses were beginning to drop bows of high quality for players.

Fourteen days later, the raid groups finished off the fifth floor boss on February 14th. Fuscus the Vacant Collosus was a 4 meter tall stone golem that hit like a Mack truck. They lost one player who was so focused on slashing him and trying to get the final hit bonus that he neglected to dodge. The swing wasn't even that fast, but the idiot had ignored his own safety for a greedy chance to get boss loot.

And it dropped a large hammer, so the fool couldn't have even used it. Carl was disgusted at the waste, but like he told Kirito before the first boss fight. If people throw themselves into danger, they are responsible for their own lives and the consequence of failure is death.

The first death in a boss fight shocked everyone, and they slowed down again by a few more days. 19 days after they finished off the fifth floor boss, they cleared the sixth floor. After that they took 2 weeks to clear the seventh floor. 12 days to clear the eighth. 10 days to clear the ninth. And only one week to clear the tenth.

After that, the raid groups seemed to hit their stride. By that point everyone had learned their roles and were good in them. They were confident in their skills, and their team work. Even though the two main raid guilds still butted heads over so many decisions, they also understood how to work together to defeat the bosses.

The raid guilds and Carl and his small group of friends continued to clear a floor a week from after the 10th floor until they hit the 25th floor boss, where disaster struck. Up until the 25th floor, both Dragon Knight Brigade and the Aincrad Liberation Squad had gone together to clear the floors.

Despite the two raid groups always fighting each other for loot, hunting grounds, and resources, they grudgingly worked together. Even though they wanted their guild to get the lion's share of resources, they knew the ultimate goal was to get out of the death game.

And usually the two guilds would get the intel from the information brokers about the floor bosses, so they would end up joining forces to defeat the boss.

But this time, one of the ALS teams found the location of the floor boss, and Kibaou let his greed overcome his common sense. Usually with the two raid teams together, they would have around 65-70 people on each raid to kill the boss.

But this time, with only the ALS knowing about the boss's location Kibaou saw his chance to pull ahead from the other groups. With bad intel about the boss's abilities, and only 60 people, many of which had never participated in a boss fight, he tried to defeat the boss. And lost badly. Over half of their numbers were wiped out in the fight before the rest could retreat.

35 players, many of whom were skilled and high level, died in one man's greedy attempt to become number one. To prove that he was the best, and whatever else ran through the man's mind.

After that disaster the ALS began hemorrhaging members. No one wanted to stay on that sinking ship after Kibaou got 35 players killed. Kibaou took his remaining friends and supporters and retreated from the front lines to lick their wounds.

In their place a new guild rose up, named Knights of the Blood. Their guild leader was named Heathcliff. Privately, Carl chuckled about the name he chose. He probably chose the name after the Wuthering Heights character, and not the cat, but Carl still found it funny.

At least Heathcliff was a lot more organized and not prone to the greed, anger, and offended pride that guided Kibaou.

Kirito and Asuna eventually made the decision to join the guild Knights of the Blood. They were a lot more receptive to Heathcliff's recruitment pitch than they had been to the controlling nature of Kibaou and Diabel.

Agil chose at that time to stop fighting on the front line, and open up a shop that catered to players. When Carl asked why, he responded that the massacre on the 25th floor had made him aware of how close he'd come to dying himself, and that he wouldn't forgive himself if he didn't return to his wife. Carl couldn't blame him, and even helped him set up his shop.

Agil had gathered enough resources to be able to afford the cost of doing business, especially with Carl's help. He also hired an assistant so he could get out of the shop to continue leveling occasionally, even if he wasn't going to be participating in any more of the boss fights.

Carl of course chose to remain separate from the guilds. He had too many things to do to have the guild leadership command him on what he could or couldn't do, where he could or couldn't go. And no matter how attractive the sign on bonus that Heathcliff offered, Carl was adamant he wouldn't join. He was still more than happy to help them if asked, but that was it.

After the massacre of the ALS, it took another two weeks for the Knights of the Blood, or KoB, and the DKB to put together a treaty of sorts to formalize their interactions. Neither side wanted to see another massacre of players that hasty actions of Kibaou caused. They agreed to share the responsibilities, dangers, and benefits of floor boss clearing.

While the KoB and the DKB were in negotiations, Carl had two free weeks to continue to pillage the virtual world Kayaba created. He made the most of his time, traveling around the areas he hadn't gotten a chance to see yet.

By the time everyone was ready to take on the boss again, Carl was pleased with the number of different plants and animals he had added to his farm, as well as the crafting levels he had gotten. After having a bit of a vacation, he was ready to return to the grind and help kill bosses.

The battle with the 4 meter tall succubus went well. Carl was impressed at how well Heathcliff's KoB worked with the DKB. Everyone was very focused on the goal of killing bosses. They weren't worried about the loot, and they calmly accepted the danger without losing their fighting spirit.

Now that Carl saw that the raid groups were being led properly, he was less worried about needing to show up at the battles. If he happened to miss a boss fight in the subsequent months because he was preoccupied with a quest or item, he was sure that Heathcliff and Diabel could manage. Kibaou had really been a disruptive influence that caused problems where ever he went.

* * *

On the one year anniversary of being stuck in the game, the raid group finished off the 37th floor boss. Carl made sure to be there for the fight on that significant date. It had been a slog. Literally. The boss room was set up like a swamp, and they had to fight a giant Kappa.

Keeping the boss from dragging any players deeper into the water and drowning them had been a chore. Anytime he got a hold on a player, they had to quickly hit the boss in the head to spill some of the water from his head, making him release the player and retreat back into his swamp to refill the water in his head.

A couple of days after the fight, Carl received a special report from Argo. Apparently Kibaou had been making another nuisance of himself. He had led the remaining supporters back to the first floor where they had merged with the organization MMO Today.

MMO Today had been originally built and led by a player by the name Thinker to help as many players as he could with resources and help in getting by. When Kibaou had shown up, Thinker had originally been happy to help Kibaou's group of people. They were floor clearers who had a tragedy befall them, and Thinker wanted to help them get back on their feet.

But after a short time, Kibaou and his supporters used their high levels to take control of the organization. They renamed it the Aincrad Liberation Force, and changed the way they operated. They started forcing all the players around to pay a protection tax. They took control of resources, and forced the lower leveled players to submit to their control.

There were rumors that they arranged "accidents" for anyone who was outspoken against them, until everyone had no choice but to accede to their despotic rule.

Carl by this point was fed up with Kibaou and other people like him. If there was any truth to the rumors, he needed to be stopped. He could have left Kibaou alone after his mistakes got his own people killed, because it wasn't deliberate. But now that he was running an extortion racket? And maybe arranging deaths? No more.

He dressed up in his Grutter persona before teleporting to the beginning town on level 1. As each of the levels were cleared, the designated town was hooked up to the teleport network. As Carl exited the building where the teleport was located, he noticed several guards that stood outside. They didn't seem too bothered by anyone exiting, but they were on guard against letting anyone in without paying a toll.

Carl noticed one of the guards broke off and started following him. Carl bared his teeth in a humorless grin behind his mask. Already he was seeing signs of Kibaou's occupation forces. After turning a corner so he was out of sight of his tail, and seeing that no one was watching him, he took to the roofs, disappearing from his tail's sight.

Over the next week, Carl lurked around the town, spying on Kibaou and his men. Taking notes on just what they were up to, and how far they were going. The Coat of Midnight was actually helpful, in that it helped him hide better.

After a few days Carl saw Kibaou making his way secretly to a grove of trees just outside the town late at night. Hiding nearby, Carl saw him meeting with a man wearing a dark cloak with a hood that covered his features.

"What kept you, Guild Leader Kibaou?" The dark cloaked man mockingly questioned after stepping out of the tree line. Carl saw that the diamond above his head was orange. He had at the very least committed a crime.

Normal players had a green diamond floating above their heads. When a player committed some crime, like violence against another player, their diamond would turn orange. But it would fade over time back to green. On the fourth time a crime was committed, a player would have to do a quest to turn in back green. On the fifth time, their diamond would be permanently orange.

If a player killed another green player, they would turn permanently orange. However, if a green player killed an orange player, it would be considered justified self defense, and the green player's color wouldn't change.

"Tch!" Kibaou seemed frustrated. "I had a meeting. Here's your weeks payment and a list of targets." Kibaou grunted, while handing off a sack to the dark cloaked man. "Make sure no one connects it with me. I don't need that kind of heat."

"Don't worry. We at Laughing Coffin stand by our deals. We'll take care of your dissidents, and you continue paying us, and everything will be just fine."

'Hmm, time to track this bastard back to his group Laughing Coffin. This scene seems to paint Kibaou as guilty, but I've got to be sure.' Carl thought. With his supreme senses, he was able to spy and listen in from very far away, and made sure he wasn't seen by either man.

Kibaou soon returned back to the town, while Carl followed the dark cloaked man in a circuitous route through the woods to his rendezvous at a cave. Carl couldn't enter the cave without letting them know he was there, but he recalled it had a second exit.

After listening to the meeting going on inside, and the list referred to as a "kill list", Carl felt he had a pretty good handle on what was going on. Chancing a quick glance inside, Carl counted 19 orange players. The leader was referred to as PoH.

Now that Carl was sure this was a group of killers, he quickly got to work when he heard they would be spending the night in the cave and move on in the morning. He started setting traps outside the entrance. He then moved to the other exit, and set some more traps in case any managed to get behind him.

He then slipped inside. There was one guard awake at the exit that Carl entered. Pulling out his bow and arrows, Carl smeared paralyzing poison on the arrowheads. He quickly fired, and hit his target. One arrow wasn't enough to kill him, but the poison Carl placed on the arrow was enough to keep him from calling out the alarm.

Carl quietly moved next to him, and sliced his throat a few times until the man died. A bag representing his inventory landed on the ground after he dissolved. Carl quickly put it in his inventory. Apparently, auto loot doesn't work for PKs. Looking up at his diamond, Carl was relieved to see it was still green.

Reassured that he wasn't permanently an orange player, Carl moved on. After sneaking in to the enemy's camp, he began going bedroll by bedroll and killing each orange player he came to as quietly as he could after paralyzing them.

After Carl was halfway through the 19 players, the alarm was raised, and all the orange players leapt to their feet. Carl kept an eye on the leader, and when he was about to make his escape, Carl placed a poison arrow in his back, before going back to his sword.

Even though he was outnumbered 9 vs 1, Carl simply couldn't be hit by the players. Even though they may have decent levels, they had crappy, normal human reaction times and speeds. Carl was like a lion among a herd of lambs, tearing them apart.

After 10 minutes of work, Carl finally tracked down and killed the last member who had run outside the cave and promptly gotten caught in Carl's traps. Carl ignored the pleas for mercy they babbled. They were a guild dedicated to murdering people to get money and loot, so he had no mercy for them.

Carl just couldn't understand it himself. Maybe they thought they were never going to be getting out of the virtual world, and so would never stand trial? Or that there was no evidence? Maybe they thought they weren't really killing people? Maybe they did think they were killing people and liked it?

Whatever the reason, Carl couldn't countenance leaving them to their own murderous devices. They were murdering people who didn't deserve it. Killing murderers like Carl had done was vastly different from murdering innocents. Carl may have to suffer from some bad sleep for a few nights, but he thought it was something that was necessary to save more innocent lives.

Checking his loot from the PK guild, Carl found the so called "kill list" that Kibaou gave them. It was a husband-wife combo that was trying to get the orphans out from under Kibaou's influence. Kibaou didn't want that to happen because he was making plenty of money off their labor.

So the dilemma that Carl faced was, how to end Kibaou's predations on people without outright killing him and turning orange permanently? How can he sucker Kibaou into a trap to turn himself orange so he could take care of him? Or how to arrange an accident that wouldn't reflect on Carl's own color?


	22. SAO 4

Kibaou scowled as he stomped down the road. He was not having a good day. That damned couple snuck another kid out of his control last night. Didn't those bastards understand that they need to contribute to the cause if they want to get out of this damned game?

But no, they keep undermining his authority. Just like those damned assholes, Rondo, Diabel, and Lind. And now there was another guild leader, Heathcliff. But he's found the solution to his problem now. It's just a matter of time before the psychos of Laughing Coffin take them all out.

Kibaou didn't consider himself a bad person, so he wouldn't do that kind of thing personally. But if he can find someone to take care of problems so he can get the work done he knows needs to be done so they can get out of this damned game? Then he's going to take that opportunity.

His day started out bad with news of that damned couple. And now he had gotten news that a couple groups lost control of the hunting grounds they were in charge of. Several groups of people were able to spend all day killing mobs without paying the tax.

Kibaou snorted. They tried to tell him some cock n' bull story of being haunted. Idiots, there were no ghosts in the freaking game. So now he had to make a trip to the hunting ground to set those idiots straight, and make sure they got paid appropriately for the hard work they did in taking charge in this death game and making sure everything was regulated. Making sure every player is safe was an important job. And it took a lot of capital to run, so it's only fair for the players to pay him for their own safety.

Kibaou had just crossed a bridge when something whacked him in the back, causing him to stumble off the trail, tumbling down a ravine.

"Who the hell was that?!" Kibaou angrily exclaimed, looking for who hit him. Looking up the ravine he fell down, Kibaou saw that there was a fallen tree across the path that hit him in the back. "What the hell?"

Kibaou then started hearing whispers in the shadows of the forest. Nervously looking around, he scanned the area for the players he knew had to be hiding there. "Who's there?" He shouted. "Come on out in the open!"

Getting no response, but hearing someone moving in the forest, Kibaou nervously unsheathed his sword. Whoever this was doing this was in trouble! He wasn't going to stand for this nonsense.

Kibaou then began climbing up the small ravine back to the trail. He heard a noise behind him that startled him, and he started to spin around to see what it was, when he lost his footing and started to fall. Flailing with the hand that didn't hold a sword, he caught something to steady himself while feeling his sword hit something.

Only after taking a moment to breathe in relief did Kibaou realize that the thing he'd grabbed to steady himself was leather. He looked up. There was a black clad man wearing a Noh mask so he couldn't see who it was. He was looking down.

Kibaou followed his gaze down and saw that his sword was impaled in the man's leg.

"Oops." The dark clad man said.

Kibaou looked back up at the man, and saw he was now looking above Kibaou's head. Glancing up, Kibaou noticed the green diamond above the Noh masked man's head, before seeing his own diamond had turned orange.

The last thing Kibaou saw was a blur as the black clad man in a Noh mask attacked.

* * *

Carl looked down at the bag of loot representing the end of Kibaou's life in disgust. "The moment you started hiring killers to murder people who were inconvenient, is the moment you turned into a monster Kibaou. Hopefully you'll be a better person in your next life."

Carl picked up the bag and stuffed it in his inventory. No sense in leaving it to go to waste. He made his way back to town. Hopefully with the ringleader and instigator gone, cleaning up the mess left by Kibaou would be a bit easier.

Over the next couple of weeks, Carl worked hard to ensure the players that were being taken advantage of in the starter town had a start on getting independent from the protection racket.

Carl spent time meeting with the couple that kept sneaking the young 8-12 year olds away from Kibaou's control. He brought the kids out with him to low level hunting grounds, and taught them how to fight as a group. That way even the kids could be self sufficient by hunting low level mobs. The kids probably wouldn't ever get to the point they were helping them clear the floor bosses, but enabling them to survive on their own efforts instead of slaving away for tyrants allowed them to eat better, and be happier.

When Carl was checking out the starter town, he also discovered that an enterprising group of players had set up a brothel. Carl spent some time investigating how it was organized. If the women employed in the brothel made the decision to live that life instead of risking their deaths by hunting, Carl wouldn't care. But if they were being forced into it by higher level players that didn't let them hunt, and it was the only way to stay fed, then Carl had some issues with that.

After some discrete investigations, and questioning, Carl discovered that only about 1/5th of the girls working there actually professed to enjoying the lifestyle. Carl wasn't sure if they truly felt that way, or were avoiding angering the people who locked them up. But the rest of the girls had definitely been forced into it so the pimps could have enough girls on tap to make their money.

Carl pondered how he was going to do this. He couldn't just go in, sword swinging because the pimps were still green. They hadn't used any direct violence against the girls, just put them in situations that the only way to stay fed and alive was to give in to their demands.

So attacking and killing the pimps, while it would be satisfying, would turn him orange permanently, which he wanted to avoid. Despite the evilness of what they were doing, the guards and pimps had mostly intimidated and used fear tactics to keep the young girls in line, rather than violence. So Carl had to figure out a way to bring the girls that didn't want to be there out without initiating the violence.

After thinking for a moment, Carl realized he could take some inspiration from Jackie Chan. Make use of the environment. Every chair, bucket, and ladder would be his tool to trip up the guards and ensure they couldn't intervene and block the girls in.

First things first, though. Unless the girls were clued in to what was happening, they would probably put up as much of a fight as the guards did. So Carl tested something he'd been reluctant to do while in the simulation. Use magic.

Kayaba, that mad man, had set up the world of Aincrad to be one of swords and fighting, not magic. So Carl wasn't sure if using magic here would alert the AI Cardinal or not. But for this unobtrusive action, Carl decided he would test it. The AI had obviously not noticed his Warehouse so far, so that meant the AI wasn't perfect.

But would his own portal magic also fly under the radar? That, Carl wasn't sure of, because the magic of the Warehouse was much better than his portals. But would Kayaba actually program the AI to check for magic when magic wasn't programmed in to the simulation and humans of this world didn't use magic? Carl thought he would probably be alright, as the idea that Kayaba could anticipate someone who he trapped in the game being able to use real magic was quite a stretch.

He opened up a small portal to transfer a small pouch from one side of town to the other. He deposited the empty pouch in an out of the way place. And then he waited for several hours.

Several hours of tense but boredom inducing time spent, and nothing happened. No notices by the AI, nothing came to investigate him or attack him for being unnatural. Carl decided he was in the clear, as long as he did subtle things and not anything too flashy.

So early the next day, when the brothel was in its downtime, Carl started opening portals to each of the girl's rooms and dropped a small package to each of them that they would notice upon waking up.

Each package had a note explaining how he would jail break them if they wanted him to. The notes were enchanted to make sure they couldn't share the information with anyone who didn't get the note. And only the girls could read the note.

If they wanted to be free of the brothel, they had to be ready the next morning. If they wanted out, they should hang the little door hanger decoration on their rooms door knob. Carl would take care of the rest.

Carl decided to use magic to inform the girls of the jail break, but he would be using mundane methods to enact the actual jail break. The AI might ignore a few packages being delivered by magic in a low priority area. But he didn't think the AI would ignore the strange goings on caused by magic if there was a lot of excitement around many players, and players started teleporting around without teleport crystals. It would be obligated to investigate more deeply then.

Carl suddenly stopped, and hit himself in the forehead.

"Change of plans…" Carl muttered to himself. "Just because I never use them, I can't believe I forgot about teleport crystals. Idiot!"

He hurriedly went and consulted with the Yamato couple that were so ardent in their attempts to help the young orphan kids. When he got their agreement to help, he purchased enough teleport crystals for each girl in the brothel, and set them to teleport them to the building the orphans were at.

He then hurriedly made up new care packages for the girls and exchanged them with his first, too complicated, attempt.

He realized that the girls might be too wary of falling into a worse trap than they were already in, so he included in his note an urging for any of the girls that escaped via the teleport crystal to contact the other girls to let them know if it was safe or not. He also included recordings from the Yamatos telling the girls to take the chance to escape. He was sure many of the girls would have heard the gossip about the Yamatos from the players that visited.

He also included an alarm clock in the second package. Why wait for them to wake up later in the day and have the possibility of their guards doing something rash, when he can control when they wake up and ensure they were all on the same page at the same time?

That afternoon, Carl saw that about half of the girls teleported out of the brothel. They were welcomed by the Yamato couple, and the few other adults that spent their time and energy making sure the orphan kids, as they were called, were taken care of.

Once the girls were sure that it wasn't a trap, they contacted their friends that were still in the brothel. All the rest of the girls showed up after that. Carl had been right, no girl truly wants to be forced into prostitution, they were just mouthing the words to survive.

Carl watched as the three groups, the adults, the kids, and the girls, warily interacted at first. Their past year had taught them to be wary of outsiders and anything that sounded too good to be true. But soon enough, the ice was broken and they started getting along.

Carl stayed with the group for a couple more weeks to help the groups get up to speed on combat and hunting mobs for their dinner. The girls especially took to the lessons with zeal. They didn't want to ever be helpless again and be trapped into selling their bodies.

Carl had found out that there were a couple girls that stayed behind in the brothel for whatever reason. The brothel owners were quite angry and some of them resorted to violence on the girls to express that anger. When Carl discovered that some of them turned orange temporarily, he struck before they could turn back to green.

With the majority of their girls teleporting out whenever they managed to capture another one, and with some of their fellow pimps dying, the rest of the low life scum reformed real quick and treated the few girls that remained with kids gloves.

When Carl had thought about the girls that remained in the brothels, he decided against any more intervention. If the girls weren't even willing to extend the effort needed to activate their teleport crystal and take a chance on a better life, then that was their call. There was only so much he could do to help others out of their own situation. If they weren't willing to put forth effort to change their circumstances, then Carl wasn't going to waste any more time on the situation.

He had already spent enough time cleaning up the mess caused by low life scum. He had been away from the front lines for nearly a month. He had to get back there or he would be left behind.

He bid farewell to the orphan kids, the ex-brothel girls, and the adults that watched over them to return to the grind. He had been interacting with them in his Rondo personality. His Grutter identity was a ninja, so he wouldn't be hanging around all the time. Ninja's weren't to be seen!

For the rest of his time in Aincrad, Carl would travel back to spend time with the group every few weeks to check up on them and make sure they were still doing good. It always raised Carl's mood to see how well the group was doing now that they were independent and able to protect themselves.

Over time, as their levels rose from hunting mobs to keep fed, the ragtag group began moving up floors to hunt more mobs, get better crafting drops, and better food. Carl was happy to see they were doing good. And spending a couple days with them every few weeks was a good way to unwind.

When Carl returned to the front lines, he found that the clearing raids were about to clear the 41st floor. By this point, the average level of the players was 209. Carl was relieved that he had been far enough ahead from his grinding that he hadn't actually slipped behind, but the gap was narrowed, because he hadn't been hunting high level mobs.

Carl was level 223, so aside from missing out on the crafting materials and items from level 38 to 41, he was still quite prepared to re-join the boss hunting.

The giant Rose Bush boss on the 41st floor was a bit different from the regular bosses, but it had some nasty abilities. Shooting thorns, pollen bombs, and bee summons kept the players on their toes. But they managed to prevail in the end with no casualties.

The raid groups continued their swift and, as safe as they could make it, clearing schedule of a floor a week. The pace for most of the players was brutal. Nearly every waking moment was taken up by the driven need to grind. Grind out levels and skills, in preparation for the boss fights.

But despite the brutal, relentless, pace, there was almost no one who complained. At least not where anyone else could hear. The clearing groups had a sense of purpose. They _knew_ their quest was noble. They were the ones giving hope to every other player that one day they could escape this death trap and return home.

Even the players that weren't directly involved in the boss fights, like the crafters, knew in their hearts that they were a vital part of the effort. They kept the front line fighters supplied, geared, and ready to fight. Everyone had a sense of purpose that was difficult to find back in the real world.

Carl wondered if this situation, this community effort, this sense of everyone in concert, was the real reason Kayaba created this world and trapped everyone in it. "Man is a social animal." Carl remembered clearly those words from Spere 037. Kayaba could have ruled a world of digital persons in his own creation all on his own. But he apparently felt that he just couldn't enjoy it on his own. He had to have other people there to experience it with.

* * *

"…so all reports say everyone is ready. We'll meet up tomorrow at 10 a.m. as usual to attack the boss, unless there are any objections?" Heathcliff said as he prepared to end the meeting for the 49th floor boss fight.

Carl stood up. "I don't really have an objection to the plan, so much as an observation." Carl commented. He was usually hit and miss on the meetings. He didn't really care what the plan was for fighting the boss. He would follow along with what the guild leaders came up with, since they knew their men best.

Heathcliff stared at him for a moment. "Yes, Rondo? What is it?"

Carl briefly smiled. He knew the guild leaders were mildly uncomfortable about not being in charge of him, but he'd proven too useful in the past to leave him completely out of the loop.

"Well, my observation has to do with the fighters. I think it would be good to slow down the pace a bit for the next couple of weeks after this boss. Everyone is enthusiastic, and working hard. But even back in the regular world, people took vacations and breaks to de-stress from work. We're in a much more stressful environment, so I think throwing a couple of parties to let people unwind would benefit everyone in the long run." Carl suggested.

Heathcliff and Diabel got thoughtful looks on their faces. They looked to their seconds and advisors to see their opinion on the matter.

"He's got a point." One craggy faced old man in charge of the crafters finally admitted. "People aren't robots, able to go nonstop for so long. Our people have been amazing in what they've pulled off, but it would be a good idea to give them a bit more rest for a bit. Re-energize the battery, so to speak."

"Okay. After this boss fight, we'll stretch the next two into two weeks, instead of pushing for one. We'll have a party after the fight to relax, and take it easy for a week." Heathcliff announced after consulting with Diabel.

The meeting adjourned, and Carl left to meet with Agil, Kirito, and Asuna for an evening meal.

"Hey guys, how are you?" Carl asked as he sat down at the table the group had reserved for them.

"Doing good, my man. Business is booming." Agil responded.

"Good, good." Carl responded. He noticed that Asuna was blushing and nudging Kirito, while Kirito looked happy but embarrassed.

"We've got an announcement." Kirito finally said at Asuna's insistence. "Asuna and I are going to get married." He proudly stated.

"Congratulations!" Carl and Agil both said.

"A toast, for the lovely couple." Agil raised his glass.

"Cheers! To the lovely, and deadly, duo!" Carl followed Agil in raising his glass. He could see Asuna's happiness rise at their response.

"So we were thinking of taking a break after this boss for a couple weeks for a honeymoon…" Asuna started explaining their plans as their food arrived.

Carl enjoyed their evening meal, having a good time chatting with his friends. Kirito had really changed over the past year with the help of Asuna. He was no longer the socially awkward teenager. The two were among the best fighters in the raid groups, and their synergy was such that they were known as the Deadly Duo.

Their long time being such a stable part of the raids as members of the Kights of the Blood had done wonders for the two, bringing them out of their shells. They were looked up to and admired by their fellow guild members for their incredible skills. And Kirito had finally settled down into being a part of the guild, and was much more comfortable in social settings.

Asuna had bloomed from the shy thing she'd been back on the first floor. She had almost no hope then of surviving, but she was determined to die trying. Kirito had brought joy and enjoyment of the little things back into her life, giving her a new determination to stay alive to live. She in turn helped him out of his anti-social rut.

Agil over the past year had grown his business shop. He had last set up a store on the 35th level. He was going to be opening another branch up on the 50th level when they got there. Part of the reason he was so successful was because he wasn't money driven. He would always work deals out with the players to get them the best gear he could. He wanted the players to be well equipped to have the best chance at survival. And people recognized what he did for them, so he had many repeat customers.

Carl meanwhile regaled his friends with stories of what the orphans and girls had been up to. Carl's two groups of friends had bonded strongly once they got together a few weeks back.

The orphans had been introduced to the dirty side of human greed that wanted to turn them into little money makers, with not a care for their welfare. So when they met people who genuinely cared for them, they recognized it and reciprocated.

The former brother girls had been as far down in the dumps as they could, with no hope or end of the bad times in sight. When they finally got free, they were determined with a fiery passion to remain free. And they adopted all the orphan kids as their own siblings. There were fiercely determined that the young kids wouldn't have to experience any more of the darkness that human nature brings.

The two groups together would often explode on other adventurers when someone would say a wrong word or joke at their expense causing a big fight over anything from seating at a restaurant, to who had the rights to a hunting ground. Carl had taught them well, and they hadn't lost a fight yet, which amused the hell out of him.

* * *

The next day the boss fight went according to plan, the boss went down smoothly without any casualties. When the guild leaders of KoB and DKB announced the party that afternoon and the several day vacation, there was much cheering.

After two weeks off, the group came back with a fire in their bellies, recharged and ready to kick butt. The two week vacation had come at a perfect time, allowing Kirito and Asuna to have their honeymoon without slacking on their responsibilities.

A week later, they had finished off the floor 50 boss, which was a six armed metallic Buddha statue. After downing the boss, Carl helped Agil establish his new shop in the town on the 50th floor.

After which the raids continued their weekly schedule, with every month they would have an extra three days off to take a break. The guild leaders had decided that a regular holiday type break for a party and relaxation would keep everyone in their peak condition. And it worked.

They followed that schedule until they got to the 75th level boss, where the raids encountered a set back. Four people died in the initial attempt at the boss fight. The raid managed to pull back with minimal casualties, but the set back caused them to take the time to have a memorial for the fallen.

The leadership realized that the floor bosses coming up might be more difficult, the higher they rose. At floor 75 the boss was level 375. They had been trying to take it on with the average player level of 380. They made the decision that they would grind up to an average player level of 385 before taking on the boss again.

After taking three weeks to get up to the appropriate level, the information gathering players spent a lot more time looking for good hunting grounds to level the players. The better the grounds, the quicker the raid could level, and the quicker they could kill the boss.

The average time the raid spent on each level dropped down to two weeks. They were determined to avoid any more deaths, and if that meant they spent an extra week grinding levels, then that's what they would do.

The slowed down pace actually let their numbers swell greatly, as the players who were below them started having time to catch up and join the efforts to help the main raid group.

After the 76th floor, a player showed up asking for help revenging his friends who had been killed by a player killer guild named Titan's Hand. Some green players had lured his group out with tales of a promising hunting ground, where the orange players of Titan's Hand had killed them. He had barely escaped them, and came looking for help among the higher level Raid members.

Carl took on the job, following the player down to the 47th floor. After doing some hunting for the player killers, he came across a short beast tamer girl who was being targeted by the PK guild. The guild leader, a pretty girl named Rosalia, would party up with and lure groups of players into an ambush while her orange colored members would kill the group to loot them.

Carl had no mercy for murderers, especially ones who organize the whole murder. So he used his control over the environment to cause the orange players to continually trip and slash the green members of the Titan's Hand PK guild. Once they started fighting each other in earnest, and he helped the orange members finish off the green members from the shadows, he took out the remaining orange members.

He then helped the pitiful beat tamer girl Silica revive her poor dead feathered dragon, Pina. Seeing how the girl Silica had no one to hunt with, and didn't have a lot of time to spare either, he brought her to join The O'nG guild. It was what the orphans and former brothel girls named their guild. With Rondo's recommendation, they were happy to take in Silica into their hunting parties. Especially when they saw the cute little rare dragon that she had, which became the group's mascot.

Carl rejoined the floor clearing operations, where the raid group continued to clear a floor every two weeks. They had cleared the 79th floor the day before the two year anniversary of their being stuck in Aincrad. It was a solemn date for everyone, but their progress in the past two years gave everyone hope that they would be able to win their freedom soon.

The tough pace continued, clearing a floor every two weeks until they reached the 90th floor, where the boss difficulty level raised once more. It took them 21 days until they were ready to defeat the giant 6 meter tall crab boss.

The 91st Wolf boss also took 21 days to prepare for. The boss was level 455, and by now the players needed an average of 15 levels above the boss before they could defeat him.

The average players who weren't involved in the clearing of bosses at first still felt hope that they would get out soon. But as each floor took nearly a month, they resigned themselves to waiting it out for however long. It was already May. How much longer would they be stuck there?

The raid group finished off the 92nd floor boss, the giant house cat boss, on May 27th, 2025. Despite being cute, the battle had been deadly. Hair ball bombs, shrieking sound attacks, it had been a harrowing fight.

The 93rd level boss, a giant praying mantis, had been almost easy in comparison to the cat, since everyone expected a 5 meter tall insect to be tough, but they had been lulled into complacency by the cute exterior of the cat.

The less said about the hippy centaur boss of the 94th level the better.

The giant turtle of the 95th level stymied the group for 25 days. They needed certain items from quests to expose the turtle's vulnerabilities, so they held off fighting him until they had enough hammers to last the fight.

The 95th level boss fight set a theme for the following boss fights. Up until then, they could defeat the boss through their own efforts. But now there were certain quests they needed to complete to gain the items needed to defeat the boss.

They took 25 days to prepare for the giant eagle boss of the 96th level, which required eggs gathered from the quests to fool it into landing so they could attack. Every time they took a quarter of its health off, it flew off again. Which required more eggs to lure it down.

The 97th level boss was a giant puppy that took 26 days to get ready for. They needed a variety of sticks to play fetch to distract him from his charge attack. They needed treats to get him to let players go when he glomped on them. Some people were starting to get pissed at Kayaba for coming up with such ridiculous boss fights.

The 98th boss fight was a griffin that took 28 days to prepare for. After the ferocity of the griffin fight, the players almost wished they could have a nice puppy fight again.

They commemorated the anniversary of their third year trapped in the death game on the 99th level. This year the anniversary of the day they were trapped didn't bother them as much, because they were almost there. Two more bosses, and they would be free.

It was difficult to put into words just how much everyone's feelings swelled with expectation and hope. They only had a couple more bosses and they would be free. Free to go back to their normal lives. Free to see their families again. Free.

Carl took his friends Agil, Kirito, and Asuna to join the O'nG guild for the day's commemoration. He had long since introduced the groups to each other, and everyone got along well. Argo even showed up, somehow she got "intelligence" that it was the place to be on that day.

Carl simply laughed at her joke since he was the "source" of her "intelligence". The group had a picnic barbecue, set off fireworks, and just generally enjoyed each other's company. While everyone was of the opinion that they would have preferred not to be stuck in a death game, they couldn't think of finer people to share it with since they were stuck.

After that, Carl and the other floor clearers returned to their grind.

The 99th level boss took 29 days to prepare for. It was a giant medusa, so everyone needed their own copy of the sunglasses that would protect their vision. Four people's glasses slipped off in that fight, killing them. It had been a while since they had any deaths. The raid worked so well together, they only had 2 deaths since the 75th level. But despite the deaths, no one wanted to pause their pace.

But what really set people back, is that Heathcliff, the leader of KoB had disappeared after the fight. No one could find him. He hadn't died, or his loot bag would have been left behind. He simply, wasn't there anymore.

The members of KoB felt a little lost without their leader. He had been their rock for nearly three years. Kirito and Asuna stepped up to fill the co-leader role. They were the strongest members of KoB and had been leaders for a long time.

And the other thing that caused much consternation amongst the raid members, was that there was no information about the upcoming boss. No one knew what to expect. No matter what quests they completed, they couldn't find any information about the boss.

So they delayed a few more days, and leveled up a bit more. But it was already December 20th. The players couldn't wait anymore. They wanted to chance the boss for the possibility to escape the game before Christmas.

So on the 23rd of December 2025, they entered the boss room. Everyone in the raid, except Carl, was shocked to see Heathcliff standing there, waiting for them.

Heathcliff gave a sort of sad smile. "Welcome everyone. I am the final boss. Defeat me, and you go free."

Carl gave respectful nod. "Kayaba." He greeted the man. If Carl hadn't figured out who he was from his **Probing Eye** perk before, his knowledge from the jump document that Kayaba was going to be the 100th floor boss would have told him.

Heathcliff raised one eyebrow. "Oh? You don't seem to be surprised at who I am, Rondo." He half asked, half stated.

Both Kayaba and Carl ignored all the shouts of exclamation and squawks of outrage from the other players.

"My real name is Carl." Carl introduced himself. "I suspected a while ago who you were. But since you were helping us so much, I didn't want to out you. I mean, you saw what a mess that dumbass Kibaou made of things when he was in charge. You were an infinitely better leader."

"Is that why you never joined my guild? You knew who I was?" He inquired.

"Nah, it had nothing to do with it. I just didn't want to be restricted. I like helping, but I don't like people order me around." Carl shrugged. "The world you built is pretty amazing. And what's a world without people? You did a good job of building the guild too." Carl complimented.

By now the shock had worn off the raid and they were watching the exchange between the two men, shocked that they were simply exchanging pleasantries, instead of Carl cursing out Kayaba.

Heathcliff/Kayaba gave a pleased smile at the compliment. "Indeed. It has been everything I hoped it would be. But there is only one thing left to do. Defeat me, and everyone will go free." Heathcliff/Kayaba armed himself with his sword and shield. "And no holding back anymore. I want to finally see what you're capable of."

Carl grinned at Heathcliff/Kayaba. "Okay. For a man such as you, I can fulfill your last request." He drew his sword. "Stand back everyone. It's about to get…" And Carl charged.

As he promised, he didn't hold back, he moved and attacked at his fastest speed. The sword light from Carl's slashes looked like one long bright flash to everyone else in the room.

He came to a pause in front of Heathcliff/Kayaba, sword point lowered and pointed at the floor. Carl looked deep into Kayaba's eyes.

"So beautiful..." Kayaba trailed off as the wounds Carl inflicted on him began showing up. His health bar emptied, Kayaba started dissolving into motes of light with a smile on his face.

A system message then flashed in front of every player.

**[The level boss of the 100th level defeated. Congratulations players. Simulation ending.]**

A moment later, the world dissolved before everyone's eyes.

* * *

When Carl opened his eyes again, he saw he was in a private room in a hospital. He sat up after removing his NerveGear from his head. Looking around and seeing no people around, he opened a small portal to place his helmet and one passenger inside his Warehouse. That helmet allowed him to astrally project himself into the virtual world, he's keeping it safe.

Carl looked down at his body, and saw he was a bit skinnier than he was before. Taking in his food intravenously didn't seem to agree with him. But he didn't feel too weak. He noticed a little red blinking light on the nearby monitoring equipment. Carl figured it must be an alarm when his door opened abruptly and a doctor and nurse walked in.

They went through the usual procedures for patients that had been in comas for 3 years. They notified his grandfather, they did their tests, and they scheduled his rehab.

His meeting with his grandpa in this world was touching, and a bit concerning. His grandpa looked like he'd aged a decade or two while Carl had been stuck in Aincrad. Carl did what he could to reassure him that he was fine.

The following couple of weeks were tedious. With so many people watching his every move, he was stuck following their rehab schedule during the day. Even during the night he could only slip into his warehouse for short bursts, because the night nurses kept dropping by to check on him.

Finally, he finished the in-patient rehab and checked all the boxes and was finally allowed to outprocess.

During the time he was in the hospital his grandpa refused all his requests for information on the other players, or other things. He forced Carl to only focus on his rehab. So when he finally got home and got access to his three year old computer, he immediately joined the online group for SAO veterans who wanted to connect with each other.

There he reconnected with all the people he met and cared for in the game. Agil was Andrew Mills, and he had reconnected with his wife who had barely manage to save their café while he'd been under. Carl determined he would just do what he had been doing in the game and help his business prosper. It would at least give him a decent café to hang out at.

Kirito was Kirigaya Kazuto, and he reunited with Asuna, who was Yuuki Asuna. Carl heard the story about how some dude named Sugou Nobuyuki had been trying to pressure Asuna's father into agreeing to a betrothal while she was stuck in the world of Aincrad. Talk about creepy. Luckily, Asuna's father had rejected the offer, holding out hope that she would one day awaken. After Asuna woke up, her father had tentatively brought up the proposed betrothal and she violently rejected it. Her dad went along with her wishes, not wanting to upset her anymore.

It took some time and effort, but Carl finally contacted all the members of the O'nG guild and arranged a meet up at Agil's café.

When everyone finally met in real life, there was a lot of crying, laughing, and joking.

The young orphans had been stuck at the age they entered the game for the three years they were in the game. So suddenly dealing with a body three years older was a huge shock for them. They were all now between the ages of 10-16.

At one point Silica, who was Ayano Keiko in real life and was now 15, sighed deeply in depression at her table.

"What's wrong Silica?" Asked Carl. It would take a while before anyone was used to using their real names.

"I miss Pina. I wish I could have brought her out with me." Keiko sighed.

Carl hummed in thought. He had prepared for this contingency. Looking around the Café, he saw that everyone present were from his friends from the game. No outsiders were present. He felt they were trustworthy. He beckoned Agil, Andrew, over.

"Hey, can you close and lock up early tonight? I've got something to show everyone here."

Seeing the seriousness in his face, Agil nodded and closed up shop.

He gathered everyone up. "Okay, I've got a secret that if I share with you, I need you all to keep it super ultra secret. Not a word to anyone else. Can everyone keep my secret?" Carl trusted them, but he was in the midst of casting a spell that would ensure they kept the secret. It just required their active agreement to keep the secret for the spell to take effect and ensure they couldn't talk about it to anyone else.

"Okay, the big secret is, I've got magic." Carl paused as some of them voiced their disbelief while just grinning. "And to show you I've got magic. Come on out, Pina!" Carl enlarged the portal to his Warehouse that he always kept open, and Pina popped out into the Café.

When he had woken up in the hospital, his warehouse had closed on him due to the transition between Aincrad and the real world. Carl had kidnapped Pina just before the fight with Kayaba in order to bring her into the real world for Keiko, after ensuring his farms would be able to produce more feather dragons. So he had quickly stashed Pina and his helmet into this Warehouse when no one was around after waking up in the hospital.

The squeals of delight from Silica and the other kids hurt his ears, but he just grinned and bore it. Carl was pleased at the joy and disbelief on everyone's face.

Then the barrage of questions came. Yes, he had access to his magic in Aincrad. No, he was very constrained in what he could do, he had no way to get them out from the virtual world aside from following Kayaba's rule of defeating the 100th floor boss. Yes, they can take a tour of his magical Warehouse, dojo, and farms. Yes, he can now raise feather dragons, and everyone can have one if they want. Yes, he can use magic to disguise them so no one realizes what they are and try to take them away.

From that night on, Carl was busy with the O'nG guild and his friends. He used his headquarters that followed him from world to world as a location to hire the members of his guild while they got their lives back in order and their education back on track. He began teaching everyone the martial arts he had learned from the HSDK world so they could defend themselves in real life.

He occasionally joined Kirito and Asuna on their adventures in some of the virtual reality games they eventual joined. First was a fantasy game called Alfheim Online, where magic was a part of the game, and the guild was introduced to Kirito's cousin, Kirigaya Suguha.

The next game they participated in was a shooter game called Gun Gale Online, where the guild participated in a tournament, and took first place.

He attended Kirito and Asuna's wedding, pleased that everything worked out nicely for the couple.

He invested in Agil's café, and supplied many food stuffs and drinks that one couldn't get normally. Especially the Aincrad recipes brought in plenty of business that they had to move to a bigger venue and hire more staff.

He helped his grandfather build his dream of doctors using the next iteration of the NerveGear to get practical experience in surgery so they had less chances of making simple mistakes that cost people lives.

And he just generally enjoyed the next seven years being busy with his friends.


	23. Warehouse 5 Monopoly

Carl opened his eyes in his bed back in the Warehouse between jump worlds. He got out of bed, and wandered around his house, looking to see if there was anything unusual. He had already had a couple of surprises show up between worlds, so he would try not to be too shocked if something jumped out at him.

Seeing nothing unusual, he made his way back to his bedroom and opened up the terminal that Spere 037 had left for him.

Looking over his options, he chose to add **My Quest Senses Are Tingling**, **Like Riding a Bike**, **APM Intensifies**, and **Environmental PK** to his base body.

His quest senses and the awareness of the environment and how to utilize it as a weapon are a little bit esoteric for powers, but over the time he'd been in the virtual world of Aincrad he had gotten used to having those senses.

Even his life outside the virtual world had gotten a bit easier from having his quest senses. Anytime someone had wanted to ask him for help but something held them back, Carl had gotten a broad sense of what they wanted.

His quest senses had provided a huge boost in his ability to negotiate. Knowing what the other party wanted going into negotiations was a huge benefit to forming his tactics to get what he wanted out of the deal.

Add in the abilities to never lose the skill level he attains in anything from lack of training, able to adapt his skills to other systems, and speed up his base reflexes? Yeah, Carl was quite happy with his perks from the SAO world.

Carl finalized his order, and as usual passed out while the changes were being made to his body.

* * *

After Carl woke up, he spent the next couple of days puttering around. He found that as time passed and he went through more worlds, he felt he needed some time to compartmentalize before jumping into the next world. Especially if he took the option to gain a background in the world.

Every single identity was still him, but he gained another decade or two of more memories and relatives each time he took a background. It took a bit of work to make sure he put everything in perspective and was ready for the next world.

When Carl finally felt prepared, he made his way to the jump terminal. He pressed on the screen to initiate the next jump. A message notification popped up when he pressed on the screen.

* * *

Dear Jumper,

Looks like you made it through five worlds without help, congratulations! Since I'm not able to be there to help, I thought I'd set up some contingencies. Here is a little present for you. When making your selection at the jump document, you can now bank your unused Choice Points for later. Scrimp and save a little in one world, and you can then spend big in the next! Have fun with it!

-Jump-chan

* * *

"Well, that is a nice little bonus." Carl thought out loud as he considered the implications. He then hit the close message button. "What is my next world?" Carl clicked yes to the early jump option. "Monopoly Gauntlet. Okay, I'll start with 0 cp and only my bodymod available."

Carl laughed. _This_ situation is exactly what he picked **Beneath the Mod** for.

"Okay, the victory condition is easy to understand, win the game of Monopoly. But of course there are rewards for victory. Let's see, I get a number of items out of this challenge."

**Stovepipe Hat: **adds an extra bit of class with any outfit more appropriate than sleepwear, and it will influence people to be far more likely to listen to what you say.

"A stovepipe hat, blue jeans, and t-shirt is an interesting, yet fashionable combination…" Carl grinned at the ridiculous combination.

**Pocket Watch**: Keep the right time for you at all times and always be fashionable. The shine on it could make a good distraction, or perhaps a good point to focus on.

"Sounds like someone is encouraging hypnotism." Carl laughed.

**Rover**: the little pewter pooch will travel with you. Make sure to keep him fed; he adores bacon and can actually eat chocolate, unlike regular boring dogs. Sometimes gets a bit restless.

"Having a pet to follow me through jumps will be nice." Carl didn't bother to keep his excitement off his face at the chance to get some company.

**Advice of the Spirit of Uncle Moneypenny**: If you need advice in investments or business opportunities, write your question down on something and the spirit of Uncle Moneypenny will show up to give valuable and relevant advice.

"That's bound to be useful." Carl nodded, thinking of ways to get the most out of it.

**Property**: All the property you walk out of this game with, you will find the deeds to land and buildings of equivalent worth to the Jump Worlds you find yourself in. Boardwalk will provide the highest cost property in the world you find yourself in, while Mediterranean Avenue will be the equivalent of low rent housing. But while it may be low rent, it will still provide income for you. And if you have built up houses or hotels on the land, it will no longer be low income rent, bringing in a pretty penny.

"Ooh, the ability to add more property and money to my growing list of assets. Nice." Carl thought back to how much he had worked and worried to keep a portion of the Chase fortune out of the hands of the IRS in his first jump world, and how he had made the dangerous decision to hunt vampires to add to his fortune so he and Cordelia wouldn't be destitute and on the street in demon country.

He then thought about how easy his second jump world had been with rich and good parents that gave him the best of everything. How he had benefitted immensely from access to the pokemon tech and networking.

And he thought how currently, if he wins the Monopoly Gauntlet, he basically won't have to worry about money in any of his future jumps, Carl couldn't help but get excited for this opportunity. Instead of having to spend cp to make sure he had money in each world, he could have it already available.

After taking a while to go grab a mug of root beer and calming down, Carl continued where he left off.

**Free Parking**: Don't worry about paying to park, ever again. In fact, even parking where you shouldn't will have no negative consequences.

Carl laughed. The things he could get away with, with that little perk.

**Money Changing**: Any currency you acquire in one world will be converted into another seamlessly.

"Huh, that's pretty good. I currently have a huge pile of pokedollars that I'm sure wouldn't spend well in any country on most Earths, so getting that converted will be nice. And if I went to a jump world where gold was the currency, for example, having my money converted without paying the fees will be really nice."

After looking over the perks and drawbacks, Carl had a pretty decent idea of how he would win with just the synergy of perks and drawbacks. There were even some perks that would help him out in future jump worlds.

Since Carl started with 0 cp, he started adding in the drawbacks.

**Embarassment +100cp:** Play the game with your least favorite Monopoly piece.

**Annoyance +100cp:** Makes the players annoying.

**Ankle-biter +100cp: **Some of the annoying players act immature.

**Just Make It Stop +200cp: **The players act like the most detestable of inlaws.

**Only the Dead Can Know Peace From This +300cp: **Everything the players can do to irritate you, they do.

**Free Parking +200cp: **Everyone but you can win the money from Free Parking.

**More of Them +200cp: **Two more players join the game, for a total of five (including you, player 1).

**Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup +300cp: **Three more players enter the game, for a total of eight (including you, player 1).

**Go Directly to Jail +200cp: **You are now twice as likely to land on Go To Jail or receive the Go To Jail card from the chance pile.

**Do Not Pass Go +300cp: **Every five turns spent out of jail, you end up going to jail.

**Do Not Collect $200 +300cp: **Now every two turns out spent out of jail, you end up going to jail.

**Stop Right There, Criminal Scum +400cp: **Get Out of Jail Free cards do not work for you.

**Eternal Pauper +300cp: **Barred from collecting $200 when you land on Go!

**Shrewd Fellows +300cp: **Opponents have a decent amount of business savvy.

**Strictly Business +300cp: **Opponents are professional economists and trained financiers.

**Trust Buster +800cp: **Your opponents are famous rich people. Three of your opponents are J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. Assume the other players are also suitably business savvy.

And now that Carl has banked up 4500cp, it's time to spend some of it on perks. Carl rubbed his hands together as he prepared.

**Fast Track 100cp: **Once every five turns, you can simply hop on over to the nearest Railroad, and buy it if nobody owns it yet!

**Cash Advance 300cp: **Everyone starts Monopoly with $1500. You get an extra three $500 bills.

**Rainy Day Fund 600cp: **You double the money you would normally start with.

**The Landlord's Game 400cp: **Any other player will now sell you any property they have, regardless of strategy, provided you offer 1.5 times its value. I dare say this would work wherever you went…

**Savings and Loan 500cp: **It seems the other players trust you enough to let you act as the Bank! This also means you'll be more trusted with money wherever you go – only gross misspending will break that sort of trust.

**Trust Building 600cp: **No one, it seems, is willing to come after you for purchasing a full set of properties or Railroads. I can't say why. Perhaps you could even get away with deals like that in the future…

**Winning When Losing 700cp:** It appears you can collect revenue even while incarcerated! This is a useful trick wherever you are!

Carl's whole strategy relied on him being in jail for most of the game while gathering rent money. With the ability to buy a property whenever he wants for 1.5 times the cost, plus the perk from Farmville that lets him always get the best price for anything he sells and the ability to sell anything he wants, he figured he will control the board. He could force the players to buy and sell the properties in order to ensure the flow of the game went how he wanted.

Carl had considered getting a couple more perks to make his winning easier, but he stopped himself in time. The whole point of cheating like he was doing, was to gather as much property as he could before the game ended.

If he got the perk that made it so he had one house on every property he bought, the balance of the game would disappear, he'd run people into bankruptcy too quickly, and he would miss out on getting every property upgraded before the game ended.

Plus, he just found out that he could bank those Choice Points to spend them in a later jump. That was a game changer that he was taking full advantage of while he could. He had no idea when he would come across a jump world with powers that he _just had to have_, and would get tempted to taking game ending drawbacks in order to afford them. He would rather avoid that kind of no win scenario.

As it was, he had an extra 1300 cp to spend in the future. And maybe he'll just keep that extra cp until after the 15th jump. Spere 037 heavily implied that he would want a lot of points to spend when whatever it was happened.

At first Carl had assumed it would be something good happening. But as time passed, and he remembered the opening document Spere 037 had him read, Carl had started wondering. The document had labeled Spere 037 as a third party meddler. Carl just wasn't sure anymore how much of his benefit these powerful entities cared about.

Did he, in his original world, care about the ants that are scurrying about their ant business? No. The best the ants could hope for is that he wasn't malicious enough to mess with them or destroy their nest. Maybe accidently drop some crumbs from his sandwich that they could grab to supplement their food. But for ants to actually expect humans to care about them? That was a silly thought.

Spere 037 had implied at least part of his and the Jump-chan's motivation was entertainment. What might be entertaining to them, wouldn't be so fun for those going through the "entertainment". The death games in the coliseum in Rome had also been labeled "entertainment".

So, ultimately, Carl thought it might be a good idea to make sure he had some extra banked cp around to deal with whatever "surprise" he got after the 15th jump. And if he got pleasantly surprised, then he would just chalk his paranoia up to paranoia and be happy.

"Well, enough stalling. This Monopoly game isn't going to win itself." Carl said before entering the gauntlet challenge.

* * *

Carl found himself sitting at a square table with seven other people also sitting at the table. Carl saw the Monopoly board sitting in front of him, and the ratty old shoe piece was directly in front of him.

"I think we should introduce ourselves, then. I'm Carl." Carl kept his introduction short.

The person to Carl's left snorted in disgust. "This game is a waste of my time. I'm J.P. Morgan, and I'll be taking you all to the cleaners on this game." He was dressed in an old time suit, and had a suitably nice bushy mustache.

The next man in line laughed. "Only if you've got the balls, boy. The name's Jed Clampett." The man was dressed in what looked like homemade trousers, shirt and a jacket. His hat was pretty ratty and he had thick eyebrows the same grey color as his bushy mustache.

The next man in line had a silver, closely trimmed beard and mustache, and wore a bowler hat. "Andrew Carnegie. You'll find you have your work cut out against you, going up against me."

The next man had yellow skin and devious, squinty eyes. He put his fingertips together and laughed. "I am Mr. Burns, and this game will be like stealing candy from a baby."

The next man was also dressed in a suit, wearing a hat. His intense eyes glared at his opponents across the table. "The name is Charles Foster Kane. It will take your best efforts to survive in this game."

The next man had his sideburns run down into his mustache, but left his chin free of hair. "The name is John D. Rockefeller. I'll be making new records for beating this…game. Unfortunately, it will be at you fellows' expense."

The last figure was a five foot tall duck. "The name is Scrooge McDuck. And you're going to have to work both smarter and harder to have a chance against this Scottsduck."

Carl was laughing on the inside at the inclusion of some of the characters. He so wanted to moan "Rosebud" but manfully restrained himself. Mocking a man's dying words to his face, no matter how much the internet lampooned it, was in poor taste.

But by the end of the game, Carl would have completely changed his mind on the matter due to the drawbacks he picked.

Carl counted his money before starting off. He had $6000. Looks like the perk **Cash Advance **was applied before **Rainy Day Fund, **thus doubling his entire starting fund, rather than what he originally started with. Carl couldn't say he was displeased with how those perks were applied.

Looking around the room, Carl saw a table set up on the side with drinks and snacks available. Carl tried to open up his Warehouse, but found it was unavailable. Too bad, he could really used a drink of root beer right now.

Everyone at the table meandered over to the snack table and grabbed a drink before returning to the table. Cheating at board games was a time honored tradition that was only punished if caught, so Carl kept a wary eye out to make sure nobody was trying to cheat before the game even started.

With everyone distracted by getting drinks, Carl reached out for his magic, and found that he had access to it. He employed a little bit of telekinesis while everyone's backs were turned to move the dice on the table.

Carl almost grinned madly when he found no limitations on his telekinesis, but caught himself in time to not give anything away to the other players.

He felt a momentary pang of regret. If he had fully trusted that he would have access to his magic and that nothing stopped him from cheating his way to victory with it, he could have banked another 1000cp by not taking some perks. But he felt it was best to hedge his bets and make sure he had a winning hand, no matter what. And since he hadn't done a gauntlet before and still had some paranoia about Spere 037's "gift", he thought playing it safe was better.

Carl settled down at the table as his opponents began setting up for a game of Monopoly. Carl picked up the dice, and rolled his character to his first property he would pick up. Carl settled down and prepared to cheat his way to owning the board.

But what followed was the single most exercise in frustration, triumph, patience, and sheer crazy that Carl had ever engaged in.

The triumph obviously came from Carl cheating like a madman. He kept every player relatively even through most of the game. He kept anyone from going bankrupt, and everyone passed Go! many times to get a lot of currency in circulation.

He manipulated the dice rolls to make sure each player had a monopoly so they could build houses and hotels on his future property. And he continued to make rent while staying in jail.

Then, towards the end game, when everything was built up and Carl had enough money saved, he went on a rampage and bought every property out from under the other players. Within a few more turns, everyone but him was bankrupt. He won, hands down, and owned the board.

The frustration came from dealing with all the alpha, prima donna personalities in the room. No matter what kind of dignified persona the rich usually use to maintain their dignity and public appearance, in the end they are all people. And these particular people were affected by the drawbacks Carl chose to act like the most obnoxious, irritating, godawful relatives ever imaginable.

Morgan got his freaking cheetos dust all over the money, dice, deeds, and chance cards. The man, under drawbacks, was an annoying slob.

Jed Clampett moved between smoking a pipe blowing the smoke in everyone's faces, to chewing tobacco and replacing other's drink cups with his spit cup. He thought it was hilarious. The bastard.

Carnegie was fond of telling everyone about all his surgeries, sicknesses, and foul bowel movements. Under the drawbacks he turned into an oversharer who tried to disgust everyone to distract them from the game.

Mr. Burns took a page out of Bart's playbook and acted like a freaking 13 year old. Blowing spitballs, hawking loogies, trying to swipe more money out of the bank so Carl had to guard against him. The four fingered asshole was pretty good at being irritating.

Charles Kane ended up getting stuck in politician mode. He made all kinds of promises that he broke the next round. He tried to get other players to "donate" to his cause. And he made speeches. God, did he make speeches. If Carl never heard another political speech, it would be too soon.

The less said about Rockefeller under the influence of drawbacks the better. The man liked to fight, let's leave it at that.

And Carl didn't even want to touch on the weirdness of the humanoid duck world Scrooge McDuck came from. They never even wore pants. Three words were enough to explain that. Birds are dicks. Yup, despite being a humanoid bird, Scrooge McDuck was still a bird.

So throughout the entire game, Carl had to practice his patience. The loud noises, the nasty smells let off, the obnoxious conversation, and the death threats, all caused Carl to grit his teeth in determination to see the game through to its conclusion. He wasn't about to give up before he ripped fully built up properties from everyone's hands.

"A little bit of annoyance now, gives a big payoff later." Carl kept chanting in his mind to get himself through the tough times. Eventually Carl remembered he had magic, and started blocking off smells and sounds from the rat bastards that he was playing against.

And the crazy dialed up to 11 when Carl began buying everyone out. Alpha personalities do not like to lose. And despite the perk that ensure people wouldn't go after Carl when he was getting monopolies, those players felt they had to let some steam out somehow.

That room got _wrecked_. And some of the players probably would have died if the game room didn't seem to keep them from doing so. The only intact furniture at the end was the table the Monopoly board was on. It was apparently protected by the magic of the jump chain, to make sure the game could continue.

At one point early on through the game Carl briefly considered if he should feel bad for cheating so hard that no one stood a chance at winning. Wasn't it wrong not to have some sense of fair play? To not leave some path of hope or victory for his opponent? Wasn't that unfair of him?

Whatever lingering sense of fair play Carl felt over the matter took a hit with the spitball that went in his mouth. Then he was pelted with cheetos, popcorn, and salsa. Finally, when drinks were poured down his back, Carl lost any sense of wanting to give these enemies room to breathe.

If he couldn't kill them because of the magic of the jump chain, then he would totally ruin them and grind them into dust, leaving them with no hope or assets at the end.

Fair play was for games with family where nothing was on the line. Where the point of the harmless game was family or friendly bonding and good feelings.

These…things, were obviously his mortal enemies, and must therefore be crushed beneath his feet. Real property and assets were on the line that would greatly impact his future. There was no way he was leaving the game before he ripped every last dollar bill and deed from these bastard's hands.

And when Carl won the game, owned every deed, and had taken every dollar those bastards had, he found himself back in his Warehouse between worlds.

Sitting up in bed, Carl took a shaky breath as he rubbed his face with his hands. It took him a bit to calm down. That…game, had been a little intense. The irritation had built and built until all he felt was anger and rage.

He would have ripped them apart if he had been allowed to. He could have, with the strength he possessed.

"Well, that's one thing to add to the list of perks to look out for." Carl muttered. "Something to help me keep my temper. I swear I have never lost my temper so badly before. Guess I've been lucky to not have had the proper 'stimulus' required to make me lose my cool. I've been able to protect everyone I care about, and haven't had to be stuck in the same room as those _things_ before." Carl referred to his Monopoly opponents as things because he was trying to keep calm and not let his temper go again. He had called them much worse in the course of the game.

Carl got up and took a long hot shower. He visualized letting his troubles get washed away by the water, and flowing down the drain.

After getting dressed, he made his way downstairs, where he found a cute Welsh Terrier dog sitting at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for him. The dog didn't look like he was made of pewter, he looked like a normal dog.

"Hey there boy. Are you Rover?" Carl asked, and then laughed when he saw Rover crack open his mouth with his tongue lolling out, and his stubby tail wagged. "Who's a good boy?" Carl asked as he let Rover sniff him, before petting the adorable dog. Carl was feeling much better already. Rover was apparently going to be his therapy dog.

"Let's get some grub, how does that sound?" Carl asked. Rover barked happily in agreement. "Alright, let me fix us something good. How does cheeseburgers sound?" Rover barked excitedly.

Carl entered the kitchen, with Rover behind him. He saw his pocket watch, stovepipe hat, and the land deeds sitting on the table, waiting for him. Carl ignored them for the moment and concentrated on making the best burgers he could, topped with bacon, onion, cheese, lettuce, and pickles.

Rover seemed to enjoy the meal, and he happily drank the root beer Carl put in a bowl for him. He wouldn't feed a normal dog onions, root beer, other such human foods. But the jump chain let him know it was fine for Rover to eat such foods.

After Carl looked over his deeds and placed them in his office filing cabinet, and put his hat and pocket watch away in his room, he sat on the couch with a t.v. show playing. With Rover by Carl's side so Carl could pet his new dog, he started feeling like himself again after the rage incident of Monopoly.

"I'm gonna have to watch out for those drawbacks in the future, Rover." Carl commented. "It seems I was right originally to be worried about them and avoid some of them for the most part." Carl shuddered when thinking about some of the drawbacks on offer in the BtVS world.

This brief run in with simply "annoying" opponents as drawbacks was enough to totally make Carl lose his cool, and if not for his magic allowing him to shut out their voices, he might have lost the game from sheer frustrated anger and the desire to end it as soon as possible.

But in the BtVS world, there were far more deadly drawbacks. All his memories of the BtVS world removed? Being tortured daily by demons? Losing his soul and a demon taking over after a number of years? Having unrelenting demons always after him?

Yeah, those drawbacks were no joking matter.

As Carl continued to relax next to Rover, he vowed he would be cautious of any seemingly harmless drawbacks in the future. He had definitely paid the price to get some extra cp. He felt he had more than earned it, after that Monopoly experience.


	24. HP 1

Carl clicked on the screen to start his next jump only a few hours before the deadline was up. He had spent his time relaxing with Rover while getting his head back on straight after applying his perks to his base body. It was time well spent.

Looking at the screen, Carl saw that his next jump world was Harry Potter.

Carl looked down at Rover. "Well, it's going to be a magic world again Rover. Looks like I'll finally get some magic schooling, instead of relying on only self study." Rover twisted his head quizzically. Carl chuckled at Rovers cute expression.

* * *

**It's July 24th 1991.**

**10 years ago Lord Voldemort attempted and failed to kill an infant named Harry Potter. In the process his body was somehow destroyed.**

**His followers were rounded up and the wizarding world has had peace for the last decade.**

**The world is not the secure place people think it is however. The dark forces are rising once more – Lord Voldemort has found a servant at last and plans to steal the Philosopher's stone to regain his body. The magical world is a dangerous one, full of violent monsters and people with more power than either basic decency or common sense. The non-magic population is ignorant as always.**

**Today is the day that children with magical ability all over the British Isles are receiving their letters of admittance to Hogwarts.**

**Harry Potter is one such child (although he is currently unable to read his letter) and you are another. You are either 11 years old or will turn 11 in the next couple of months. Hope you like puberty and magic. You will spend the next 10 years in this world.**

* * *

"Well, I've already gone through puberty a few times so I'm used to it, and yes, I do like magic." Carl smiled at the introduction. It tried so hard to make the Harry Potter world sound dark and dangerous, instead of magical and inviting.

Sure, there was evil and danger afoot, but most kids who read the series focused on the fun and magical aspects of it. The warnings would likely go right over their heads.

After looking through the jump document once, Carl was unsure of what to pick. There were so many things he wanted that he was already tempted to use his banked points from Monopoly.

"First things first. I'm not going dip into my banked points yet. I'm saving them." Carl started reasoning things. "After the trouble I went through getting them, I'm not spending them on the first 'shiny' perk that I see."

"So let's see how to winnow this down. First off, split the perks up into two broad categories. Those things that I can learn from the 7 years of schooling will be put in the no pile, since I'll be learning those anyway. The perks that give me abilities that can't be replicated will be on the A list."

"Things like knowledge and skill with wand making, potions, and magical creatures I can get through study over the ten years, so spending cp on them, while giving me an advantage, would be kind of wasteful."

"Why should I care so much about making wands when I'm going to be trying to train wandless magic? I can already do basic stuff wandless, like controlling the elements to attack vampires and demons. I'd imagine after learning how to do the spells with a wand, I can train myself to do it without."

"Okay, what are the absolute musts here?" Carl changed his train of thought as he looked at his A list. It was easier deciding now that he had rejected many of the perks. "The only exception to the list of things I can learn is **Occlumency** 100cp. Yes, I can learn it in the world, but it is a must have skill from the beginning. While I can learn it in world, I won't really have time to do so before I meet some legilimancers at school who I need to protect my mind from. And there's no way I'm letting Snape or Dumbledore into my head."

"Even if this is the canon world, J.K. kept things vague enough that Dumbledore and Snape's actions could be interpreted a number of different ways. They could totally be good guys trying their best to end Voldemort before he can come back to power. Snape could be a noble man acting as a spy, sacrificing himself for the good of society."

Carl paused for a moment before snorting in disgust. "Yeah, I can't even keep a straight face saying that. It sounds too much like a line he would use to pick up chicks in a bar, playing the tragic misunderstood hero. And he mocked Harry Potter for his celebrity status. Sounds like Snape's jealousy of all things Potter was very strong."

"At the end of the first war in 1981 from what I understand, Dumbledore vouched for Snape as his spy so Snape wouldn't end up in Azkaban. Once Snape was outed as Dumbledore's spy, the cat was out of the bag. No one on the Dark Lord's side would truly trust Snape. At most they would utilize his skills while keeping him at arm's length."

"And that wasn't the only time Dumbledore locked the doors to the barn after the animals already escaped. Riddle used Harry's blood to re-bodify himself. After that, how much use would the blood wards have been on his aunt's house?"

"So, even if they are good guys doing the best they can, they are still busy bodies who think they are allowed to make important decisions for everyone else. And I don't want to take the chance, however remote, of them mining me for information before Obliviating all my memories away until I really am a clueless 11 year old."

"Well, whatever the truth of the matter of Snape and Dumbledore's alignment, the point remains that I'm not letting those two into my mind, so **Occlumency** is an absolute necessity."

"**Parselmouth** 200cp and **Metamorphmagus** 400cp are abilities that I can't train, but that I really want. I've already been tempted to change up my appearance from time to time, but didn't want to look substantially different when I finally reunite with my girls, so Metamorphmagus is a definite plus. It'll also enhance my acting ability, if I can have a new face with every persona."

"And while I may not have a _need_ for Parselmouth beyond getting into the Chamber of Secrets, there are all those fanfictions talking about the other uses for a vibrating tongue. Cunning linguist indeed."

"Okay, next on the list is **Clean Blooded** 100cp. That will keep me from catching any illnesses or diseases. I've been lucky to not be dropped into a zombie apocalypse world so far. But if I ever find myself in one, that perk should keep me immune from getting infected."

"So if I pick the **Drop In** background, that will give me the best price with the discount to **Metamophmagus**. I already have a form of telepathy, so it shouldn't be hard to learn Legilimency while I'm in the world. I will, however pick up the **Memory Spell Specialist** that is 50cp with the discount from being a Drop In. Never know when I will need to make someone unsee something they shouldn't have seen."

Carl had 400 more points to spend. While he could spend it on **Animagus** or **Quidditch Star**, he noticed something that he'd appreciate much more. He looked down at his pet, Rover.

"How would you like to be a Phoenix, Rover?" Carl asked the dog. He took the bark and wagging tale as agreement. "Okay, then. I'll import you as my Phoenix familiar then." Carl thought the 300cp was a pretty good investment to make sure his pet could hang out with him in the world. And having the Phoenix abilities available were a game changer.

Carl then looked at the Scenarios offered. If Carl picked a Scenario, his stay in the world would no longer be stuck at 10 years. He would stay in the world until he fulfilled the condition. With those conditions his stay could be only one month, or an entire lifetime, depending on how he played his cards.

The Scenario that interested Carl was **Statute Scrapped**: You have decided that, for the greater good, it is about time wizard kind stopped hiding from the muggles. This puts you at odds with both international wizarding law and public opinion. Whether you decide to pursue this politically or illegally, your goal is to cause over 90% of muggles in the UK and Ireland to wholeheartedly believe in magic. **Reward**: Any message you have that you want spread does so like wildfire. If you want a secret or idea to get to pretty much everyone all you have to do is tell one person and before you know it they will all know.

The biggest reason Carl was interested was because of his time in the Sword Art Online world. It would have made things so much easier at the beginning if he could have countered the anti-beta player bias early by spreading the idea that they were victims of Kayaba too. Or even spread the idea that there was hope. That would have kept a lot of people from going crazy and doing some of the things they did.

While Carl was inside the virtual world, he had seriously doubted the high number of fatalities that was said to have happened in the first month. But when he exited the world, and found out that it was actually more than what they knew about, Carl had felt a punch to his gut. He figured most of those people had to have gone a little mad from their lack of hope, their certainty that they _would die._ So they just gave up and ended things, or they went crazy and killed others.

But if Carl had had the ability to spread an idea of hope to the people in that early hysterical time, a message of hope that people would actually pay attention to, then many people could have been saved.

Carl had succeeded in that world in giving Kayaba what he wanted. He died satisfied, and Carl got a world seed that he could build into a virtual reality/dream world. But he was going to hold onto it for now, and only use it in the future when he had need of it, or had a reason to utilize it.

After some time of thinking about it, Carl decided to go ahead and take the Scenario so he could have the reward ability. And if he was going to be outing the wizard world to the muggles, he was going to take **Setup Wizard** 200cp which would make him very adept at mixing technology and magic. If he was going to be outing the wizards to the muggles, Carl planned to make it as easy as possible for the wizards to mix in with the muggles, and for the muggles to see the benefits of not freaking out about magic being real.

So now Carl needed to take a drawback to get at least 100cp, unless he wanted to dip into his savings. Being branded with a dark mark for 100cp didn't seem worth the hassle. He didn't want any kind of tether to Voldemort. 100cp was not enough pay for him to subject himself to that.

**Prophecy** +100cp would make only the superstitious distrust him greatly due to fitting a famous prophecy about a dark wizard. "So, pretty much most of the wizarding world." Carl snorted. Yeah, that was off the table.

**Bully Teacher** +100cp wouldn't be so bad if he could just get rid of the teacher, but it said that the replacement would also harass him just as much. And since Carl didn't want one of the teachers of the main subjects to shortchange him a valuable part of his education, Carl decided to pass.

Carl eventually decided on **Prisoner of Azkaban +**300cp: A mad wizard will escape from Azkaban at some point in your first 3 years. He will desperately want you dead, cannot be reasoned with and is very intelligent, skilled, and resourceful.

Carl knew it was somewhat of a risk to take a drawback that pointed an enemy at him that was determined to kill him. But even though he would be de aged to 11 years old, he would still have the body of a Master Class Martial Artist, his tier 4 senses, magic abilities, and sharpshooting ability. If he couldn't take out a single wizard with all of those advantages, then he should really just give up now.

And it would give him 200 cp to bank for later.

Carl looked down at Rover. "So, you ready for this boy?"

Rover barked excitedly. Carl finalized his choices, and the world blacked out as he was inserted into the jump world.

* * *

Carl blinked and the world came back into focus. Looking around he saw he was standing in a reception area of a building. He could see out of one of the windows a playground where several kids under 10 were playing.

His attention was caught by the sound of someone entering the room. The middle aged lady seemed a bit surprised to see him standing there.

"Who are you, then?" The lady asked in a kind voice.

Realizing that this was the orphanage that he would be staying at according to the jump document, Carl introduced himself. "I'm Carl." He didn't know if he had a last name here, so he chose to only introduce his first name.

"Ah, yes. Carl Edwards. There was an odd person here for you earlier today. They seemed surprised you weren't already here. They left a letter and a message that they would return tomorrow morning. It's all so unusual. But we've received your papers from St. Agnes' Orphanage so you're fine." The lady handed Carl his Hogwarts letter, then rambled on for a bit, explaining to Carl about their schedule, curfew, mealtimes, and whatnot.

"So, did you have any questions before I show you to the room you'll be staying at?" She finally paused.

"I didn't catch your name, Miss…?"

"Oh, dear. I do sometimes forget the simplest things. I'm Edith Adley. Just call me Miss Edith, everyone else does."

"Thanks, Miss Edith, for taking me in." Carl picked up the suitcase that he found next to him.

"Don't you worry about it. It's what we do. Now, follow me. We'll get you situated. You've got a couple of hours until supper, so that gives you some time to get settled. If you have any problems, come find me or the handy man, Mr. Keene. He shows up once a week to inspect things around here, and does any maintenance needed."

Carl just nodded along as he followed Miss Edith to his room. Once she left, Carl opened his suitcase to see what was there. Carl found a note that explained that the money from his hotels, rentals, and farms were going to a bank account that would follow him from world to world, courtesy of his Uncle Moneypenny.

In the Harry Potter world, he could access his account in both the muggle and the wizarding world. Gringotts already had his information, and he could pull galleons, sickles, and knuts out from there using the key he found in the suitcase. Alternatively he could go to a Barclays branch and access muggle money; he found a debit card in the suitcase next to his Gringotts key.

If he was ever in a world where there were no banks, he could use the suitcase, state how much currency he needed, and it would appear in the suitcase when he opened it. The suitcase would return to his Warehouse if he ever lost it. If it was ever destroyed, he would have to wait until the next world before a new copy would show up in his Warehouse.

Carl was pretty happy with the added ease by which he could access his money. It would make things so much easier. Getting up, he opened up a portal to his Warehouse.

Entering the Warehouse, Carl looked around for Rover. He soon found his dog turned Phoenix on the ground in front of where the terminal was that Carl used to access the Jump Documents.

Rover counted more as a possession/pet/familiar than an actual companion, so he hadn't been pushed out of the Warehouse for the time it had been shut down when Carl entered the world.

Carl looked down at his brave, noble, beautiful Phoenix. He tried, he really did try not to laugh at Rover, but he couldn't help it. He looked so pitiful and distressed flopping around on the ground, Carl couldn't help but chuckle at his plight.

"Apparently going from four legs to two and wings was a bit of a transition, huh, boy?" Carl asked as he helped the juvenile phoenix that was the size of his hands, to stand on two legs. "Looks like it will take some practice before you get the hang of your new body."

Rover chirped in such a way that Carl could tell it would be a distressed whine in a dog. He carefully petting the small phoenix familiar while helping him get used to moving around in his new body.

Carl talked about how birds learned to hop around and flap their wings, and how they eventual learned to fly. Rover seemed to be learning fast now that Carl was there to provide help and encouragement. He was still only a fledgling at the moment, so he couldn't learn to fly yet, but he was getting the hang of moving about on his own two legs.

After a couple of hours, it was supper time, so Carl set out some food for Rover while he left for the orphanage dining room. He soon got introduced around to the dozen other kids there, all between the ages of 6-16.

It seemed like a decent place. Miss Edith seemed to care about everyone, the kids were dressed in decent clothes, and the kids seemed normal. They weren't balls of sullen rage from being mistreated, or fake happy from being drugged up to be made more pliable. So Carl figured that there wasn't anything hinky happening there. It was just an ordinary orphanage.

'Sure, it may be odd to always be watching out for those kinds of things, but who knows what might happen in a jump world.' Carl justified to himself. 'It's not like there isn't someone out to get me, so my paranoia is justified.' Carl was thinking about the Azkaban Prisoner that would break out sometime in the next three years as if he didn't inflict that drawback on himself. Self-fulfilling prophecy, and all that.

After helping clean up after supper, Carl spent some time watching television with the other kids, getting to know them. He knew he wouldn't be spending a lot of his time here in the future, once he went to Hogwarts, but it didn't mean he couldn't enjoy the simple things that came with being 11 again.

When it was late, Carl finally returned to his room. He was pleased that the orphanage was big enough to give everyone their own room, even if the rooms were pretty small. He entered his Warehouse to check on Rover, who was sleeping in pile of blankets he'd made into a nest for him.

Smiling at the connection he felt with his new familiar, Carl left Rover to his sleep. He changed clothes to his workout Gi, which was a bit big on him. Carl had made it a habit to never get rid of any clothes that he simply outgrew. He hadn't worn that particular Gi since he was 13 in the HSDK world.

Carl laughed at that thought. "An eleven year old reminisces about what he did as a 13 year old, 20 years ago. I guess that's why sometimes Dr. Who just answers questions with 'It's complicated.' Going into the details would just make it even more confusing."

Banishing his thoughts, Carl entered his dojo and started his workout. He still had all of his strength from having a Master's body, and his skills would never deteriorate anymore, but he still needed the exercise. He had only reached the Master Class, not even a Grand Master yet. And he was in a small body again, so he needed to reacquaint himself with his actual body's range.

After finishing his workout, showering and dressing for bed, Carl spent some time reviewing the new knowledge he found in his head about Occlumency. He dropped into meditation quite easily, and started sorting out his memories in his mind.

Judging from the instructions he found about Occlumency, Snape had been a right bastard when he was teaching Harry Potter. When he shouted "Clear your mind!" before assaulting Harry Potter's mind, he had been skipping a few steps. Eventually a part of learning Occlumency was to test the strength of one's defenses against an attack. But in the beginning "clear your mind" had to do with organizing memories, which is much better done under peaceful meditation, not painful assaults.

Once the memories were orderly and sorted, then the defenses could be built over time. Finally, after all that was done, then they could be tested. Weaknesses and flaws in a defense could be pointed out and shored up during that final phase.

Snape taught Occlumency like he taught Potions. No instructions, no help, and no explanations, but with a very abrasive manner.

Carl found that while his memories weren't sorted, he had barriers and defenses already in place, due to his purchase with cp. After running through a few memories and sorting them, Carl determined that it would take a few weeks to go through them all and take full control of his mind defenses.

After spending some time on his organizing his mind, Carl went to sleep so he would be rested for the next day where he would meet the strange man that left his Hogwarts letter for him.

* * *

"Carl!" A voice shouted out, interrupting the game of football he had been enjoying with the other kids at the orphanage.

Looking over, Carl saw Miss Edith standing at the door, beckoning him to come over. He obliged her, running up to her.

"Yes, Miss Edith?"

"You have a visitor. It's that strange man I mentioned yesterday who brought you that letter for the oddly named school." Miss Edith explained as she led him to the sitting room.

When they arrived, Carl saw a short man, four feet tall, sitting on one of the chairs, sipping tea while his legs dangled, kicking back and forth. He had a pair of spectacles on, and sported a large brown handlebar mustache.

"Carl, this is Professor Flitwick of Hogwarts. Professor Flitwick, this is Carl Edwards." Miss Edith introduced them to each other.

"Pleased to meet you professor." Carl greeting the diminutive man.

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Professor Flitwick cheerily greeted him back. "I'm here to see if you'd like to take your place at Hogwarts. We are an exclusive boarding school up in the highlands of Scotland… Term begins on September 1st… You can reach the school from a train here in London that departs at 11 in the morning from Kings Cross."

The professor gave the sanitized version of the school spiel since Miss Edith was present. But his spiel was interrupted by Miss Edith laughing merrily.

"Oh, no need to beat around the bush, Professor. I'm a squib from a wizarding family, so I know all about the magical topic you're trying to skirt around. Go ahead and give him the full version of the talk."

Carl couldn't help but chuckle along with Miss Edith at the situation. Apparently Miss Edith had been having a bit of a laugh, describing Professor Flitwick as a "strange man". It was only when he was taking so much time beating around the bush with her present that she finally took mercy on the poor professor.

Professor Flitwick seemed to be taken aback a moment. It had been his experience that squibs were usually bitter about their lack of magic. They weren't usually so cheerful around fully fledged wizards or witches. Miss Edith seems to have found her calling in life, and was completely content.

Smiling back at the cheerful orphanage caretaker, Professor Flitwick began the normal explanation of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He continued on with the subject of the school subjects, how the term went, what he taught at the school, and the general basics of the hidden wizarding world, and the necessity of keeping the Statute of Secrecy.

After a few quick demonstrations of Charms, Professor Flitwick finally asked Carl the question. "So, Mr. Edwards. Would you be interested in attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?"

Carl nodded eagerly. "I'd love to go!" He exclaimed, really getting into his persona of a young boy excited about magic. "So, the letter you left me had a list of school supplies that I don't think the local stores supply. Where do I go to get what I need?"

Professor Flitwick smiled at Carl's enthusiasm. "There is a shopping centre near here called Diagon Alley. If you're not too busy, I could escort you there now? If that would be convenient for your caretaker, Miss Edith?"

"Now is as good a time as any, Professor. With my duties here I'm afraid I'm unable to escort him at this time." Carl also got the sense that she was relieved she wouldn't have to step back into that world. That she was perfectly content with her life and duties at the orphanage.

"Well, then. Why don't you gather you get ready and grab anything you need, Mr. Edwards."

"Sure thing, Professor. I'll be back in a few moments." Carl left the room to get changed from his play clothes that had gotten dirty. He was back in less than 10 minutes, with his Gringotts key and the Entrance Fee envelope.

"Professor, just before I moved here yesterday, I received by owl what they called my Gringotts bank key, and a letter saying it was for entrance to my school of choice. I wondered if you knew anything about a bank called Gringotts?" Carl asked a leading question. He wasn't sure what plan Professor Flitwick had to pay for his school supplies, but since Carl had his own account, he'd rather just take care of it himself.

"Ah, excellent, Mr. Edwards, that is good news that you probably don't have to rely on the Orphan's Fund. Gringotts is a goblin run bank for the Wizarding world. We'll stop by there first thing when we get to Diagon Alley."

"What about the school fees? Do some families pay for all 7 years of schooling up front, when their kids are young?" Carl asked a leading question. If he could get the professor to admit that school could be paid in one lump sum, his Entrance Fee item could probably take care of it, and he wouldn't have to pay out of his bank account.

"Yes, some families that have the money pay for their children's full seven years after they are born. It saves them money in the long run if the prices increase at some point, you see…"

After the professor talked about the subject for a bit, Carl got him to divulge how much the full 7 years cost was. Once that was settled, Carl opened up his Entrance Fee envelope, and found a draft note for the full amount that he handed to the professor.

Once the fees for Hogwarts was taken care of, Carl and Professor Flitwick exited the orphanage and the Professor explained and showed Carl how to summon the Knight Bus.

Carl was having fun with the ride where all the seats shifted around like crazy. He simply grabbed onto his chair, tucked his legs up out of the way, and rode it out. It was like an out of control bumper car rally, really.

When he and the professor exited the bus at the Leaky Cauldron, Carl could see a huge grin on the professor's face. Professor Flitwick, it seemed, had also enjoyed the exciting ride. They bypassed the main bar floor of the tavern, and Professor Flitwick showed Carl which bricks to tap to open the portal.

"And this is the main wizarding shopping center here in Britain." Professor Flitwick explained. "There are other, smaller local shopping centers around the country wherever there are gatherings of wizarding homes, but this is the biggest shopping district." The professor led Carl down the main thoroughfare, a straight shot from the entrance, to the white marbled building that was Gringotts.

They soon entered the building by the wide double doors that were flanked by a pair of goblin guards. After waiting in line for 10 minutes, Carl approached the teller.

"Carl Edwards to make a withdrawal from his vault." Carl confidently stated to the teller as he presented his key, following the advice given to him by Professor Flitwick, he talked in a no nonsense but polite tone.

"And how much are you withdrawing, Mr. Edwards?" The teller asked after scanning the key.

"100 Galleons." Carl replied.

The teller nodded and made a notation in his book. They then waited for a vault runner to fetch his gold. Since he was just standing there, Carl couldn't resist asking some questions.

"Do Goblins give out quests?"

"No." The teller barely blinked at his unusual question.

"Do Goblins always live underground?"

"No."

"Do Goblins have harems?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a harem?

"No."

"Do Goblins regularly call Humans 'spitroast' in your language?"

"No."

"Really? Not even jokingly?"

"No. But for you I'll make an exception." The teller bared his teeth in a mocking grin while Carl chuckled.

"Cool. Do you get warm fuzzy feelings when Humans are polite to you?"

"No. It only makes me wonder what they want from me."

"Are you charging me per question or by time?"

"Both." Carl laughed.

"Okay. Well, that's all I've got for now. May your enemies be crushed and driven before you." Carl stated as he accepted his pouch of gold.

"And may you hear the lamentation of your enemy's women." The teller returned.

"I didn't think you'd be a Conan fan."

"Who do you think produced the movie?" The teller, Knot-Ripper asked with bared teeth.

Carl laughed in response. "Awesome! I hope to see more good movies in the future." He waved farewell to the Goblin as he rejoined Professor Flitwick who had waited by the doors.

"Where to first professor?" Carl asked as he rejoined the cheerful charms professor.

"I believe we'll get your trunk first. That way, when we get your other supplies, you can simply pack them away in your trunk."

"Sounds like a plan." Carl agreed.

They soon arrived at the trunk shop, and Carl spent some time carefully reviewing the options. He didn't really need the trunk, he had his Warehouse for storage. But to avoid anyone asking questions about why he didn't need a trunk, it was necessary to get one.

Added on to the fact that he'd enjoyed a few good Harry Potter stories in his original world. So the whole shopping experience was part of entering the wizarding world, and he didn't want to shortchange his inner child of the opportunity to revel in the fun.

After looking over his options, Carl decided on a 3 compartment trunk. One compartment was for all his clothes and toiletries and whatnot. The second compartment was for all his school supplies for potions, astronomy, quidditch, and whatnot. The third was for his small personal library, quills, ink, and parchment.

Satisfied that he would have a drawer, cubbyhole, shelve, or bin for anything he would need for his school supplies, Carl paid for his trunk, and followed Professor Flitwick to Madam Malkins shop to get his robes.

As he was getting measured, he asked Madam Malkin about the robes and the charms she puts on them. The robes were designed to last a year. During that year, they would keep growing with the student to make sure they always fit. And that was pretty much it for her standard robes.

Carl learned there were more charms and even runes that could be sewed onto robes, but that they were so expensive that they were not worth bothering with for daily wear robes that he would outgrow.

After getting his wardrobe and placing it in his trunk, he and the professor moved on to his potions supplies. Out of curiosity, he asked the potions supply attendant if there was a Slytherin potions kit available for purchase. Just one of those fanfiction things Carl wondered about.

The teller denied there being such a thing. But since he kept glancing nervously at Professor Flitwick, the head of the Ravenclaw house and the Charms professor, while he nervously denied there being such a thing, Carl didn't particularly believe him.

From the looks of it, Professor Flitwick didn't believe him either.

"So, Professor. Are you going to launch an investigation into whether there is such a thing?" Carl smilingly asked after they exited the store.

Professor Flitwick hummed in response. "And where did you hear of such a thing, anyway, young Mr. Edwards?"

"I overheard a couple of students talking about it. Seems odd that only one house would be involved in having a specially prepared potions kit. But I didn't know if it was something the professor set up for their students, the apothecaries set up to make the Slytherin's feel like they were getting something special, or what." Carl blithely lied about how he'd known.

Cause he hadn't overheard anyone talking about it, he just wondered about fanfiction tropes. But it looked like in this universe at least, Snape's bias towards all things Slytherin was manifested in a number of ways.

"Well, what next, Professor?" Carl asked excitedly.

"Next on the list is one of my favorite places." Professor Flitwick said before leading him to the bookstore, Flourish and Blotts.

He only purchased the standard books on his school list while he was here with Professor Flitwick. He planned on coming back the next day to really stock up on books.

At the very least, he was planning on buying all 7 years of school books before Lockheart could get at the Hogwarts list and really screw it up by requiring all of his books to be bought by every student. That's not to say that previous defense instructors couldn't have messed up the list, but at least they weren't Lockheart, the useless fop.

And finally, at the end of the tour, they arrived at Ollivander's wand shop. Carl knew the old man was described as "creepy", but that was from the perspective of stupid 11 year olds. No, when Carl finally met the old man, he would have to describe him as _very _creepy.

The old man was creepy, but he was creepy in an amusing way. Kind of like how Halloween is "spooky", but not really scary, more fun. Carl could tell that Ollivander simply played up that aspect of his appearance because it was fun to mess with 11 year olds.

After spending a long time in the store trying wands, Carl finally settled on a 12" Pine and Unicorn Hair wand.

"I don't know, Mr. Ollivander. This one feels better than the others, but it doesn't feel _perfect_, if you know what I mean." Carl commented.

"Hmm, yes, it does seem to be only a partial success. I'm not too happy with that, but it's the best option at the moment."

"Well, Mr. Ollivander, let's say that if I come back sometime soon with a wand material that really matches well, would you be willing to make it into a wand for me?" Carl asked, thinking about Rover and how he could likely get a feather from him. All the fics said that a feather from his Phoenix familiar would likely make a decent wand for him.

Ollivander hemmed and hawed for a bit, but eventually caved in. "I can only try. I'm not promising anything. There's a reason I mainly only work with three wand core materials. So many of the others are too…temperamental to really work in wands. But I'll give it a try."

"Thank you in advance, then, Mr. Ollivander." Carl then paid for his wand and a holster before bidding farewell.

Now that all his supplies were purchased, his trunk was shrunk and in his pocket, and his wand was in his holster on his wrist, Professor Flitwick introduced him to the art of apparition as he dropped him off back at the orphanage. After thanking the professor, Carl made his way to his room where he started reading his books.

Over the next week Carl spent much of his day at Diagon Alley exploring the area, buying more books, asking the shopkeepers many questions about their business, magic, and what kind of things he would need to study at Hogwarts.

He felt he was getting a pretty decent handle on the wizarding world, and he was able to peruse a lot of shops and find many simple items that were made to save wizards and witches time, or make their lives more comfortable and convenient.

Over that week Carl watched as Rover grew quickly. He figured another two weeks and the dog turned Phoenix would be as big as Fawkes was in the movies. Whether that was his full size or not, Carl couldn't say for sure.

And on the 31st of July Carl made sure to be in the Alley early in the morning. Since he was in place early, he got to watch as a rather malnourished boy of 11 entered the alley for the first time, escorted by a half giant. The awe and joy on the boy's face made Carl smile along.

Carl stayed in place as he watched them enter Gringotts. When they exited, with the giant figured man stumbling off to the leaky cauldron for a pick-me-up, Carl moved in to greet the boy.

"Hey, there. My name is Carl Edwards. First time in the alley?" Carl asked as he sidled up next to the messy black haired boy.

The boy blinked a little warily at Carl, but eventually responded. "Yeah. I'm Harry."

"I'm pretty new to the wizarding world too, but I've spent the past week or so hanging out here during the day before going back to the orphanage at night. So if you want, I can show you around?" Carl offered after they shook hands in greeting.

Harry blinked a bit in surprise at the news that Carl lived at an orphanage and seemed cheerful about it.

"Sure, yeah. Why not?"

Carl then took him to the trunk shop first, while talking about some of the things he'd run across in the shops while he was there.

"You could totally trick out your trunk, you know." Carl commented when it looked like Harry was going to get the cheapest, most beat up trunk there. "You can get multiple compartments, make it so it can shrink and be put in your pocket. Heck, you can even put an apartment in the trunk. Why not get something nice that will last you all seven years of Hogwarts." Carl offered.

Harry flushed a bit, looking down and mumbled, "Cause my relatives would never let me have anything nice." If Carl didn't have superhuman senses, he would never have been able to hear him.

"Well, look at these security options here. With these put on your trunk, you could have the nice trunk you deserve while they wouldn't be able to touch it. Heck, they wouldn't even need to know you had it, really." Carl encouraged. "Besides, it's your life, your magical education, and your money. You shouldn't limit yourself because of their disapproval. You've got magic now! You should enjoy it!"

Carl could see the realization like a revelation come over Harry. He didn't have to care about his relative's disapproval. He would be away from them most of the year, and he could really learn and live without their constant abuse. From then on Harry started coming out of his shell a bit more, excited about the possibilities his new life offered.

They spent only a bit of time in the potions ingredient shop gathering Harry's ingredients. They spent a bit more time in book shop, since Carl encouraged Harry's desire to learn about the magical world. Carl had already picked up a few extra copies of a book on Occlumency, and he planned to gift a copy to Harry. It was his birthday, after all. Carl made sure to talk about the dangers of mind readers, to encourage Harry to study Occlumency.

The earlier a seed is planted, the earlier it could grow. And Carl would prefer this world to have a Harry Potter who was knowledgeable and proactive, rather than a Harry that follows along at Ron Weasley's lazy pace.

When they made their stop at Madam Malkins, Carl encouraged Harry to get a whole new wardrobe that he could wear at school, eschewing his normal hand-me-down rags.

"I'm not saying you should care overly much about appearances." Carl tried to explain a bit more about why he thought it was important. "But it really does help a bit with self confidence. If you look good, and know you look good, it's a lot easier to be confident in yourself and your abilities."

"If you are forced to dress in rags, and you feel like you don't deserve anything better, then it's a lot harder to gather that confidence in yourself and your abilities. And our magic responds to our will. If you have a weak will, or are not firm in what you want your magic to do, then it will wiffle waffle on you. But if you are confident, and feel strongly about what you are doing, then your magic will respond to that, and almost leap to do your will."

"Well, I guess I'll try that." Harry tentatively accepted Carl's reasoning, and bought himself a full wardrobe. "But I'm only going to wear it at school. If my relatives found out I have money, they would try to take it away from me."

"That's probably the smart thing to do, then." Carl agreed. Baby steps.

Before Hagrid came and took Harry away, Carl passed him his book on Occlumency and a couple more items that he had picked up during the previous week. One was a magical lockpick that advertised itself as able to open any muggle lock. The other was an item that would have a muggle notice-me-not field around it.

Carl gave Harry those items to ensure he could sneak out of the Dursleys whenever he wanted. Carl also explained to Harry how to summon the Knight Bus, and extracted a promise from the young wizard to meet the next day in the alley so they could explore more.

With that, Carl pretty much ensured that when September 1st rolled around, Harry would not be quite as ignorant of the wizarding world, and wouldn't be crazily desperate to latch onto the first redhead that entered his train compartment as his best friend ever.

And if some people happened to see Harry Potter hanging out at Diagon Alley, getting introduced to the magical world for the first time, and spread the news that the boy didn't know anything about the magical world before then? Well, that could only smoothen out his relations with his fellow wizards when they realized that Harry wasn't stuck up or anything.

But then again, maybe Carl was giving the average wizard too much credit. Carl shrugged the idea away for the time being. For now, it was time to be a kid again. Acting!


	25. HP 2

The next day Carl met up with Harry outside Diagon Alley, and the two boys, with no parental or teacher oversight, explored to see what they could find.

Diagon Alley, despite being named an alley, wasn't just a straight street with stores on either side. It was a shopping center/bazaar that had grown organically over hundreds of years as the wizards and witches added more space expanded shops and building as it grew, until it was finally bound in place by the muggle city that grew up around it.

As a result, there were many nooks and crannies in a messy warren that led to fascinating stores, and Carl and Harry were having a fun time exploring it. There were many stores set up to sell different magical sweets. There were junk stores that held a plethora of enchanted muggle items. There were even some stores that held magical art, which was absolutely fascinating and beautiful. Some of the things they could make with an ingenious application of magic were amazing.

Then there were the quidditch focused stores that had expanded space inside to test different brooms. Harry found out early that he had a talent for flying that was incredible. Carl didn't have his sheer talent, but his spatial awareness allowed him to pull some stunts without crashing that were just as impressive.

Carl was happy he got to learn to fly with Harry who had an obvious joy in the subject that was infectious, rather than with a bunch of nervous first years while Malfoy sneered and bragged about out flying a muggle helicopter.

There were shops set up for specific services, like enchanting clothing or items, raising and training exotic pets for the owners, gambling, legal services, and many others. The sheer variety and _magic _of it all was amazing.

After some persuasion, Carl managed to convince Harry that it was a good idea to visit a healer that had set up shop in the alley so Harry could get started on the nutrition and growth potions that would make sure he wouldn't end up a shrimp. They got him a decent pair of glasses with charms to remain on his face and stay clean so he wasn't dependant on thick, ill suited glasses. He got his magical inoculations, and other such medical checkups.

Carl was relieved to find Harry didn't end up having any magical blocks, so Carl hadn't ended up in an Evil!Manipulative!Dumbledore world. The old man probably meant well, but since he had so much on his plate, a lot probably ended up neglected and fell by the wayside. There was only so much one man can do without clones or time travel, after all.

After interacting with Harry for a few days, Carl was happy to call him a friend. After Harry finally got over his fear of chasing off the first friend he ever had if he said the wrong thing, Carl found that Harry had an amusing wit and confidence about him. Carl figured it came from surviving unbroken around his relatives, and now that he finally was able to let out his humor without being punished, Harry was more than happy to let himself go.

Carl himself was happy to see all the things wizards and witches did with their magic, and started making note of the things they didn't do. He could see many possibilities where a magical/muggle tech solution could be used to improve the lives of muggles and magicals alike.

Over the month that was left of the summer, along with spending time hanging out with Harry every few days, Carl spent time practicing his Occlumency and reading his schoolbooks to get ahead and be prepared. He knew of at least one teacher that would expect students to teach themselves.

While he had gotten a perfect memory from his perks, Carl marveled at the difference having Occlumency made to how his mind ran. If his mind were to be compared to a computer, then his mind prior to organizing his memories would be like a computer that was incredibly inefficient. A lot of time and energy was wasted on running unnecessary programs and having the memory stored all over the place that caused the memory recall and programs running to be bogged down and slow.

After Carl cleaned up his memory and organized it, his mind felt like it hummed with efficiency. His organized mind let him recall things quicker and clearer than ever before. He was no longer distracted by random unrelated and unneeded thoughts popping in his head, distracting him from what he was doing.

Beyond just protecting his mind from attack, even just the organization of his mind made the cp he spent on it so worth it. Even if Occlumency was the only thing he got out of this world, it would be well worth the trip.

With only a week left until school started up, Rover had finally stopped maturing, so Carl got him to donate a feather so Carl could have Ollivander make him nicely matched wand. It was a beautiful 12" Pine and Phoenix Feather wand. It felt great when Carl gave it a wave. His magic _sang_ with joy when his wand bonded to him.

"Excellent." Ollivander beamed at how well the wand matched Carl. "Pine wands usually choose an independent minded wizard. Your wand will likely enjoy being used creatively and will easily adapt to new methods and spells. Pine wands also seem to adapt to non-verbal magic easily." Ollivander waxed lyrical about Carl's wand. "Those wands with Phoenix cores tend to be adaptable to the greatest variety of magic. I would say you have an excellent partner there, young Mr. Edwards. I believe we can expect great thing from you."

"Thank you, Mr. Ollivander. How much for this amazing wand and another wrist holster?" Carl settled the account before exiting the store, absently caressing where his new wand was stored on his wrist.

'Yeah, if anyone snapped my wand, I would likely want to murder them.' Carl thought as he enjoyed the feel of his new wand. He could totally understand why wizards got attached to their first wand.

Carl and Harry didn't only explore Diagon Alley during their summer excursions. They also spent time touring around the English touristy spots. For Carl, he had grown up in the U.S., so he'd never been to England before. For Harry, being trapped in a cupboard while growing up had seriously limited his exposure to the muggle world. So they both enjoyed the novelty of doing the touristy thing.

They also spent a couple days at a beach, and spent a day at an amusement park, where Harry finally got to enjoy some of the things that his cousin Dudley had told him about to make him feel jealous.

Carl also got to meet the dignified Lady Hedwig. She seemed to tolerate the presence of Rover when he introduced his Phoenix to Harry and Hedwig. Rover did have quite a bit of the canine disposition in him still, so he was a very friendly bird. He seemed to finally be getting the hang of his wings and fire flashing abilities, which made one more method Carl had available to get around.

Finally, it was time to go to school.

* * *

Carl arrived at platform 9 ¾ at 10:30 in the morning. He boarded the train and looked through each of the compartments to see who was already there. He saw a bushy brown haired girl reading in one compartment by herself.

Since he recognized who the girl likely was and had the opportunity, he made a snap decision to make some more changes. Hopefully for the better. He opened the door and introduced himself. "Hey there, first year too? I'm Carl Edwards. Nice to meet you."

"Hermione Granger. It's good to meet you! I'm ever so excited about going to Hogwarts to learn magic. When I found out I was the first in the family to have magic, it was ever so exciting. I spent all the last month trying to learn all I can about the magical world. This is going to be so great!"

Carl couldn't help but smile along at the young girl's excitement. She was absolutely right, this was going to be fun. He chatted with the girl for a few minutes before excusing himself to go look for his friend. "But I promise to come back to chat some more in a bit after I grab my friend." Carl promised when he saw her crestfallen face when he said he was leaving.

Seeing her perk back up in hope when he promised to come back made Carl hyper aware of just how desperate young Hermione was to find a place and friends to belong to. He vowed to himself that he would be a good friend to her, just like he'd already made a good impact on Harry's life.

Carl continued on down the train until he found Harry, sitting by himself in a compartment. "Hey, Harry, glad to see you found the platform just fine." Carl greeted him after opening the door.

"Hi, Carl. Yeah. Beat the rush and all that by taking the knight bus." Harry commented, motioning outside the window at the large, rowdy crowd of students and families. "Have a seat."

"I've got a better idea. I met a nice first year girl who seems just as excited about learning magic as us. How about we go join her and make some more friends?" Carl suggested.

Harry only hesitated a moment to think about it. "Yeah, sure. That sounds good." Harry packed away his book and picked up his trunk, shrunk it, and put it in his pocket. He then picked up Hedwig's cage.

"Have you thought about asking Hedwig if she'd rather fly to Hogwarts on her own, rather than be stuck in her cage all day?" Carl asked.

"Huh, hadn't thought of that. But yeah, good point. How 'bout it, Hedwig? Would you rather fly on your own?" Hedwig bobbed her head up and down in obvious agreement. "Sorry about that girl. I'll see you at Hogwarts then, alright?" Harry said as he let her out of her cage and opened a window for her to fly out of.

After he put the cage in his trunk, Harry followed along with Carl as they wandered back to where he had left Hermione.

When they arrived at the compartment, Carl found that there were four Slytherin upper years in the room instead of Hermione. Frowning at the boisterously noisy guys, Carl motioned Harry away from the door.

"It's looking like Hermione got chased out by those jerks. So, we've definitely got to find her and make sure she's alright." At Harry's sober nod, the duo started searching the train.

It took a while, but Carl and Harry found Hermione's new compartment. She was sharing it with a chubby looking brown haired boy who looked really uneasy and unsure what to do or say. Carl could guess that the boy was Neville Longbottom, and he really was shy at this young age, and unsure how to handle an upset girl.

Carl burst into the compartment. "Hermione! We found you! Try to hide from me, girl! Hah!" Carl started laughing at her face frozen in shock. He poked her shoulder. "Hey, you okay there Hermione?"

"Yes. No, not really." She immediately changed what she was saying. "I was just minding my own business, when those upper years dressed in green chased me out of my compartment. They were so rude! I didn't understand why they were calling me mudblood, but I could tell it was bad."

Neville sucked in his breath in shock at the rudeness of the upper year students.

Carl sat down next to Hermione and put an arm around her in comfort. "Well, now you're among friends. So you don't have to worry about those jerks anymore." After a bit Hermione had calmed down and seemed to be feeling better.

"So, introductions. I'm Carl Edwards. This is my friend, Harry Potter." Carl pointed at Harry." This lovely lady by my side is Hermione Granger." Carl grinned at the small blush that appeared on her face. "And I'm afraid I'm at a total loss. Much to my dismay I have yet to be introduced to the other young man in our troupe." Carl said while looking over at Neville.

"N-Neville Longbottom."

"Pleasure."

"Nice to meet you."

Out of the corner of his eye, Carl noticed motion on the floor by the door. He swifty reached down and snagged a daring toad trying to make his escape.

"Trevor! Thanks for stopping him. He's forever trying to escape." Neville abashedly explained.

"No problem. Got yourself an adventurous toad then, huh?"

"Yeah. He was a gift." Neville embarrassedly explained.

"He seems like a healthy specimen of a toad. Does he eat a lot?" Carl asked.

"Oh, yeah, probably. I mostly leave him in my greenhouses. He hangs out with me when I'm taking care of my plants. That's probably why he's so used to wandering around."

Hermione seemed to perk up at the mention of his plants.

"So, you have your own greenhouses? You have experience in Herbology then? Cause I read our first year book, One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, but I haven't been able to actually _see_ any magical plants so I'm ever so excited to learn about them when we start up class." Hermione rambled on, before suddenly realizing she'd hijacked the conversation and snapped her mouth shut. In her experience, this was when her fellow students would get upset at her and snap at her to shut up.

Carl just chuckled a little. "Well, I don't know about Harry, but I've got no experience at Herbology myself."

Harry chimed in with a "Me neither. Just Rose bushes."

"So it looks like we accidently struck gold to end up in the same compartment with Neville. So tell us Neville, what kind of plants have you been raising?" Carl could see the happiness on Hermione's face when she wasn't snapped at and that Carl helped her ease into the social interaction. He also noticed the hope rise up in Neville's eyes that they were actually being nice and interested in his favorite topic, instead of mocking him for being a squib.

The group of four hardly noticed when the train left the station, as they were enjoying each other's company and conversation so much.

When the lady selling snacks came by, Carl and Harry bought up some of their favorites, and shared the treats around. It took some fast talking from all three boys before Hermione agreed to try some of the sweets. Her parents being dentists, they had indoctrinated her into avoiding the delicious tasting morsels.

It was only when Neville explained to her how easy it was for the healers in the magical world to fix, repair, or replace teeth altogether that she finally gave in and started to enjoy the sweets. And Carl could see she got the idea in her head to visit the healer to fix her teeth from their talk. If it helped her feel more confident in herself, Carl was happy that she got the idea four years early and didn't have to wait until a snide blonde accidently cursed her teeth and a professor insult her before she would do something about it.

Eventually the train ride ended and they followed Hagrid to the boats that took them the scenic route to Hogwarts. Carl idly wondered what the area would have looked like if the founders had extended the lake around Hogwarts so it had a moat for extra defense. They probably would have had to shore up the foundations with magic to prevent the eventual erosion. What would he design his magical castle to be like?

Carl was jolted from his musing when they arrived at the entryway and met Professor McGonagall. She gave them the "Your house is your family" speech, and after an encounter with the ghosts, they were ushered into the Great Hall where everyone else at school was waiting for their sorting ceremony to finally end so they could eat.

Carl suddenly thought that, strangely enough, the scene where Draco Malfoy offers Harry Potter friendship and "help finding the right sort" of company didn't happen.

'Come to think of it, Ron Weasley didn't show up asking for a place to sit, either. Maybe not running into the Weasley family had a butterfly effect? Since Harry didn't meet the Weasleys, the twins didn't spread the word all over the train that the Boy-Who-Lived was on the train, and Ron didn't seek him out to befriend him. So Malfoy didn't hear all the people talking about Harry and try to seek him out for social gain. Guess there is some basic Slytherin instinct in Malfoy after all, if he was looking for social advantages by befriending a celebrity. Either that or Malfoy just wants to be popular.'

After their short encounter with the ghosts, the group was lined up and ushered into the Great Hall. Carl watched as the hordes of eyes watching the group of first years made nearly all of them at least self conscious.

Professor McGonagall began calling out the names for the sorting, which seemed to follow canon as far as Carl could tell. Until it got to him.

"Edwards, Carl."

Carl moved up when he heard his name and sat on the seat. The hat had no sooner touched his head, when it called out, "Ravenclaw."

He had selected the Ravenclaw house on the Jump Documents because it gave him the **Wit Beyond Measure** perk for free. It would give him a boost to intelligence, giving him a naturally quick wit, preeminent puzzling skills, and able to grasp theoretical principles with the best of them.

If he was going to focus on outing magic to the muggles and be able to merge magic and technology, he wanted all the help he could get in his endeavor to create a new mad science. The cunning, bravery, or loyalty perks offered by the other houses just couldn't compare in helping him attain his goals like adding on more intelligence and puzzle solving skills could.

Carl smiled encouragingly at his three new friends as he made his way to the Ravenclaw table. He then prepared to wait out the rest of the sorting, although he got a little shock a few minutes later. Hermione joined him at the Ravenclaw table after her turn. Apparently having already made a friend influenced her to join him in the house, rather than force the hat to put her in the more social Gryffindor house.

"Congratulations there, Hermione. Glad you could join me." Carl greeted her as she sat down next to him.

"Thanks." Hermione and Carl's conversation was cut short as Professor McGonagall continued calling the first years to be sorted.

Carl politely clapped for each student's sorting. Neville managed to get himself sorted into his parent's old house of Gryffindor. On the train ride he had shared some of his nervousness about not being able to fulfill his Grandmother's expectations. Harry, Hermione, and Carl had tried to build up his confidence a bit, and encourage him to go for the house he wanted.

A short time later, Harry joined Neville in Gryffindor. Seeing the two boys sitting next to each other, Carl gave them a big smile and a thumbs up. They grinned back at him, waving cheerfully from where they sat.

Once the sorting was over, Dumbledore stood up to say his few words. "Nitwit, Blubber, Oddment, Tweak." And then he started the feast.

Carl dug into the food, and was pleasantly surprised. The food was good. He wondered if magic was the reason the food was so tasty, or it was the House Elves that made it so good. Right as he was about to voice this question to some of the upper year students, he paused. He then swallowed the question and buried it deep.

He didn't want to introduce Hermione, who was sitting next to him, to House Elves anytime soon. The longer before Spew made its appearance, the easier Carl would rest. And he had some research to do about elves first. He wasn't sure what was true in this world, if they needed to bond with a place of power or family to survive, or if they had been cruelly enslaved against their will. Until he found an answer, he decided he would leave the topic alone.

After the feast was finished, Dumbledore had a few more announcements concerning the Forbidden Forest and the third floor corridor on the right hand side leading to a most painful death.

Carl turned to Hermione, "Surely death being kept in a corridor in school isn't common in the wizarding world?"

Hermione looked unsure, having no answer. "Maybe it's just somewhere they need to repair and don't want anyone to wander where it's unstable?" She theorized.

Carl shrugged. "Well, either way, I'm not going to go find out." Carl lied through his teeth.

Nodding her agreement, Hermione joined Carl and the rest of the first years as they lined up for the 5th year prefects Penelope Clearwater and Chester Enfield as they guided them up to the Ravenclaw tower.

They were introduced to the door knocker that gave out a riddle before letting them inside.

"Don't worry if you can't get it, though. If you fail to guess the riddle, it will sound a bell to alert someone inside to come let you in. The professors couldn't let the students' failure to answer a riddle come between them and attending class, after all. You may or may not get teased for not remembering the answer to the riddle though, since the riddles and answers are posted on the board there." Penelope told them as they entered the common room, while pointing at a corkboard hanging on one of the walls.

"The boys dorms are on the left, while the girls are on the right. Be aware that boys are not allowed up in the girls' dorms, and there are measures to make sure you stay out." Chester continued the introduction. "Breakfast in the mornings starts at 7:30. We'll be available to escort you to the Great Hall at 8, where you will get your schedule for the year."

"Any questions?"

Carl looked around and saw that all the first years looked dead on their feet, and none of them seemed interested in questions at the moment. He too didn't have anything to ask them at the moment.

"Okay, if you have any questions at any time, just come find one of us prefects and we'll help you as best we can." Penelope finished up. "Now, off to bed the lot of you."

Carl looked over at Hermione. "Hey, get some good sleep. See you in the morning."

"Yeah, g'night." Hermione agreed before a yawn shut down her ability to speak.

Carl trooped up to his room and found his bed. Carl was pleased that each of the Ravenclaws got their own room. With space expansion charms, there really was no reason they couldn't all have their own room, unless the professors thought they needed to be "social". As if they weren't getting enough socializing time by spending nearly 10 months of the year at a boarding school.

Setting up his trunk, he moved his Warehouse portal on the wall and entered to change and have his evening workout at his dojo.

After showering and getting ready for bed, he did his daily meditation to sort his memories. Occlumency was an ongoing exercise. Each day as he made new memories, he organized them to keep his mind running at peak efficiency. It also kept his defenses from turning into a jumbled mess.

Burrowing into his bed in his dorm room, Carl drifted off into sleep. It was nice to occasionally actually sleep, and tonight was one of those nights. For the experience if for nothing else.

* * *

Carl woke up early the next morning, not needing nearly as much sleep as a normal boy his age did. With a few hours until breakfast to spend, Carl entered his Warehouse. He saw Rover snoozing on his new perch that was set up over his old bed.

Ever since Rover had gained his full Phoenix growth, he'd mastered the use of his wings to fly, and learned how to flash teleport around. With his new mobility, Rover lived up to his name and started traveling around the country, or the world, doing whatever a pewter-dog-turned-Phoenix did with their time.

Carl would occasionally still cook dinner for him and Rover, but otherwise the Phoenix had access to the produce of his farm to forage at all day, as well as whatever he found around the world.

After petting his snoozing familiar, Carl started his workout in his dojo. He was beginning to see just why the description of the dojo had said that it would serve him for a "light workout". It was designed for those at the disciple class, not those at the master class level.

Carl idly wondered if the Room of Requirement could simulate a better workout dojo for him. Maybe a gravity chamber? He would have to test it sometime this week.

Once Carl had finished his workout, he showered and prepared for the day. Once he arrived at the Ravenclaw common room, he saw Hermione already sitting down, reading one of their school books in anticipation of their classes beginning.

Carl snuck up behind the brown haired girl, and covered her eyes. "Guess who?"

"Not funny, Carl!"

The annoyed tone of voice caused Carl to chuckle as she slapped his hands away. He shrugged in response to her glare. "Good morning, Hermione. Not a morning person? How did you sleep?"

"Just fine." She huffed while picking up her bag stuffed full of books.

Carl eyed the heavy backpack full of books. "You know, we're not going to have every class this morning. You don't have to bring the lot of them?"

Hermione gave him a supercilious look. "Just because _some_ of us don't believe in being prepared, is no reason for the rest of us to be so lackadaisical."

"Well, as long as you don't hold my foibles against me, who am I to complain?" Carl grinned at the girl as he opened the door for them to make their way to breakfast. He too had all his books with him, in a mokeskin pouch he had purchased. He was just concerned that the little 11 year old girl was going to be worn out from lugging her books around the castle all day. But it was her decision, after all.

They continued chatting as they made their way to breakfast. Upon arriving, Carl saw that there were few students so early in the morning. He and Hermione sat down at their table and began to eat.

A short time later, more students began entering the hall. Some of them were bright eyed and bushy tailed, and some others had to drag themselves around so early in the morning.

When Harry and Neville entered, Carl waved at them.

"Over here, Harry, Neville. Come, have a seat!"

Harry and Neville exchanged glances, and then looked around the hall for a moment, before shrugging and joining Carl and Hermione at the Ravenclaw table.

"So, why are we joining you at the Ravenclaw table for breakfast?" Harry asked, having gotten used to Carl over the summer, while Neville had only met him yesterday and was the more timid of the two.

"Because you two didn't get up early enough to make it to the Gryffindor table before we got here, of course. Otherwise Hermione and I would join you there. If you want to sit there for breakfast, you'll have to beat us to breakfast, and we'll join you."

"We will?" / "You will?" / "You will?"

Three voices questioned Carl at once. Carl spent a moment to sweep a mock serious glance at his three friends. "But of course. That's just how these kinds of things with friends work. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor-"

"We're not mailmen!" Hermione interrupted.

Carl laughed that she got the reference. "Well, no. But house divides that everyone else lives by shall not affect us." Carl grandly gestured around the hall. "I mean look at that. Even Padma and Parvati Patil are too afraid to buck the 'unspoken tradition'" Carl made sure to air quote in an exaggerated manner, "to chance sitting at a different house with their twin."

Padma Patil, who had been sitting close enough to hear Carl, looked over at her twin at the Gryffindor table sitting with the wittering Lavender Brown, firmed her jaw in decision, and got up to go sit with her sister.

Carl watched Padma go over to the Gryffindor table with a smile of satisfaction. The house system of Hogwarts wasn't a bad idea, but like many traditions it had gotten carried away over the years. When great friends and even siblings were afraid to interact with each other publicly at Hogwarts, there was definitely something wrong with the system.

"10 points to both Ravenclaw and Gryffindor for helping to promote house unity." A voice that Carl recognized as Professor Flitwick sounded out from behind him.

Carl turned around and saw Professors Flitwick and McGonagall standing behind him. He hadn't heard them coming up behind him, so he assumed they had been using some kind of silencing charm on their feet. Sneaky professors!

"Thank you professors." Carl smiled at their Heads of House. From the corner of his eye, Carl looked at the head table to see what reaction the other professors had. Dumbledore was beaming happily in their directions, while Snape was glaring, presumably at Harry.

"Apart from the official feasts where every student is required to sit at their table, there is no rule keeping students apart. It's good to see the students of different houses getting along so well." Professor McGonagall said with the faint hint of a smile gracing her features. "Here is your schedule Mr. Potter, Mr. Longbottom. Be sure to not be late."

"Thank you professor." The two boys responded.

"And a schedule, each, for you Ms. Granger and Mr. Edwards." Professor Flitwick handed over Carl's schedule. "I hope to continue to see good things from you two." He cheerily commented.

"Yes, professor." Hermione dutifully responded.

"We'll do our best to not disappoint, professor." Carl commented with a smile.

"See that you do." Professor McGonagall gave one more look at the four students before moving off to the Gryffindor table to pass out schedules while Professor Flitwick did the same for his house.

Once the professor's backs were turned, Hermione reached across the table and snatched Neville's schedule from him to compare to her own. Carl gave Neville a shrug and a smile to let him know that she didn't mean anything by being so abrupt. Neville smiled back at Carl to indicate that he didn't take it to heart, and simply leaned over so he could look at Harry's schedule until he got his back.

"So, what's first up on our schedule, Hermione?" Carl asked after she had a chance to copy out Neville's schedule onto her own.

"We have Transfiguration first thing with the Gryffindors this morning with Professor McGonagall." The studious girl stated, handing Neville's schedule back to him with a thanks.

"Hence why Professor McGonagall told us not to be late." Carl chuckled.

"It would be a shame to lose the points we just earned." Harry pointed out. "Wonder what we'll be doing in our first class?"

"I just hope I do okay in the class." Neville ventured.

"I'm sure you'll do fine, Neville." Harry offered.

"Harry's right, Neville. You just need to be confident with your magic. It's all about using your will and that Gryffindor stubbornness I know you've got to tell it what you want to do." Carl also tried to help bolster Neville's confidence.

"Hah! You think a squib like Longbottom is going to do good? Everyone knows he never showed any accidental magic growing up. I don't know how he got into Hogwarts, but he really doesn't belong here." An annoyingly high pitched voice came from behind Carl.

Carl had heard the three people move up behind him, but he hadn't worried about students attacking him. Turning around, he saw the pale face of Draco Malfoy sneering at Neville, Hermione, and him.

"I'm Malfoy. Draco Malfoy." The blonde Slytherin introduced himself once he saw he'd gotten Harry's attention. "Hanging out with a squib and two mudbloods won't do your social standing any good, Potter. But I can help you find the right sort, if you ally yourself with me." Draco arrogantly offered.

Carl was somewhat amused to be labeled a 'mudblood' by a mewling brat. Even before he'd started the jump chain he had already been three times Malfoy's age. And now that he had 50 years of experience in different worlds, fighting against demons, vampires, martial artists, and various virtual monsters that could have killed him, the result of being called names by a schoolyard bully just didn't have much impact, other than mild annoyance.

Harry on the other hand, clenched his jaw in anger at Malfoy's insults directed at his friends. "I think I can tell the right sort for myself, thanks." Harry subtly turned the insult back onto Malfoy, implying that Malfoy was the wrong sort. Malfoy flushed in anger at having his verbal jabs turned back on him.

"Careful, Potter." Malfoy spat in anger. "If you don't respect your betters, you'll go the same way as your parents."

'Yup, the idiot went there.' Carl thought. 'It's time to stop this confrontation. And teach Malfoy a little lesson.' Quick as a snake, Carl struck. His hand in the shape of a snake head buried itself in Malfoys gut and returned before anyone could see him move. Who asked Malfoy to get that close to a Martial Arts Master?

Malfoy opened his mouth as if he was going to speak again, but then he turned green and bent over like a prawn, puking his guts out onto his feet.

"Wow, I've heard the phrase 'spewing bile' to describe the kind of disgusting words and threats that just came out of your mouth, Malfoy, but I've never seen someone take it so literally." Carl laughed.

"25 points from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw each. And detention all this weekend." The angry, oily voice of Professor Snape snapped out as he stormed up to the group.

Harry muttered angrily at Snape's unfair punishment. Neville shut down and went quiet and still. Hermione turned pale at being punished so harshly by a teacher. Snape eyed them angrily, hoping they would say something so he could up the punishment even more.

Carl narrowed his eyes at the greasy man, then stood up and waved at Professors McGonagall and Flitwick. "Could I have the adjudication of our Heads of House and the Deputy Headmistress in this unfair assignment of punishment?" Carl loudly called out.

"That will be another 25 points from Ravenclaw and another detention." Snape ground out through his teeth.

By that time Professors McGonagall and Flitwick had arrived.

"What is going on here?" Professor McGonagall asked sternly.

"The problem is that these Gryffindors and Ravenclaws assaulted my Slytherin, and so I'm punishing them." Snape quickly said.

'He must have a lot of practice with jumping in and spewing out rationales for his biased behavior.' Carl thought.

"Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape levied unfair punishment on the four of us when we did nothing wrong. None of us even touched Malfoy despite his despicable words and taunts. When he suddenly upchucked, Professor Snape, without even asking questions about what happened, took 25 points from each of us and assigned detention all weekend. When I asked for the adjudication of our Heads of house and the Deputy Headmistress, as is my right as a student here at Hogwarts, he took another 25 points and assigned another detention."

Professor McGonagall glared at Snape for his unfair and overly harsh punishment, before turning her attention back to Carl. During his explanation, Dumbledore and the other Professors had made their way over to the group, but Dumbledore refrained from saying anything for the moment, content to let his Deputy Headmistress handle things.

"Why don't you start at the beginning and explain everything clearly." Professor McGonagall said.

Carl nodded agreeably. "We were just eating breakfast, minding our own business, when Malfoy here came up to us." Malfoy was still wheezing on the ground, so he couldn't jump up in his own defense. And Crabbe and Goyle were just standing there stupidly.

"The first words out of his mouth was to call Neville here a squib and Hermione and I mudbloods." Carl watched Professor McGonagall's mouth firm even more and Professor Flitwick's usual cheerful demeanor was nowhere in evidence. "After which he offered Harry here to show him the 'right sort' which presumably didn't include us. Harry rejected his offer because Malfoy just insulted his friends. Then Malfoy said, and I quote, 'If you don't respect your betters, you'll go the same way as your parents'. So Malfoy insulted all of us at the table, and mocked Harry's orphan status, and threatened him with death."

Carl watched in satisfaction as the students listening in who hadn't heard Malfoy and the professors gasped at the sheer despicableness of what Malfoy said.

"We were just about to yell back at Malfoy, when Malfoy suddenly turned green and puked." Carl continued. He could see Snape really wanted to blow up at him, but was held in check by the other Professors. "We have no idea how that happened, since we didn't even do anything to him. But Professor Snape was there real quick and assigning us punishment and taking points without even asking what happened. I mean, we haven't even learned any spells yet, how could we have done that to Malfoy? So we wanted you to adjudicate this mess, because Professor Snape was being unfair to us. And he didn't even punish Malfoy for what he said, either." Carl finished his explanation.

Professor McGonagall and Flitwick then questioned all the students involved, and those who witnessed the confrontation. The Professor's then erected a silencing charm so they could talk it out with each other without the students overhearing.

Carl watched the byplay with interest. It looked like Dumbledore made a decision that Professor's McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout didn't like, while Snape looked on derisively.

After taking down the silencing ward, Professor McGonagall turned to Dumbledore. "Since this is your judgment, you give the announcement." She tersely stated.

"Ahh, yes. The detentions have been waived. But the point deductions by Professor Snape will stand. It's important for you to respect the judgment and authority of the professors." Dumbledore announced while smiling in his Grandfatherly manner. "Now that the matter is concluded, let's be about our day."

Carl shook his head. Was the old coot willfully covering for Snape and his bullies, or did he really believe that settled everything? "But what about Malfoy's punishment for what he said, Professor Dumbledore? I mean, threatening a fellow student like he did, shouldn't he be punished?"

Dumbledore looked down his nose at Carl. "Mr….?"

"Edwards, Professor. Carl Edwards." Carl wasn't sure if Dumbledore genuinely didn't remember his name from the sorting just the night before, or if it was some kind of subtle power play of reminding him where he stood. Either way, his opinion of Dumbledore couldn't get much lower at the moment.

"Mr. Edwards, it's important to be magnanimous and forgive the words of a fellow student said in a moment of anger. I'm sure Mr. Malfoy didn't mean it. And as you can see, he's already suffered a punishment for his words." Dumbledore waved at Malfoy that was still curled up on the ground.

Carl knew exactly how hard he had hit Malfoy, and he knew Malfoy was fine now, he was just playing up his "injury" for sympathy. He didn't see how Malfoy puking was related to the administration of the school punishing a student.

Carl debated whether he wanted to try one more argument. He was pretty sure Dumbledore wasn't going to be swayed, but maybe there would be more receptive ears? At the very least he could get some of the other people in the room thinking about why leaving it at that was unfair and wrong.

"But professor, I'm a little confused here. There's quite a big difference between someone receiving karmic justice for being a thoroughly unpleasant individual, and this institute of learning levying a punishment in order to get the message across that those kinds of threats and attitudes won't be tolerated. Don't you think, as the head of this institute, that you should send that message to Malfoy here?"

"Now, now, Mr. Edwad." Dumbledore began patronizingly. "I've been an educator for a number of years. You'll just have to trust my judgment. I believe that Mr. Malfoy has learned his lesson."

'Huh, apparently this Dumbledore was playing dominance games. Mangling my name? How petty and childish can you get?' Carl derisively thought while keeping his feelings from showing on his face.

"Okay, then Professor." Carl gave in. The stubborn old coot obviously wasn't going to be changing his mind, but he could tell that his words and ideas had hit home with the other professors, and they weren't happy with the result of Dumbledore's verdict either.

Carl looked over at his friends, and saw that Hermione was on the verge of exploding. Catching Harry and Neville's eyes, he motioned towards Hermione, and then the doors. Looking at her, they got the message, and all three grabbed their bags and hustled Hermione out of the Great Hall as the rest of the students were dispersing.

Carl led them into the first empty classroom he found, just in time for Hermione to explode in anger.

"I can't believe the absolute unfair, unreasonable…Teachers shouldn't be like that, they should be impartial and fair…" Hermione ranted on for a while.

When she finally got it out of her system and calmed down Carl put a hand on her shoulder in comfort. Harry and Neville decided to just stand by, since they otherwise had no idea how to handle themselves in the face of an angry girl.

"Yeah, you're absolutely right Hermione about what the ideal teacher should be. Unfortunately we've got Snape and Dumbledore." Carl joked. "If it makes you feel any better, all the other teachers seemed to be angry about the results too. It's not a lot, but at least we've got some help around here. Just as long as we steer clear of those two, we should be alright."

Hermione snorted in angry amusement. "Oh, yes. Only two bad teachers in the lot." Looking over the three boys in front of her, she cracked a smile at last. "Well, at least I've actually got friends to make it better." Which caused Harry and Neville to blush.

Carl smiled back at the three. "Indeed. It's like the Three Musketeers!"

"But, there's four of us." Neville said blankly, unsure just what a Musketeer was.

"You're right, Neville. The Four Musketeers. We'll tell you more about them later. The important thing is their motto. One for all, and all for one. We're friends, and we're here for each other." Carl enjoyed seeing the realization coming over each of his three friends that they were now something more than just four people. They were a band of brothers (and sister).

"Now, I think we'd best get to class." Carl said, dispelling the touching moment.

Hermione nearly squawked at the realization that they might be _late to class_, and started chivying them on their way to class.

They barely made it on time to the Transfiguration class, rushing in just as the bell rang.


	26. HP 3

"Neville, I don't think your wand is well matched for you."Carl told his friend as they were headed to the library after the day of classes to study as a group. "When I went to Ollivanders to pick up my wand, he said something about the wand choosing the wizard. I think that's why you have such a hard time manifesting your magic."

"Yeah, Ollivander said the same thing to me." Harry agreed.

Neville pulled out his wand to look at it with a complicated gaze. "It was my dad's wand. Grandmother wants me to be like him, so she gave it to me to use."

"Let's stop a moment in this classroom and test something." Carl said.

Once inside, he pulled out the first wand that he bought from Ollivander, the 12" Pine and Unicorn Hair wand. He handed it to Neville. "Here, give that a wave and see what it feels like."

Neville waved it, and a cascade of sparks shot out of the wand. A big, cheesy grin appeared on his face. "I can feel it. It's so much more responsive than my dad's wand."

Carl pulled out a matchstick and placed it on a nearby desk. "Give it a go, Neville."

Neville got a look of concentration on his face. He waved the wand in the manner taught them by Professor McGonagall while saying the incantation. The match turned a silvery color and sharpened up a bit.

"Oh, well done Neville!" Hermione cheered.

Neville's face was alight with excitement. "I did it! It's not perfect, but I actually did it!" His earlier attempts in class he hadn't been able to change the match at all.

Carl clapped Neville on the shoulder in congratulations. "Nicely done. I think I'll leave my spare wand in your hands until you can get to Ollivanders and get a properly fitted wand."

"What? No, I can't…"

"You can and you will. Like I said, that's a spare wand." Carl reassured Neville. "It was the best fit of those in Ollivander's shop. But when my Phoenix familiar grew up and donated a feather, I had Ollivander make me a perfectly fitting wand." Carl showed them his pine and Phoenix Feather wand. "In fact, I haven't introduced Rover to you yet have I?"

At Hermione and Neville's no, Carl called for Rover over their bond. When his familiar flashed in, the two were entranced to be meeting a Phoenix. Harry had already met Rover during the summer, so he was acting blasé about the phoenix.

"And, please keep it a secret that I've got a Phoenix familiar. I don't want all the extra attention that I would get from it being generally known." Carl asked his friends. They agreed to keep it secret.

After Rover had flamed out, the group moved on to the library to work on their homework. It was only the first day and they had already been assigned essays.

* * *

In the middle of the night, a shadow was making its way to the seventh floor corridor, sticking to the shadows and running silently.

Carl, in an outfit similar to Grutter costume that he used in the SAO world, and morphed to have a different face, came to a stop and stood in front of a tapestry of a man teaching trolls how to dance, looking at a blank wall. He fixed his request in his mind, and paced in front of the blank wall three times. A door appeared on the wall, that Carl spent no time opening and entering.

Once inside, all that appeared was a single pillar, waist high, with a tiara that _reeked_ of dark magic sitting on the pillar. Carl opened up the silk lined lead chest that he made with materials from his farm and levitated the tiara inside the box, and slammed it shut.

Even through his Occlumency shields, he had felt the compulsions to put the tiara on his head. It wasn't strong enough to tempt him, but they were there and they were strong. Once he closed the lead chest, he no longer felt the compulsions, and the nasty stench from the dark magic of Tom's soul jar disappeared from the air.

Carl opened up the portal to his Warehouse and placed the box containing the horcrux in a secure storage. Shrinking the portal again and placing it on his forearm protectors, Carl prepared for the next part of his plan.

He requested the room to give him a passage to just outside the Slytherin common room. Keeping the door open so he could swiftly return to the Room of Requirement, Carl stared at the blank space of wall that hid the entrance. Carl focused on imagining a snake and hissed the word _§Open§_ in parseltongue.

Nothing happened.

'So, one fan fiction idea down.' Carl thought with a rueful smile. He then whispered the word "pureblood" in English. That was the password in what would have been Harry's second year in the books.

A line in the wall appeared. The wall on either side of the line slid apart to create a doorway leading into the dorms.

Carl scoffed silently. 'Sure, keep the same password into perpetuity. That's secure. But then again, this is the same institute that makes the Ravenclaws answer a riddle to get into their dorms. Not exactly secure.'

Carl backed away and let the doorway to the Slytherin common rooms close, and re-entered the Room of Requirement. He then requested the room to provide him a door to the Slytherin 1st year dorm. Carl peaked out on a hallway that had a number of doors on both sides. Looking closely, he saw name plates on each door.

Once more closing the door, Carl requested a door into Crabbe's room. No door appeared. Apparently the founders had put some limitations on where the room could open a door to, which actually reassured Carl a bit. Now he was pretty sure some random person couldn't use the room to sneak into his own dorm room.

Carl tried a few other rooms in the different houses, and was unable to have a door appear directly into student rooms. He then requested a door into his own room, and it appeared. Apparently since it was his own room, the Room of Requirement would provide passage, but any others it couldn't. Good to know.

Carl then reopened the door into the corridor outside the first year Slytherin dorms. Making sure that the door to the Room of Requirement stayed open, Carl moved over to the door marked for Crabbe. The door itself wasn't locked, but it was barred from the inside. Carl used a spot of telekinesis to move the bar and opened the door.

Carl loomed over Crabbe as he slept. He pulled his wand and cast Legilimency. He had purchased some books on the magical art and read up on how to do the spell. Using his telepathy as a guide, Carl felt out how the spell worked while trawling through the 11 year old's memories.

Carl discovered from the boy's memories that he and Goyle had perfectly normal intelligence. The Crabbe and Goyle families were close with each other, and both their father's had sat them down years ago and advised them to fake being dumber than they were. It played into everyone else's prejudice of how they must be dumb because of their looks.

Carl watched Crabbe's memories of Crabbe and Goyle senior explaining to them how their families had been trapped years ago into perpetual oaths of servitude by the Malfoys. They would have to listen to and obey young Draco Malfoy's orders, just as their fathers had to obey Lucius Malfoy.

That was not information that Carl expected to run into. He didn't have any plan or idea what to do with that for now. Guess he'll just ignore it for now.

Switching the spells he was using, Carl started using his **Memory Spell Specialist** perk given knowledge to practice altering small, insignificant memories in Crabbe's mind.

He didn't change anything significant in Crabbe's memories, merely some of the colors of some people's clothes and the faces of random people in the crowds at Quidditch matches. Carl was doing it just to practice a bit to make sure he has a handle on his abilities before he tries it on any important memories.

After being satisfied that he had his abilities under control, Carl reverted all the changes he'd made in Crabbe's memories back to their original.

He still hadn't spent any time studying what the techniques of the magical police were for investigating crimes. The less evidence he left behind, the smaller the likelihood was of anyone looking for a mysterious mind mage running around loose in Hogwarts.

Carl retreated out of Crabbe's dorm and back into the Room of Requirement. He then had the room provide him a passage to the third year Gryffindor dorms. After checking for traps and disarming a few that would have woken up the three third years that slept in the room, Carl entered.

After making sure he had on his own gas mask, Carl set off a small air released potion to ensure the three boys would stay asleep while he did his work. He'd found the potion during his exploration of Diagon Alley and thought it had some very good applications, like his current project.

He soon had the location of the Marauder's map from the mind of George. It was in his the drawer next to his bed. Carl pocketed the valuable map. He then worked on George, Fred, and Lee's minds, erasing memories of the actual map, while leaving behind the memories of the secret passages they had discovered. He hadn't been willing to spend cp on getting the map, but he was for sure going to be snagging it while he could.

Carl then retreated back to the Room of Requirement once more. Time for his last mission of the night. Carl opened up the map and held his wand to it.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

Carl looked at the map that detailed the whole castle. After some playing around, he figured out how to zoom the map to a particular area. Looking at the first year Gryffindor boys dorm, he looked for the name of Peter Pettigrew.

It wasn't there.

Scowling, Carl then started looking through the rest of the Gryffindor Tower for the rat. He wasn't anywhere in the boys dorms. Looking over at the girls dorms, Carl spotted the rat in the 6th year girls dorm. Apparently he could bypass the stairs in his animagus form?

Carl considered if he should attempt to capture the rat man now? Pettigrew was awake and might put up enough of a fight that he alerted people to his presence. But if Pettigrew was assaulting the girls, he needed to be stopped post haste. But at the same time, Carl had no desire to deal with the fall out if things went south and he was spotted.

After thinking the situation over, in the end, Carl decided to act now rather than later. He was already years late from stopping Pettigrew completely, but he'd be damned if he let the traitor continue what he was doing. He called for Rover. His familiar showed up in a burst of flames.

"Hey, boy. I'm going to be trying to capture a bad guy in a situation where I might need a quick exit. If I call for you, can you flame us back to this room quickly?"

Rover chirped affirmatively while nodding his head up and down. Carl petted his head in appreciation. "Thanks."

Carl had the room give him a door to just outside the sixth year girls dorm. He gingerly stepped out onto the floor, and sighed in relief when no alarm went off. Thankfully the alarm seemed to only be on the stairs immediately next to the common room.

He quietly cracked the door open. Looking in, he saw four beds with their canopies closed. He saw a faint light from one of the beds, and a short dumpy man poking his head and torso through one of the curtains.

Seeing that he wasn't detected, Carl fully entered the room. Calling forth his magic, he used bands of air to tie up Pettigrew, prevent him from speaking, and then shoved one of his sleep bombs in the rat's face all in one smooth action.

The rat passed out, dropping the wand he was holding to the floor. Carl froze, looking at the beds to see if anyone woke up to the faint sounds. Thankfully it was soft enough to not wake anyone, and the sleep potion vapors insured that all the girls remained asleep.

After seeing no movement from the inhabitants of the room, Carl relaxed some. He bent and picked up the wand that Pettigrew dropped, stuffing it in a pocket. He then peeked into the curtains and saw that the sixth year girl was heavily sleeping. He assumed that Pettigrew had cast a spell on her to keep her asleep. Her panties were still in place, but her nightdress was hiked up to expose her assets.

Carl quickly covered her, and closed the curtain around her bed, then looked at the floating traitor and all around nasty man in front of him. Shaking his head, in disgust, Carl floated him back to the Room of Requirement.

Once he was back in a more secure location, he started his Legilimency practice on the cowardly traitor. He was a quick study with the Legilimency spell thanks to his telepathy magic learned from the BtVS world.

After trawling through the filth that was Pettigrew's mind and reviewing some of the relevant memories, he found the biggest reason why Pettigrew betrayed the Potters, his supposed friends, wasn't because of fear of Voldemort. It was jealousy and greed.

Pettigrew was jealous of Potter and Black, who were always the more popular and talented, wizards. He was promised women, riches, and recognition by the Death Eater recruiters and Voldemort for his betrayal.

"Such a petty reason to betray those that trusted in you." Carl said to the unconscious wizard.

Shaking his head at the pitiful excuse for a man, Carl tied him up securely. He made sure to administer another dose of knock out gas to keep him under for several more hours, then floated the tied up man and a chair from the lost and found from the room into his Warehouse.

Securing Pettigrew to the chair, Carl then printed a big sign that he attached to the bound man.

"This is Peter Pettigrew, the real betrayer of the Potter's location to the Dark Wizard Voldemort. He framed Sirius Black for his own criminal acts, including the death of the 12 muggles in the explosion on the street on the morning of November 1st, 1981. Sirius Black never received a trial for the crimes he was framed for. Give both Pettigrew and Black trials with veritaserum and you will find the truth. One more item, Pettigrew is an unregistered rat animagus. Make sure he doesn't escape justice again. Help Sirius Black, an innocent man unjustly imprisoned in Azkaban, go free, imprison his betrayer, and show the people of the wizarding world that the current administration is Just and looking out for them."

Carl looked over at Rover. "Think it will work?" Rover chirped excitedly, nodding. "Can you flame him to Madame Bones' office at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement just before she goes into work in the morning?"

Rover nodded in agreement.

"Cool, I'll leave it to you then." Carl petted his familiar for a few minutes. "Well, time for me to get to bed."

* * *

Two days later at lunch Carl saw an official looking owl land at the head table in front of Dumbledore. The old wizard read through the letter twice, his face twitching at the news.

Carl was observing him carefully. The old man was shocked and upset at the news. Then he got frustrated. Carl watched the old man glance significantly at Harry where he, Carl, Neville, and Hermione were eating at the Gryffindor table.

'The old man is thinking of how he can get ahead of the crisis to make sure his plan is in place.' Carl thought as he watched the old man hurry out of the hall. The possessed Professor Quirrell caught Carl's eye because he was looking quite gleeful at the departure of Dumbledore.

Carl didn't think that Quirrell would be able to get anywhere near the Philosopher's Stone, since in the canon story he took all year to get through the defenses. But there was no sense letting him have the chance when Carl was determined to steal it first.

"Hey, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'll catch back up with you in the library." Carl made his excuses since he was done eating after he'd given Dumbledore enough time to leave the castle.

Once he was in the bathroom away from everyone, he called up Rover. Using his mental link with his familiar, he had Rover flash him to just outside the 3rd floor corridor. Then, in a series of flashes, Carl and Rover jumped into each room before quickly flashing to the next. Carl only caught brief glimpses of the obstacles before they were in the next room.

Fluffy had only just raised his three heads in consternation at the fire flashes before Rover took him to the next room.

The devil's snare twitched away from the bright fire, giving Carl a good look at how the plant was situated around the room.

Carl barely heard the rustle of the key's wings as they grew agitated at someone being there, but before he could even look up Rover already had them into the next room.

The kings of the chessboard turned their whole bodies towards him when he appeared, but Rover didn't pause in his efforts.

Carl's nose was struck by the most offensive odor he'd ever smelt. Before he could even halfway gag at the body odor of a 12 foot troll, he was away from the violent odor in a flash of fire.

Carl then saw a series of potions set on a table before he was in the final room and looking at an ornate mirror. He reached up and petted Rover for his quick flash technique, but kept his praise nonverbal, just in case there were listening devices.

He looked over at the Mirror of Erised. A device that would show the viewer the strongest desire of their heart. The downside was that it didn't show them how to attain that desire, only what their desire was.

Carl took a moment to brace himself. He was pretty sure he knew what he wanted, but there was that wriggling worm of doubt in his gut. He thought he knew himself well enough, but what if he was some kind of delusional person acting under false pretenses?

Carl snorted. Yeah, he read too much fiction back in the day to still be worried about silly stuff like that. After so much time in the jump chain, he was confident he knew what he wanted. It's what he was working towards every jump.

He stepped in front of the mirror and looked into it boldly. A smile grew on his face. He saw pretty much what he expected. Carl's reflection good naturedly flipped him off before slipping the Philosopher's Stone into his pocket. Carl felt the weight of the stone settle into his own pocket. Mission accomplished.

Carl spent a few moments looking at what the mirror was showing him. He waved to the multitudes of people present in the image.

His reflection then turned and kissed the girl that was closest to him, smirked once more at Carl, before turning and jumping into a portal that led to his next adventure while his family, friends, and harem continued to do their thing on the world that he was the king and master of.

Carl turned away from the mirror while petting Rover who was perched on his shoulder. 'That is a future to look forward to.' Carl thought. He gave the signal to Rover for them to flame out. In a flash of flame, the room was once more empty.

After making sure there was still no one in the bathroom, Carl dropped the Philosopher's stone off in his Warehouse. He would take care of it later. For now, he would store it where no one else could get to it.

Carl arrived at the library, and saw his three friends studying at the table already. "So, what are we studying first?" Carl whispered as he sat next to them.

"Charms first, then potions." Hermione whispered back.

"Gotcha." Carl settled down and started writing his assigned essays.

* * *

Carl was already sitting and eating with his friends a day later when the Daily Prophet arrived, and kick started a huge commotion. Every student that read the front page was shocked.

"So, what's the news that's got everyone jumping like cats on a hot tin roof?" Carl asked Hermione, since he didn't bother getting a subscription. He did get a subscription of the Quibbler, but that didn't come out as often as the Daily Prophet.

"Peter Pettigrew was caught and convicted of the crimes that Sirius Black was thought to have committed." Hermione summarized. "Apparently he was thought to have been killed by Black, but he had framed Black for the crimes he committed. Black went to prison without a trial, utter barbarity that, and Pettigrew has been hiding as a pet rat of a student at Hogwarts since 1981. Seriously? The family he hid with didn't think to check to see if such a long lived rat was odd?"

"So Sirius Black was set free after his trial, and is currently recovering from his 'unfortunate hardship'." Hermione scoffed. "Calling being thrown in prison without a trial for 10 years only a hardship? More like a travesty of justice or an appalling corruption of the system. Calling it only a little hardship…" Hermione trailed off in disgust at the situation.

"But that's not all." Hermione continued after reading more of the article. "Apparently, just before they put Pettigrew in his cell in Azkaban, some guard made a mistake and the Lestrange escaped."

"Which one?" Neville hoarsely asked Hermione.

"Pardon?" Hermione asked back, finally looking up from her paper to eye Neville curiously at his odd tone of voice.

"Which Lestrange escaped?" Neville repeated his question with some intensity.

Hermione quickly scanned the article. "It looks like three of them. Rabastan, Rodolphus, and Bellatrix Lestrange."

Neville clenched his fists and gritted his teeth in anger on hearing the hated names.

"What is it Neville?" Hermione asked in concern at his strong reaction.

"They are the ones that took his parents from him." Carl softly explained to Hermione when Neville didn't answer and it looked like she would badger him for answers.

"Oh." She softly said. "I'm sorry Neville. If I'd known, I'd have broken the news easier."

Neville nodded, and swallowed thickly. "It's okay, it's not your fault. It's just not something I like to talk about."

Harry clapped Neville on the shoulder. "We're here for you, if you need us, Neville."

Carl and Hermione echoed his sentiment.

"So, did they manage to keep Pettigrew locked up, or did he escape too?" Carl asked after a few moments.

Hermione smiled weakly at him for the change of subject. The atmosphere had been getting pretty heavy. "It says that they kept him from escaping."

Carl nodded at the news. It looks like his Prisoner of Azkaban had escaped pretty early because of the changes he made. At least, he was going to assume that one of the Lestranges were the wizard or witch that would come after him.

If another prisoner escaped in the next three years, he was going to have to lodge a complaint. It was already three times the number of wizards he was supposed to have to deal with, he should get three times the cp too. If that turned into four escapees it was just unfair!

And it was only the end of the first week of school. It must be a record.

"So how's everyone's Occlumency practice going?" Carl asked, blatantly changing the subject. He had gifted Neville and Hermione an occlumency book on the train. He had purchased several copies of the book before his one large purchase during the week before he and Harry met.

"It's amazing! I feel able to remember everything so much better after each meditation session!" Hermione gushed.

"And your memory was already tops before occlumency. After you master Occlumency you're going to blow everyone out of the water." Carl complimented her.

"Shush, you."

Harry and Neville joined Carl in chuckling at her embarrassed face.

"It's going good. Ever since I borrowed your wand, I've actually been feeling my magic." Neville said with an excited face. His successes were doing a great job of giving the young Longbottom more confidence. "I feel like I'm making good progress."

"Nice."

"Congratulations."

"Nice job, Nev."

Carl then turned to Harry, who had a look of frustration on his face. "I can't seem to get it. It feels like my head is a mess, and I can't properly concentrate whenever I try. Then I randomly feel angry, or distracted, and lose my concentration." Harry complained. He had had his book for quite some time, longer than anyone else, and he hadn't made any progress. Harry had at first thought that was just how difficult Occlumency was, but seeing Hermione and Neville making progress so easily upset him that he was so slow to get it.

Carl hummed in thought, looking at Harry's scar where a piece of Voldemort's soul was residing. Carl could almost taste the nastiness from it, and it was amazing to him that no one else seemed to notice.

"It might be because of your scar. There's a lot of dark magic residue left over." Carl commented. "It might be interfering with your ability to focus."

Harry angrily rubbed his scar while scowling. "Is there any way to get rid of it?" He almost growled, angry at the thing that brought him unwanted fame, and seemed to be ruining any chance he had to master Occlumency.

"It's Friday, and we don't have classes in the afternoon tomorrow. I'll check on something tonight, and get back to you tomorrow. I _think_ we can take care of it tomorrow evening. Then it should stop interfering with your meditations." Carl offered.

Harry weakly smiled. "Thanks."

Carl smiled back at him. "No worries. It's what friends do."

Hermione gathered up her school supplies. "Well, it's time to get to class."

Just as they were getting ready to leave the Hall, Malfoy popped up near them. "Are you nervous there, squib? I'm thinking the Azkaban escapees are looking to find you and finish what they started with your parents."

Carl grabbed Neville before he could react. "Snape is already making his way over to protect his darling little dragon." He whispered to the group. "Let's keep moving so we don't get in trouble. Draco will get his later." Carl promised.

Carl and Hermione kept Harry and Neville moving along while Draco smirked gloatingly at them. With his godfather Snape to back him up, and with how much leeway Dumbledore gave Snape, Draco didn't think he had anything to fear at school, so he could be as nasty as he wanted.

Carl determined that he would find a way to get back at the arrogant wizard Nazi in training.

* * *

Fred and George were just leaving the Great Hall after dinner and were about to head to the Gryffindor tower. They had their heads together, thinking about the next prank they would play, and who their target should be. They had just arrived at the main stairs leading up to the tower when they were suddenly deluged by a mass of sticky sugary liquid.

The sticky mess was followed by a cloud of feathers landing on them, sticking all over them. They heard a high pitched laugh sounding above them. Looking up, they saw the blonde haired face of Draco Malfoy laughing down at them from a couple of landings up.

Seeing that he had their attention, Draco sneered at them. "That's what blood traitors like you get!" He announced before disappearing from the landing he was standing at.

Fred gritted his teeth, before looking at his twin at the same time George looked at Fred. "I think we've just had a volunteer for our pranks for at least the next month, Fred."

"Why, I do think you're right, George." George responded.

"Right, let's get cleaned up first though."

* * *

A group of 6th and 7th year Hufflepuff students were making their way back to their dorms after a long day of studying for their NEWTs. They were tired after a long day of study, and just wanted to relax at the end of the day.

Unusually, they found a little blonde haired first year Slytherin standing outside the Hufflepuff common room entrance.

"Ah, good. I was looking for someone to hand out these flyers for employment opportunities for the girls of Hufflepuff." Draco Malfoy self importantly proclaimed while handing the adverts to the girl with the largest endowments. "Be sure to hand those out to all the girls of Hufflepuff." Draco ordered as he made his way to the nearest intersection leading away from the Hufflepuff entrance. He paused at the corner. "I'm fully aware that most of you will do nothing more than become broodmares for the next generation of wizards, but the Malfoy family would like nothing better than to employ the better looking and well endowed girls in our gentlemen's entertainment club. You get paid, and we get employees, it's a win-win." Malfoy said just before he turned the corner, disappearing before the girls could explode in anger.

"What the hell was that?" One of the male Hufflepuffs angrily asked.

Looking down at the advert in her hand, the 7th year Hufflepuff girl read the advert aloud. "Are you a useless duffer, but you have a good work ethic? Come and join the Malfoy family's strip club and whorehouse. We offer competitive wages for those with good assets. Those that are flat-chested will naturally have to work harder, but if you put out on your back, we guarantee a competitive monthly salary."

"Why that little shit! Get him!" The females in the group raged and chased around the corner, but Malfoy was long gone. "He'll pay for this." More than one of the Hufflepuffs, both male and female, vowed.

* * *

Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater were on their weekly assigned patrol of the halls to ensure the students were following the rules. Percy was chattering on, trying to impress the beautiful girl he was patrolling with.

"And then that's when I told him…"

"Percy, there's a Slytherin student wandering around over there." Penelope interrupted Percy's bragging, and pointed out a blonde haired first year that was wandering the corridors after curfew.

"Hey! You there! You're out after curfew. That will be 10 points from Slytherin and a detention. Now come on, we'll escort you to your common room."

Draco Malfoy scowled at the red headed Prefect. "Whatever blood traitor, we Malfoys do what we want." He then proceeded to kick Percy in the shins, causing the 5th year Gryffindor prefect to fall to the ground while clutching his leg in pain.

"And another thing, you don't deserve such a scrumptious girl like this. If you ever want a real man, feel free to come my way. I'll show you how superior a real Pure Blood is, girl." Malfoy then grabbed his crotch suggestively, before turning the corner.

Percy growled in furious rage from the ground, staggered to his feet with his wand in hand. "Come back here you little shit!" He furiously yelled.

"That'll be a week of detention, at least." Penelope called out as she followed Percy in trying to catch the extremely rude first year.

But when they turned the corner, they couldn't find the first year Slytherin anywhere.

* * *

Draco Malfoy ducked into a hidden passage to avoid the furious prefects. Chuckling at managing to get the straight laced Percy Weasley to curse, Malfoy continued climbing up to the 7th floor, unimpeded and unseen.

He made his way to the space in front of the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. After pacing back and forth three times, a door appeared on the blank wall in front of the tapestry. With one final look at the parchment map in his hands, Draco opened the door and entered. The moment the door was firmly shut behind him, his form shifted. His blonde hair darkened to brown, his narrow face filled in, and the form of Carl was soon apparent.

Carl chuckled in amusement. "Well, Malfoy. Let's see how you handle the harassment that you seem all too willing to give to others." Carl stretched. He was a bit taller than Malfoy, so it felt good to uncramp and get back to normal. "Chances are they will eventually figure out someone set you up, but by then you'll have felt a bit of pain. Maybe even learned a lesson or two."

Carl didn't really feel bad about setting up the annoying prat. Expressing glee at someone's parent's death or mental incapacity, and wishing that their kid shared their fate was some asocial psychopathic bullshit.

Just because Draco was only 11 was no reason not to call him out on his bad habits. Punishing him and forcefully letting him know that his behavior was wrong was really the only thing that could change the course of his life. But since Carl wasn't the authority figure, only a 12 year old boy, he couldn't do much within the bounds of the rules.

And with Dumbledore continually covering for Snape's behavior, while Snape continued to cover for Malfoy's behavior, chances were Malfoy would one day end up emulating his Death Eater dad and become a murderer, instead of just a schoolyard bully.

"Whatever. If Draco Malfoy ends up becoming a murderer like the rest of Voldemort's Death Eaters, then he'll just have to go, along with the other trash. But until then, he gets the benefit of the doubt. Doesn't mean I can't arrange a bit of suffering that might teach him proper behavior, though. Who asked him to be an annoying little shit?"

Carl looked over the configuration of the room he'd asked the Room of Requirement to make. Opening his Warehouse portal, he pulled out the notes he'd made about the modified ritual he was about to perform.

He carefully studied the ritual circle and runes the Room of Requirement had produced for him. After dozens of minutes, Carl concluded that the ritual was set up perfectly. He started laying out the needed objects for the ritual, making sure that their placement was perfect.

Inside the larger ritual circle were two smaller circles. Each of the smaller circles were about 2 feet in radius. In one of the empty circles, Carl placed a large quartz stone. He then pulled out the lead chest the Ravenclaw diadem horcrux was locked in. He placed the chest down on the ground outside the circle.

After wearing his dragonhide gloves and fortifying his Occlumency shields, Carl opened up the chest. He quickly put the horcrux in the other empty circle inside the ritual circle before moving back out of the circle. Once outside and prepared, he began the chanting to start the ritual while channeling his magic into the circle.

Several minutes later, Carl smiled at the successful completion of the ritual. After scanning the two objects in the circles, he'd determined that the ritual had done what he wanted and transferred the horcrux from the diadem to the quartz. He levitated the newly housed horcrux into the lead chest and closed it, finally relaxing now that he didn't feel the foulness of the horcrux in the air.

With this success, Carl felt that he could proceed with the plan to rid Harry of the horcrux in his scar the next evening. Carl packed away all the ritual components, and stowed away the horcrux storing chest.

Looking over the artifact that Ravenclaw made so long ago, Carl decided that he would spend some time examining the item over the next several years to try to determine what it did. Just jamming it on his head to see what it did seemed the height of folly, even though his scans said the thing was clear of Voldemort's taint.

He packed away the diadem, and then had the room make him a passage to his room, where he got ready for bed.


	27. HP 4

"Is it just me, or is half the hall looking to lynch Malfoy?" Harry asked the next morning at breakfast.

Carl, Hermione, and Neville looked around and saw that Harry was right. There were a lot of angry faces glaring at the first year. All of Hufflepuff house, the prefects from Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff, and Fred, George, and Lee were fixated on the boy who seemed oblivious about the extra attention he was getting that morning.

"I'm sure it'll be fine. No one would go too overboard at getting back at him for whatever he's done." Carl manfully kept his smirk off his face, but not out of his voice. "Besides, it's like Dumbledore was saying. Everyone here is a youth, and sometimes they get a bit rambunctious. Just a bit of youthful indiscretion. No need to concern ourselves over it."

Hermione suspiciously glanced at Carl, but also didn't bother correcting him about using only Dumbledore's last name without calling also calling him professor. Her belief in the authority figures had taken a big hit when she had been punished by Snape for what Malfoy started the other day. With Dumbledore fully condoning her unfair punishment and none of the other professors able to stand up for her, she didn't feel very trusting of them anymore.

Neville mumbled something to himself that he didn't mean for anyone to hear, but Carl caught the words. "Hope he gets his."

Carl smiled at Neville. 'I'm sure he will, Neville. I'm sure he will.' Carl thought. He then turned to the group as a whole. "So, the thing that I tested out last night went like a charm. We should be able to do it this afternoon. But don't let anyone know about it, they might try to stop us." Carl warned.

He was reasonably sure they would be okay until that evening. They didn't have potions today, so Snape wouldn't get an opportunity to peruse Harry's mind. And Dumbledore was off doing whatever he did outside of Hogwarts, so he wasn't around to see what they had planned in Harry's mind.

Harry smiled in relief. "Good. I can't wait to get rid of it."

* * *

"Are you sure this is safe?" Harry asked as he looked over the ritual circle that Carl, Neville, Hermione and Harry were standing around.

Carl hadn't yet introduced just what type of room the Room of Requirement was. He would wait until after everyone in the group had their Occlumency shields up before sharing some of the more interesting secrets he had.

Carl nodded seriously. "I already tested it on an object that had a curse similar to your scar, and it worked like a charm. Well, not a charm, so much as a ritual." Carl paused when he saw that Harry wasn't really relaxed at his use of levity. "Trust me, it will be fine."

"But where did you even learn about this ritual? And why aren't we getting our head's of house involved in this?" Hermione asked in a concerned tone of voice.

"Well, I wasn't always an orphan." Truth.

"My family has quite a few books on ritual magic." Lie. He was the one with the books and he got them in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world. Just because he didn't have the original books anymore didn't mean he couldn't recreate them now that he had perfect memory from his perks.

"Before I had to go to the orphanage, I studied from the books most of my life." Truth. He'd lived longer in the jump chain than he had before the jump chain.

"So I guarantee I know what I'm doing." Truth. His perk **Like Riding a Bike** made it easy to convert the ritual from the BtVS magic system to the Harry Potter world.

"And sharing my family's books with the professors is prohibited by my family's rules." Lie. He just didn't want the hassle of dealing with the adults when he was fully capable of doing the ritual himself. Being 11 again sucked for a number of reasons, but he could work around those limitations.

"They would probably try to confiscate my family books." Truth. The teachers, Dumbledore especially, seemed to think it was their duty to keep the more "dangerous" magic from the students until they could handle it. Which really made Carl wonder why Dumbledore set up the deadly trap on the third floor where the students could get hurt by the traps. Carl guessed that Dumbledore was a "Ends justify the means" and "Do as I say, not as I do" kind of man.

"And I'm not about to let the professors steal my family's property." Carl paused as he looked at Harry. "It's ultimately your decision, Harry, whether to actually go through with it. I'm confident the ritual will work. But if you want, we can probably copy down the ritual and go get Professors McGonagall and Flitwick to check it over." Truth-Lie. He would be perfectly okay with having the professors look over the ritual, but he would have to take certain measures because he wasn't about to bring the professors to the Room of Requirement.

After considering it for a bit, and with the offer of losing his headache inducing scar, Harry eventually decided. "Let's do this before I lose my nerve."

Carl smiled at Harry's decision. It would be much less complicated since Harry chose not to go to the professors. Carl had been hoping Harry's independent personality would lean towards that decision.

"Okay, sit in this circle here." Carl indicated the appropriate circle while placing a large quartz stone in the other circle. Harry carefully sat in the circle with his legs crossed. "Okay, try not to shift around too much. Stay in the circle."

Carl took his place at the edge of the circle, while indicating places for Hermione and Neville to sit so they could participate in the ritual. While he could do the ritual all by himself, Carl felt that their participation was for the best. It would make them feel a part of the process and get a feel for using their magic in rituals, even though Carl would be the one directing the ritual.

Carl soon began the chant, invoking the ritual to begin. As he continued, he could tell that Harry was a bit uncomfortable, if his grimaces were anything to go by. But that's what happens when pulling a soul fragment out of someone's head that had latched on and leached from his magic for 10 years.

Several minutes later the ritual was complete. Carl watched Hermione, Harry, and Neville looking at the quartz stone in disgust. Now that it was out of Harry's head, they too could feel how disgusting it was.

"That feels nasty. That was in your head, Harry? How could you stand it?" Neville asked.

Harry shook his head. "Dunno mate, that's just the way it was as long as I can remember. I feel so light now." He giddily proclaimed while holding up his hands to stare at them. A moment later, he pulled off his glasses and looked around the room without them. "I can actually see without my glasses!" Harry cheered.

Carl laughed. "Yeah, this nasty piece has probably been messing with your head something fierce." Carl placed the stone in another lead chest before placing it in his bag with expanded space to put in his Warehouse later.

"So, what are you going to do with the stone with that dark magic in it?" Hermione asked Carl.

"There's another ritual I'm working on that will dispose of it. But I'm not ready to do it yet. So, I'll just keep the stone safely stored until I'm ready." Carl said.

"As long as you keep it far from me, I don't care." Harry declared. By that point he'd climbed to his feet and was just kind of drifting/bouncing around the room. "This feels so goooood. My mind feels all light and floaty. I don't even feel so angry. I feel…happy I think it's called. Huh, that's a new one. Never really felt that before."

Carl laughed and pulled out some snacks and drinks from his "bag". "Why don't we relax for a while as Harry gets used to the wonderful feeling of not having nasty dark magic gunking up his noggin?"

Hermione smiled at Harry's goofy antics as he almost danced around the room in happiness. "Okay. We can spend an evening without homework, I suppose."

Carl then pulled out a board game that wasn't Monopoly they could play to relax the evening away. Monopoly was verboten around him from now on.

* * *

Just outside the Great Hall the next morning when Carl and Hermione were headed to breakfast, Carl noticed a crowd of students laughing and joking as they looked at something on the ceiling. Carl looked up and noticed Malfoy was stuck on the ceiling in his underwear.

After looking and laughing for a moment, Hermione tried to compose her face. Carl on the other hand just let the wide grin remain on his face.

Just then Harry and Neville joined them at looking at Malfoy's predicament.

"Who do you suppose will get him down?" Neville finally asked after enjoying the embarrassment of the thoroughly unpleasant boy.

"Some of the Slytherin's most likely told a professor by now. I'm sure they'll be along soon." Carl dismissively said. He wasn't about to move one finger to help Malfoy.

"How do you suppose they kept him up there?" Harry asked.

"Sticking charms, most likely." A voice knowingly answered from behind Carl. Looking around, Carl saw a 6th year Hufflepuff girl. He recognized her as the one he had handed the flyers to while disguised as Malfoy. Carl saw a gleam of angry satisfaction in her eyes.

Right. He was never under any circumstances admitting that he was the one to set up Malfoy. It looked like she would never let this grudge go. He knew he could physically protect himself from her ire if she ever found out, but he didn't want to have to be on guard for the rest of his 10 plus years here, just wondering what new scheme she would come up with to punish him if she ever found out.

'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned indeed.' Carl thought as he eyed the young lady who had anger and grim satisfaction bubbling in her eyes as she gazed at Malfoy.

The students that were standing around and laughing at Malfoy's situation suddenly got quiet when the door to the Great Hall slammed open and Snape came stalking out. The scowl on his face caused the students to rein in their amused enthusiasm in an attempt to not draw the ire of the foul tempered professor.

Carl watched as Snape's gaze zeroed in on Harry. Snape was blaming Potter for Malfoy's situation, despite the fact that there was no evidence, and that first years wouldn't have even learned the sticking charm yet.

Carl sighed in exasperation at Snape's inability to let a grudge go. It seems that Snape had long decided that he would hound Harry all seven years of his schooling, and that he would enjoy "putting the Potter brat in his place".

As he watched Snape free Malfoy, Carl started thinking up different methods to neutralize Snape. He certainly didn't want to suffer through the next seven years of the petty man's vendetta against all things Potter just because he was Harry's friend.

First he needed to figure out just what crimes Snape was guilty of. If he was just an unpleasant and petty man who couldn't let go of school yard grudges, then he didn't deserve death. Imprisonment, maybe. To be removed from teaching impressionable young students? Most definitely.

But Snape could wait for now. As annoying as Snape was to deal with, he wasn't actively trying to kill Carl at the moment. Carl hadn't forgotten that he had the Lestranges on the loose that he had to take care of before they ambushed him.

So as Carl spent the Sunday studying, playing games, and hanging out with Hermione, Harry, and Neville, he also started prioritizing his plans in the back of his mind about what he would do the next few days and weeks.

Occasionally he felt the temptation to just sit back and let the plot happen rise up in him. When he felt those feelings rising, he quickly used Occlumency meditation to set himself straight. He had already butterflied away the plot. It wasn't coming back. The plot was well and truly dead.

After his time in the world of History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, he recognized those feelings for what they were. An attempt on the part of the world or plot or whatever to get him to not interfere with the story line. For whatever reason, the world seemed to like trying to force the plot line to happen.

His newly gained Occlumency ability helped Carl immensely in safeguarding his mind from those impulses. After thinking about why he was affected in some worlds and not others, Carl had figured that he would be most vulnerable to those impulses from the world when he was in a world where he already knew the story line.

Of course just because he had some impulses sent from the world didn't mean he had to act on them, but if he wasn't careful and vigilant, he would fall prey to them.

In his first world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he had known the story line and felt the same impulse to just sit back and passively let everything happen. But he had been so new to the jump chain, and finding himself in a world of vampires, demons, and magic had ratcheted his fear and paranoia up so much that he was able to easily ignore those feelings to sit back and let things happen. As a result, he was always seeking ways to overcome his horrible situation. Not to mention the fear of becoming destitute and homeless amongst the vampires had always pushed him into action, thus escaping the trap of falling in line with the world's plot.

The Pokemon world had been nice and relaxing for the most part. He hadn't known anything about the plot, so he hadn't felt any special need to sit back and watch the plot develop. So he hadn't realized at the time that knowing the plot would influence him into acting a certain way.

And Farmville didn't even have a plot to influence him, so there was that.

But he had pretty much succumbed to the lure of the HSDK world and just sat back to watch the plot happen. He had still gained a lot out of the world from being apprenticed to the Masters of Ryozanpaku, but he had lived a strangely passive life outside of training for 10 years there. It was not a situation or mind set he wanted to return to.

In the Sword Art Online world, he hadn't known anything about the plot, so he had been in the clear there. He was about 80-90% positive that not knowing the plot on that world had saved him a lot of trouble and drama while his mind was still open and defenseless from plot induced lethargy.

The less said about Monopoly, the better. Drawback induced insanity was a thing, and he was glad he now had the Occlumency skill to order and defend his mind while keeping him sane.

Overall Carl was very happy to _finally_ have some mind defenses in place to keep him sane and on task. He could think of quite a few worlds where going in with his mind undefended was pretty much an automatic death sentence.

So while pondering the idea of what to do about Snape, Carl had a vague idea brewing in his mind that he would sneak into Snape's quarters one night so he could study the Dark Mark on his arm. He would then put up special traps on all the entryways and secret passages into Hogwarts that targeted those with the Dark Mark so he could catch the Lestranges when they tried to get at him here at Hogwarts. There was no need to actual wait before they were in front of him before he could start to act, that would just be stupid.

But before he started working out how he was going to get at and subdue Snape, he had one more thing to do. After the nice lazy Sunday was over, in the middle of the night, Carl snuck out once more to the Room of Requirement.

He spent the next half hour making doubly sure there were not any problems with the ritual circle. He wasn't about to let a little overconfidence ruin this ritual. He soon set out the crystals that had pieces of Voldemort's soul in them. They would act as the necessary link he needed to hook into Voldemort and drain the sucker dry.

"Protip to any liches and soul splitters out there." Carl spoke out loud to himself when he was done preparing the ritual. "Don't leave your soul jars laying about where clever magic users can get their hands on them and destroy you." Carl paused for a moment. "On second thought, ignore what I said. Chances are if you're a lich or power mad soul splitter, you and I won't be friends. Continue to leave pieces of your soul laying out like candy for me to snatch. Pleaseandthankyou."

Earlier in the week when Carl had gotten his hands on the Ravenclaw Diadem that had been made into Voldemort's horcrux, he had made the decision to hold off on using the ritual to end Voldemort immediately. He knew there was a piece of soul in Harry's scar, and he had no idea what effect it would have on Harry if he used the ritual while Harry's scar was still hosting the soul piece.

But now that it was transferred away from Harry's noggin, Carl was free to suck up all of Voldemort's power that his soul pieces gave him access to and store them in the crystals, just like he had done in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world.

Carl began the ritual, making sure he didn't flub his lines as he chanted.

After a bit, Carl could see the power being drawn in from Voldemort. It looked like seven links that corresponded to the six Horcruxes and Voldemort himself. Voldemort's magical power began to fill up the numerous crystals that Carl had used as batteries.

Halfway through the ritual, something changed. The amount of magic flooding in changed from a slow flowing river to a gushing white water rapid. The amount of magic was amazing for one mostly mortal wizard. Carl was happy he had included as many crystals as he did in the circle, otherwise a lot of that magic would have been wasted.

After the ritual was complete, Carl brushed his hands off. "And thus ends Voldemort, formerly known as Tom Riddle. Not with a bang, but a whimper and no last, final, epic battle. As is appropriate. It's best your insanity is just forgotten, Tom." Carl amusingly spoke out an eulogy for Tom Riddle. "And now, the society you tried to destroy and or control can finally move on without the possibility of you coming back. From ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. You won't be missed."

Carl soon packed away his new magic batteries and the ritual items. He would cleanse the magic in his new batteries soon. But for now, it was time to get to bed.

* * *

"It's unusual for Snape to be late." Carl commented to Hermione as they stood outside the locked doors of the Potions classroom.

"It's already been 20 minutes. We should go let Professor Flitwick know." Hermione decided.

Carl watched Hermione march off for a few steps before shrugging and following her. "So, what's your bet on for why Snape didn't show up?" Carl asked her after falling in step with her determined march.

"I don't gamble." Hermione frowned in disapproval at Carl.

Carl laughed. "Fine then. What's your _guess_ as to where he is? I personally think he finally took a shower and cleaned his hair which, when he looked in the mirror caused him to not recognize himself when he saw his reflection and he accidently attacked and cursed himself, thinking he saw an intruder." Carl posited.

Hermione frowned for a moment at Carl before breaking into giggles. "No way. That would imply he had a reflection." Hermione cheekily pointed out.

"Good point." Carl agreed with a chuckle.

They continued to chat while making the trek to the Charms classroom. Looking in, Carl saw they would be interrupting the 5th years at their class.

After they explained why they were interrupting Professor Flitwick's class, their head of house sent them to wait and study at the Great Hall while he would investigate.

By the afternoon word had been passed that Snape and Quirrell were indisposed. The rumors were that they had lost their magic and were in a coma. Or died. Or were turned into giant slugs. Or a number of other silly rumors.

When Carl heard that news, he soon realized that it was likely his ritual in the middle of the night that was the cause of them being indisposed. Quirrell being affected made sense because he was likely hosting Voldemort's spirit at the time, so it had heavily affected him.

The only reason Carl could figure as to why Snape was also affected was the Dark Mark. Apparently Voldemort had placed a bit of himself in each Dark Mark so he could have access to his follower's magic to strengthen himself. So when Carl hooked into Voldemort's soul and drained his power, Voldemort brought along the magic of all those he had enslaved with his Dark Mark.

The effect the ritual had on anyone with a link to Voldemort was exactly why Carl wanted to get the Horcrux out of Harry's head before he used the ritual to suck up all of Voldemort's power. Otherwise Harry too may have had his magic sucked out and be lying in a coma right now.

By the next morning the papers of the Wizarding World were full of stories about all the prominent citizens that had inexplicably lost their magic and fallen into comas. Looking at the list of names, Carl knew it was a who's who of Death Eaters. Every Death Eater that had a Dark Mark had lost their magic and fallen into comas.

Soon enough Carl realized that it likely meant that his drawback that sent a Prisoner of Azkaban after him to kill him was probably already taken care of, much to his dismay. He had wanted to capture the Lestranges and use them to loot their vaults at Gringotts.

He wasn't exactly greedy for the gold, although the more gold he had the better. No, he had wanted the chance to loot a dark family of all their dark arts books and items so he could study them. It would be interesting to see what exactly was the big deal that caused people like Dumbledore to freak out about dark magic, while at the same time half of the wizarding society kept it as an important part of their culture and traditions.

Maybe he could find something in magical laws about claiming the possessions of defeated enemies? He would have to do some research next to find out if that was a thing in this world or not. If it was a thing, Carl or Harry could claim a lot of spoils, depending on how magic judged who was the actual defeater of Voldemort. Harry for de-bodifying Voldemort in 1981, or Carl for finishing him off now.

After thinking about the whole situation for a bit, Carl suddenly wanted to burst into hysterical cackling. He had spent so much time agonizing about his decision to get the Prisoner of Azkaban drawback. After the horrible drawbacks of Monopoly, he had been understandably nervous about picking any more drawbacks willy nilly just for the points. And here he was, accidentally resolving the danger. It was so anticlimactic. He couldn't expect any future drawbacks to be so easy. But damn it felt good to have this one resolved so easily.

* * *

Carl plopped down on his seat next to Hermione just as the Halloween feast began. "So, did I miss anything?"

Hermione looked up from her book. "Nope. It just started."

"Gonna put away your book now that the feast started?" Carl asked.

Hermione sighed as she looked at the table that was fully loaded down with various dishes. "I suppose. It would just get food on it if I continued to read anyway." She morosely concluded.

Carl just laughed. That was Hermione to a T. She loved reading and learning new things. It was the equivalent of comfort food for her.

Carl looked around at his fellow Ravenclaws. None of them really fit the stereotype of a Ravenclaw who was hungry for knowledge. Most of them were from families who had been sorted into Ravenclaw for generations, and so they followed the family tradition in getting sorted there. Most of the rest, like the muggleborn, ended up following the example and traditions of those who were legacy sortings in order to not rock the boat.

The same held true in the other houses. Many of the Slytherin's were anything but ambition and clever, most of the Gryffindor's had a long way to go before they could find any boldness or bravery, and quite a few Hufflepuff's didn't even having a passing familiarity with loyalty or fair play.

Which all resulted in Carl and Hermione, especially Hermione, not getting along with the majority of the Ravenclaws. Ironically, she asked too many questions in her first weeks and was shunned by the majority of the house. If it weren't for the presence of Carl, and her friendships with Harry and Neville, she might have eventually given in to the little conformists.

But since she had found the good friends she had hoped to have in her new start at Hogwarts, she concluded that the rest of the house could go jump for all she cared. She was enjoying having so much esoteric and hidden knowledge available, and the presence of real friends, to really care about the majority of the student's petty disapproval of her.

Carl looked up at their new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor up at the head table. The tall, black, and bald Auror Shacklebolt was a decent teacher. He wasn't big on the theoretical aspects of spellcraft, but that's what made him such a good DADA teacher in Carl's opinion.

DADA was all about the practical. How to utilize what the students learned in the other classes to protect themselves from the multitude of threats that lived in the wizarding world.

With Quirrell dead from the results of hosting Voldemort's spirit, and Snape having lost his magic and in a coma, Dumbledore had been forced to turn to the DMLE to procure a DADA professor, while he had been able to prevail on Slughorn to return to teach at least one more year.

While Carl wasn't impressed by Slughorn's personality, his teaching was a huge improvement over Snape's method of putting a recipe on the board and telling them to get on with it. No instructions, no help, just a glowering presence over the student's shoulder, hoping they would get it wrong so he could castigate them for their mistakes. It's no wonder so many students refused to take Newt Potions with Snape teaching.

"So what do you think about the challenge that Slughorn gave us?" Carl asked Hermione.

"I've already found a few references on how to save a potion that had the wrong amount of ingredients added in. I've just got to cross reference the list in-"

Carl nudged her to stop her from continuing on.

She turned to him with a scowl, wondering what was up with his unusual actions. With a nod he indicated their fellow Ravenclaw students listening in on their conversation, hoping to basically copy Hermione's work and benefit from cheating off her efforts.

She turned the scowl on her housemates, and they swiftly turned back to their own conversations. It had only taken twice getting burned by her fellow students turning in their copies of her efforts before she did, so it looked like she was the one who was copying them, for her to be completely done with the cheating bastards. The only exception had been Padma Patil and Sue Li. But Padma spent most of her time with her twin and their friend Lavender Brown amongst the Gryffindors, and Sue Li seemed to prefer going solo.

If Carl had realized Hermione had gotten so far in her research, he would not have even brought up the topic in front of their fellow Ravenclaws.

Hermione's talent at research, even as a 12 year old girl, really impressed Carl. It seemed like her magic was attuned to the library, allowing her to be exceptional at researching different topics. For that talent alone, Carl decided he would be coming back to the Harry Potter world later on to recruit her to the jumps, let alone that he actually enjoyed her company.

Carl and Hermione continued chatting about random things as they enjoyed the feast, occasionally talking with Padma who was stuck at their table for the feasts instead of being able to sit with her twin.

* * *

"Happy Christmas Harry. Get anything good?" Carl greeting Harry on Christmas morning in the Great Hall.

Hermione and Neville had gone home for the Holidays, while Harry had no desire to visit the Dursleys. He had started exchanging letter with Sirius Black a couple months ago, but the two still hadn't met yet, due to Harry being in school and Sirius' stay in the hospital to recover from Azkaban.

"Yeah, loads. Bunch of books, candies, and clothes." Harry looked around to make sure no one was near enough to hear him. "I also got this sweet invisibility cloak that used to be my dad's. Thankfully Weasley was out of the room when I figured out what it was. I'll show you it later."

Carl whistled lowly, as if he didn't expect Harry to get the cloak. "That's cool that you got something of your dads. They didn't pass on anything from your mom did they?"

"No." Harry deflated a bit.

"Sorry, didn't mean to bring the mood down. Maybe we can ask the professors just who were your mother's friends and write to them for stories of your mom? I mean, you've been getting stories of your dad from Sirius and Remus, so why not try to find some friends of your mom too?

Harry perked back up. "That's a great idea."

They continued chatting as they ate breakfast. Then they spent the day playing games, reading, and generally just lazing about. It was a pretty good holiday.

The next day, Harry told Carl all about how he got restless and wandered around the castle at night with his invisibility cloak, and ran into a mirror in a room that showed him his parents. He wanted to show Carl the mirror.

After looking in the mirror, Carl turned to see Harry having an expectant look on his face. "I don't see your parents in the mirror, Harry." Carl told him. Harry looked a bit confused. He had clearly seen his parents in the mirror. "Look at the inscription up top. It's written in reverse script. Likely the creator of the mirror was a wizard who was overly enamored with their cleverness so they wrote the inscription for a mirror in reversed script, like you could read if you were looking in a mirror."

"It says 'I show not your face but your heart's desire'. So for you, obviously your parents and yearning for an actual family is a big part of what you desire. When I look in the mirror, the thing I see is all my goals, dreams, and ambitions accomplished, with the very large family and group of friends I plan to gather standing with me. A life fulfilled, full of love, happiness, adventure, and derring do." Carl barked a laughed. "That's what I see in the mirror."

Carl backed away from the mirror as Harry approached it again. Harry's eyes widened at what he saw. "The image has changed. My parents are still there, but now I see myself fully grown and surrounded by friends and family. I'm married and have kids."

Carl smiled at Harry. "Looks like a little knowledge has opened up what you desire to more possibilities there. Good thing you brought a Ravenclaw with you." He teased.

Harry laughed at him. "Whatever. Like you would even have had enough courage to find this mirror without a brave Gryffindor leading the way!"

"Well, at least I can always chuck you head first at a problem if I want to solve it through brute force."

"I've heard of using your head to solve problems, but you're not supposed to use other people's heads like that. And I thought you were smart."

"It is smart. Rather than using my own precious head, I use someone elses. See? Smart."

Carl and Harry left the Mirror of Desire behind to go fly some brooms on a cold winter day. Rather than spend time pining over simple images of what they desired, they decided to spend it having some fun with a friend.


	28. HP 5

The holiday break was soon over, and the students returned from their homes. Classes resumed, and the routine of homework, study, and occasional play time continued.

Carl continued to make trips to the Room of Requirement in the middle of the night. He had found two amazing abilities the room could provide him. The first was he could replicate a gravity room, so he was spending his workout time there. It was certainly better than relying on his dojo that was only good for the disciple class.

The other thing the Room of Requirement could do was to replicate every book that had ever been housed inside Hogwarts. While the room could store an unlimited amount of items in its lost and found pocket space, anything it replicated through conjuration couldn't be taken outside. But that didn't stop Carl from reading or copying the books while he was inside.

After asking around among the upper years, Carl learned that there were a number of charms for copying books, but that most books sold in the Wizarding World had copyright charms that made it so the copy charms didn't work. So most students simply used it to make a copy of their notes for friends who missed a lecture, or making a copy of their homework for their records.

Carl learned the charm anyway, since he found that while the books in the Hogwarts Library were protected, the copy of the books the Room of Requirement conjured up didn't have the same protection.

Unfortunately the copy spell mimicked the way an actual human would hand copy a book, so the spell wasn't very fast. Carl spent many an hour in the middle of the night setting up several copy stations while he studied or meditated to replace sleep. He started going through so much parchment he had to owl order a large amount to keep up with his demands, after having the Room of Requirement deliver to him all the extra parchment sitting in its lost and found room.

By the time the Easter break rolled around, Carl had his own copy of every book currently in the Hogwarts library, including the restricted section. He then started working on copying the private libraries of the different professors. Of _all_ the professors that ever taught at the school.

Each professor had a journal of their ideas and musings on the nature of their crafts, and some of them had rare books that weren't in the Hogwarts Library. Carl didn't particularly feel bad about making a copy of those personal books. He wasn't planning on publishing their work under his name, but he felt their insights could and would help him gain greater mastery of his magic.

Dumbledore especially had many books hidden away in his rooms that he likely took out of general circulation. Carl found books on Alchemy, rituals, blood magic, and soul magic, to name a few among Dumbledore's collection. Carl figured it would be a while before he really delved into those topics. He had to complete his basic education first.

Carl took a large amount of pleasure from each copy of a "banned" book he made and slotted into his personal library. Circumventing authoritarians who wanted to restrict what he could or could not learn engendered a certain rebel glee in Carl.

After the Easter break, Carl began copying the libraries and journals of the various professors of Hogwarts, going backwards in time from the present. Eventually he would reach the first teachers and founders of Hogwarts personal libraries and journals. Carl would start reading their journals and historical accounts to learn what he could of Hogwarts actual history, starting from the founders.

It would be interesting to see how far the wizarding world's understanding of magic had come in over a thousand years at the very least. And he could read about how everything started for Hogwarts, then continue to read how it and the wizarding world changed over the years.

It would certainly give him a better idea of history than listening to Binns drone on about the same topics.

* * *

Carl sat down at their group's table at the library. He noticed Neville and Harry's miserable expressions. Raising an eyebrow at them in silent question, they gestured at Hermione. Carl focused his attention on the girl who was bringing a large stack of books back to their table that nearly towered over her head.

Hermione arrived at their table and set the stack down. The sound of the books landing on the table had a certain gravitas of doom to the young Gryffindor boys. Carl laughed inside as he watched the situation develop.

"We've only got one more month before the year end finals. It's past time we got started revising. The tests are practically here already, we barely have enough time to get everything crammed in."

Carl couldn't help it anymore and laughed out loud at the miserable faces on Harry and Neville's faces. Hermione frowned at Carl.

"Don't laugh. It's not funny!" She hissed. "This is our _education_ here, and I will not allow us to shortchange ourselves!"

Carl sobered up and stopped laughing, even though a faint smile remained on his face. He didn't want her to think he was laughing at her, so much as at the situation. He got from his chair, and pulled her by her hand away from the two miserable Gryffindors.

Carl turned Hermione to face him. Putting his hands on her shoulders, Carl looked into her eyes. "Hermione." He firmly said. "Take a moment. Close your eyes. Relax for a moment. Listen to the sound of my voice. Picture yourself on a deserted beach. The crystal clear blue water of the ocean is gently lapping against the beach. The nice breeze is blowing through your hair…" Carl continued to paint a calming picture until he could tell she had relaxed.

"Now, open your eyes and look over at our two Gryffindor friends and tell me what you see."

Hermione looked over and saw with fresh eyes the nervous, almost fearful faces of Harry and Neville peering anxiously their way. Hermione started giggling at the sight. "Okay, maybe I was going a tad overboard." She finally admitted after getting her giggles under control.

Carl smiled back at her. "We know how much your education means to you. And we'll study with you to prepare for the finals. But I know that even if we don't study one bit more from now until the tests, you will still ace them. Especially with our Occlumency helping us to order our minds, we've got this in the bag. So, please, be sure to schedule some downtime for us in your planner, because burning out before the test would be just as bad as not studying at all."

Hermione nodded decisively back at Carl. "Okay, you're probably right. Especially for our two scared Gryffindors." She cheekily smiled at Carl.

Carl chuckled while nodding in agreement. He and Hermione then returned to their table where Hermione started creating a new schedule while Carl gave a reassuring grin to Harry and Neville to show them that everything was okay.

* * *

"I can't believe our first year is over just like that." Hermione said as she looked out the window of the Hogwarts Express as they pulled out of the Hogsmeade station on their trip back to London at the end of the year.

Carl looked over from where he was playing a game of chess with Harry. "Time flies when you keep busy or are having fun." Carl commented.

Neville nodded in agreement. "I still can't believe how much better the school and classes were after Snape and Quirrell became 'indisposed'." Neville even did the airquotes.

"And isn't that the truth." Harry commented.

Even though the two teachers had only "taught" them for the first couple of weeks, they had made a huge impression on the first years. And after hearing stories from the upper years all year about how bad Snape really was, they were very happy that they didn't have to experience a full year of his brand of teaching.

Another thing that had turned out for the better was that Draco Malfoy had cooled off his rampant attempts to spread the hate. With both his father and godfather in a coma and unable to get him out of trouble, and with a large group of students that despised him and wouldn't hesitate to retaliate, he had finally learned to keep his head down, even if he hadn't changed his mind on blood superiority ideas. At least he finally learned to keep his mouth shut.

Carl had also enjoyed watching Dumbledore manufacture bread crumbs that were meant to send Harry on a quest to protect the Philosopher's stone. Carl had continued to distract the group from getting involved. With the Philosopher's stone safe in his Warehouse, Carl felt absolutely no need to get involved with Dumbledore's schemes.

Over the year he had managed to get a good scan of the Philosopher's stone and with all the Alchemy books and Dumbledore's notes, he had been able to use a small chip off the original stone to produce his own stone. He had then sent Rover on the mission to contact Nicolas Flamel about his stone.

Nicolas hadn't known that Dumbledore had even "borrowed" the stone, but it turns out it wouldn't have mattered. That stone was only one of a dozen that Flamel had stashed in various "safe" places. If Dumbledore had actually destroyed the stone, like what happened in canon, then Flamel would have simply faked his death and moved on in a different identity. At least, that's what Carl got out of his one time meeting the Immortal Alchemist a few weeks ago to return his stone. He really loved his Sherlock like abilities, they got him all kinds of interesting information.

And he had made sure to show up to the meeting in disguise. He didn't want Flamel to accidentally let slip something about who gave him his stone back if he confronted Dumbledore about the situation.

As a result, Carl wasn't too worried about Dumbledore figuring out it was him that took the stone. He had taken it at the beginning of the year, and if the old man couldn't figure it out after all that time, there really would be no evidence left for him after so much time.

Carl enjoyed the train ride to London spent playing games, reading books, and chatting with his three friends.

* * *

Carl was just setting down his package of electronics when a snowy owl came flying into his room at the orphanage. Summer vacation had started nearly a month ago, and he had been spending his time as he usually did, in study and training.

"Hey, there Hedwig. How are you? Harry sent a letter?" Carl inquired.

"Prek prek. Hoot."

"Thanks for the speedy delivery." Carl complimented her as he retrieved the letter from her leg. His animal focus from the Farmville world didn't let him understand everything Hedwig was saying, but he understood the gist. And she was a very expressive owl. Seeing that she was staying put, he asked, "Waiting for a reply? Want some water or some snacks?" Seeing her agreement, Carl set out some water and owl treats he kept on hand.

After opening the letter, Carl read that Harry had invited him, Neville, and Hermione to spend a few days over at his new place with Sirius Black around the time of Harry's birthday.

Once Sirius had been cleared from the hospital, he had taken on the guardianship of Harry. And, despite Dumbledore arguing otherwise, Sirius had taken Harry away from the Dursleys immediately. With all of the Death Eaters in comas, Sirius hadn't thought too highly of Dumbledore's reasoning that it was the safest place for Harry. Harry had been very happy to not have to go back to the house of his relatives.

Harry and Neville's birthday was still a couple weeks away, but Carl guessed it was better to send the invitations early. He quickly scribbled a note confirming his reservation. He attached the note to Hedwig's leg and sent her on her way.

"It might be fun to see the Grimmauld place, if that's where they are staying." Carl mumbled before he moved into his Warehouse and started opening his packages of electronics.

His perk, **Setup Wizard**, gave him some pretty decent knowledge of charms that allowed electronics to work in a magic rich environment. Carl had decided that he would start working on his skills in merging magic and technology. It was a necessary step to accomplish his quest to make 90% of the muggles in the UK and Ireland believe in magic.

Carl spent the rest of the afternoon casting the charms he learned from his perk, and testing the devices as he cast magic around and at them. He had discovered that he was protected from underage magic discovery while in his Warehouse, so he had the whole summer to practice spells and figure out new things to do with his magic.

He was also working on silent casting of the Hogwarts curriculum during his summer months. Once he got the first years spells down with silent casting, he would move on to wandless casting. Judging from what he'd seen of the spells, he would need to learn to cast his spells wandless if he wanted to incorporate them into his fighting style. He moved too quickly, and his wand was wood and too fragile, to be used in combat.

Having his Harry Potter magic added onto his BtVS magic actually made it much easier for Carl to figure out how to adjust his casting from using a wand to wandless. He hadn't used a spell focus for any of his BtVS magic, although he had mostly focused on rituals and controlling the different elements, especially fire and wind since they were so useful for killing undead.

But the different spells available with his HP magic were just so versatile. All the household charms alone were amazing. He would never have to wash dishes by hand again, for which he was duly grateful.

And then there were all the trade skills. If there was a trade or profession, there were spells available for it. Exploring the depths of the ocean, mining for ore or gems, chopping and treating lumber, or skinning and preparing leather? Every profession had a number of spells designed specifically for it, and Carl was determined to become proficient in as much as he could before leaving this world behind.

* * *

Carl smiled as Harry and Neville opened up their birthday presents from him. Harry looked happy at seeing the RC car. Neville looked confused at what he'd gotten.

"It's a remote car, Neville." Carl helpfully explained. "Usually muggle electronics don't work long in magic rich environments. But I've got a few family charms that when applied to electronics keep them from burning out. So you can play with your car all you like at Hogwarts."

"You have charms that let's electronics work in magic areas? That's so amazing! Can I read those books? Please Carl?" Hermione got a little excited.

"Oh, well. Those are family books, so I can't share them." Lie. They don't exist. "But I could maybe write down some of the spells. You can't share them with anyone though." Carl warned. Hermione beamed happily at the promise of more knowledge.

"Okay, thanks for the gift." Neville responded. "But what is a car?"

Carl face palmed. "Okay, open up your package, and we'll show you how it works."

They spent the next half hour watching as Harry and Neville raced their cars around and occasionally passing the controller around to the rest of the group.

They didn't have a large number of people around for their 12th birthday. They had invited the Patils, but they were out of the country at the time so they couldn't make it. A couple of Gryffindors showed up for the party, mostly Harry's team mates from Quidditch.

Gryffindor had won the house Quidditch cup that year thanks to Harry's brilliant flying. Harry was a natural flyer, and now that he didn't rely on his old beaten up glasses, the snitch had a much harder time hiding from him.

Carl had enjoyed their flying lessons immensely, since he already had practice. And while he didn't have the natural aptitude that the HP world perk would have given him, his special spatial awareness that he got from his **Savant** perk let him barely keep up with the sheer talent of Harry's flying.

Carl had no plans to play Quidditch though. He had a number of advantages that made the game entirely unfair to anyone else playing. When he had gone to some of Harry's matches, his tier 4 senses and **Probing Eye** observation skills had let him know exactly where the snitch was hiding at all times. His physique, reaction times, and senses gave him such an unfair advantage, no matter which position he played, he would dominate the other team.

And since the only thing Carl would get out of playing Quidditch was bragging rights and a trophy, he didn't feel like the time spent in practice instead of training or studying was a decent use of his time for the payoff. If there was a more substantial payoff than he would have seriously considered it.

Eventually the party ended and the guests departed. Carl, Neville, and Hermione stayed on at Grimmauld place, since they were staying for the week with Harry. Sirius had gotten them some tickets to a Quidditch game in France. They were going to visit some sights in the French Wizarding world while they were there for the game.

Carl was somewhat interested in seeing what the Wizarding world over in France was like, so he was enthusiastic about the trip.

* * *

Carl arrived at Kings Cross station at 10:15 in the morning by the Knight Bus. He took his time strolling to the portal to platform 9 3/4. Upon arriving on the platform at 10:30, Carl made his way to the compartment he and his friends had used on their two previous trips.

Now that Carl thought about it, it made sense for upper years to have a compartment that they considered "theirs" if they've stayed in the same compartment each trip several years in a row. Which explained why Hermione had been chased out from the compartment she had originally been in.

It didn't excuse those upper years for being asses for being unnecessarily mean to his friend. But that was the general nature of teenagers, to be unthinking jerks to each other.

It also didn't mean he hadn't gotten back at them for making Hermione cry though. Just because teenagers were predisposed to being jerks didn't mean he couldn't act his age once in a while.

Upon arriving at their compartment, Carl saw Hermione already sitting in it, reading a book. "Hey, Hermione. How was your summer break after our trip to France?"

Hermione blushed red. "I thought we agreed not to talk about what happened in France!" She hissed at Carl.

Carl laughed while sitting next to Hermione and putting an arm around her. "Hermione, I didn't mention anything about our trip to France. Why? Has it been on your mind a lot?"

Hermione scowled at him, before slugging Carl on the shoulder. "Prat!"

Carl chuckled as he backed off and gave Hermione some space. "Yup." He easily agreed with Hermione. "I promise I'll drop it, you're just so fun to tease, cause you're cute when you're angry."

Hermione just started mumbling some random words as she retreated back into her book, her cheeks tinged red.

Harry and Neville soon joined the two in their compartment, and they settled into a familiar routine of chatting, reading, napping, and playing games on the way to Hogwarts.

* * *

"Ravenclaw!"

Carl watched the small and spritely figure of Luna Lovegood as she almost danced to the Ravenclaw table. He could already see the looks on the faces of their housemates as they mentally labeled Luna as an outsider. Someone to mock. And, if things didn't change, someone to bully.

He didn't want that. But how to intervene? How to smoothly orchestrate things so it seemed natural that he befriend her? It wouldn't do to be too conspicuous, right? He needed to think up a cunning plan.

"Hi there, Luna Lovegood. My name is Carl Edwards. Want to be friends?" Carl asked the blonde girl.

Or he could just straight up ask her.

She looked at him for a moment. "Okay!" She smiled and sat in the space Carl made for her next to him.

Hermione looked at Carl, looked at Luna, then questioned Carl with a raised eyebrow. Carl nodded significantly at their housemates in answer to her unspoken question.

When Hermione noticed how there were already several unfriendly stares being sent Luna's way, Carl could see Hermione's face set into the stubborn look that meant she wasn't going to put up with any nonsense from anyone.

"Nice to meet you Luna. I'm Hermione Granger." Hermione introduced herself to their new friend.

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Luna airily replied with a big smile, her slightly protruding eyes looking over Carl's shoulders.

The way Luna wasn't looking at who she was talking to was a bit odd, but Hermione didn't let it bother her as she started a whispering conversation with the blonde girl. Carl was impressed how Hermione didn't bother to wait until the sorting ceremony was over before being social with their new friend.

The past year of friendship, disappointment in authority, and the summer adventure in France had done a lot to relax her from her previous attitude of respecting authority.

Carl smiled on the inside. He bet it was especially because of their time spent in the French Veela brothel. If she had known what the establishment was before entering she would likely have never gone in.

Sirius really did have a bit more to go before he fully recovered his mental facilities if he thought it was appropriate to book rooms for the week long stay they had in the Veela brothel for four 12 year olds, and one of them a girl. Remus had nearly had a coronary. But, as Sirius said, all the other inns were full due to the Quidditch game.

Not that Carl really believed the inns were full when Sirius made his reservations in a Veela brothel. And there were always wizarding tents. But Carl was so amused at the situation he had just gone along with it, instead of offering alternatives.

And while none of the young 12 year old quartet had availed themselves of the services the ladies offered, a scandalized Hermione had taken the opportunity to grill the Veela about their lot in lives in a brothel, and as what the British classified as a magical creature. After the stories the Veela shared, it was no wonder Hermione didn't have much respect left for the British authority figures.

Through talking with the…employees…Carl and Hermione had learned that the brothel was owned and operated by the Veela themselves. Many of the single Veela needed the place as an outlet for their needs and appetites, and they got paid while doing so.

There were many muggle myths from olden times of the Maenad, the female followers of Dionysus that would have wild orgies of great passion. That the women would be so inflamed with their appetites that they would tear apart bulls with their own hands and feast on the raw beef. Not to mention wearing out any man they could catch. And that was putting it politely.

The Veela that Hermione interrogated actually bragged about those facts quite proudly. They were comfortable in their heritage, and even reveled in their unique skills. They loved having a place to go where they got paid for something they would have done anyway, to relieve their urges.

That week had definitely been an eye opener for Hermione, Harry, and Neville. Carl had enjoyed the eye candy around the place and enjoyed the red faces of his friends being teased by the sensual women. Hermione hadn't been left out of the teasing by any means, which amused the hell out of him.

It had also been an educational week as they learned everything they didn't know about cleaning and grooming spells, as well as magical cures for diseases. The brothel reserved the right to refuse service to any clients that wouldn't have a medical checkup and healing before availing themselves of their services. The Veela were surprisingly matter of fact and open about biology and sexuality. It was a learning experience that Carl couldn't forget.

Carl watched as Dumbledore got up to introduce their new teacher for DADA, one Gilderoy Lockhart. Carl was not impressed by the stupidly grinning fop. And he wasn't about to put up with sub-par teaching.

'Time to do some investigating.' Carl thought when the feast was over as he, Hermione, and Luna trooped up to the Ravenclaw tower.

* * *

Carl made his stealthy trip to the Room of Requirement after curfew. The Room plus the Marauder's Map made sneaking around Hogwarts afterhours so much easier. He almost didn't need to use his stealth spells. But he didn't get overconfident and still cast the sound, sight, and scent masking charms. A little bit of precaution prevented accidental discovery.

When Carl saw that Lockhart had settled down in one corner of his room, that he assumed was the fop's bed, Carl made his move. He requested a door to just outside Lockhart's rooms.

Carl quickly cast diagnostic spells on the door, to determine what spells kept it locked. Much to his surprise, there was only a simple lock keeping the door shut. A quick unlocking charm let him in.

Carl kept casting his spells all around, making sure there weren't any alarm charms or defensive wards. Finding nothing, Carl shrugged and made his way inside. The sitting room was filled with all the memorabilia associated with Lockhart's heroic author persona. It was a bit creepy to see so many posters around with sleeping Lockhart's in them.

The bedroom door creaked open. Carl ducked behind a couch before he could be spotted.

"Who's there? Is it one of my lovely fans come around for a little one on one time with their favorite adventurer, me, Gilderoy Lockhart?" The man suggested in what he thought was a sexy manner while posing.

Carl almost snorted in laughter. The ponce thought he was some fangirl come to jump him in bed? Deciding not to beat around the bush, Carl peaked out from behind the couch and cast a stunner on the fop. He then caught Lockhart before he fell to the ground with bands of air.

Levitating Lockhart back to his bed, Carl did a quick scan around the room. He was wondering how Lockhart had known someone was entering his suite. He spotted a little trinket that was flashing and sounding a low alarm next to Lockhart's bed.

Carl cast some diagnostics on it, and soon found out that Lockhart had some monitoring spells cast on his posters in his sitting room linked to his alarm trinket.

"Huh, that is actually decently clever. The intruder will think once they got past the door that there wouldn't be any alarms or defenses. Then with the number of posters Lockhart puts up, it would be nigh impossible not to be spotted by the alarm. And since everyone would just think it's a bit of his narcissism, they wouldn't think too much about the number of posters he's got up." Carl considered Lockhart for a moment. The man had a certain amount of cunning to him. He would have to, to be able to fool so many as he had for so long.

"Well, let's get to it." Carl tied up the man to make sure he couldn't move. "Legilimens." And he dove into Lockhart's memories.

Carl soon learned the basics of the man's life. How he was considered barely above being a squib throughout school. He didn't have a lot of power as a wizard, so he could never become the great wizard he dreamed of being. He was decent at the non-wand subjects, like potions, but he would never be a potions master.

Lockhart seemed to be destined for a life of mediocrity. He wasn't powerful enough to be an auror, and he didn't have the connections to put him on a track to become a department head at the ministry. So he was relegated to the obliviation squad, where even his meager power could easily overcome the unprotected muggle minds and adjust their memories so they wouldn't remember their encounters with magic.

And that's where Lockhart would likely have stayed his whole life, in a dead end job in the ministry. But one day, while on duty, he was sent to Obliviate a group of muggles who saw something they shouldn't have. He arrived first on the scene, and when he saw that it was a werewolf that was the cause of the incident, he almost pissed himself.

Luckily for Lockhart, the werewolf was dead, stabbed to death by the muggle it was attacking with the family's silverware, but not before the werewolf got a fatal bite on the muggle.

And that's when Lockhart's path in life changed. He looked around at the muggles on the scene, and thought, "I could Obliviate them all and take credit for stopping a werewolf." He would get a bonus from the ministry, and get some respect from his fellow employees.

So he acted on that impulsive decision. He arranged the scene, changed the memories of the witnesses, and had the scene set when more ministry workers showed up.

He got his bonus for taking down a rogue werewolf. He got respect from those around him. And he got quite a bit of attention from the ladies that worked in the ministry. He was enjoying life and all the attention for the first time.

But as time passed and he didn't do anything more interesting, life slowly went back to what it was like before. Boring. Mediocre. He was just another faceless employee.

And after getting a taste of the respect he craved, he couldn't give it up. He began seeking out opportunities to take credit from people, using his hard practiced skill in Obliviation to ensure his story was the only one told.

Lockhart soon sought out a publicist, and wrote his first book. He eventually quit the ministry, and began traveling, promoting his book and himself, all while looking for more opportunities to steal heroic feats and pass them off as his own deeds.

Carl learned that Lockhart had grown a bit delusional over the years and started believing his own press and lies. His only goal in coming to Hogwarts was to profit off of his book sales and put another feather in his cap as the premier defense professor.

He had thought that one of the lovely lady professor's had visited his quarters that evening when his alarm went off.

Once Carl was done sifting through Lockhart's basic life story, he stood over the tied up unconscious man for a few moments as he contemplated what to do with the man. He was a thief and a glory hound and completely unqualified to teach DADA. But he had never done unredeemable crimes like murder or taking advantage of women before Obliviating them, like was speculated in some fanfics. Why would he need to? He was a celebrity, and many witches threw themselves at him.

So Carl was a bit conflicted about exactly what to do with the man. He wasn't bad enough to require the death penalty, but he needed to be stopped before he ruined even more lives, and wrecked an entire year of Carl's education.

Maybe he would take a page out of J.K.'s book in dealing with the man. There was a certain amount of poetic justice in Obliviating the man that made his career by Obliviating other witches and wizards until he was a drooling mess.

Or better yet, Carl would take evidence of all those hidden deeds and thefts, and make them known to the Wizarding world. Lockhart _loved_ the fame and fortune he got from stealing other people's efforts. It would only be right to make him infamous for something he actually did.

With that thought, Carl got to work. He began fishing out copies of memories from Lockhart's mind of all the times he stole credit from the real heroes before Obliviating them. Carl put the memories in a series of potions flasks that he then put in a box.

He attached a note onto Lockhart for Madam Bones, the head of the DMLE, explaining what memories she could find in the box and what crimes Lockhart committed. Carl then wrapped up Lockhart like he had Pettigrew at the beginning of last year, and arranged for Rover to deliver the package to Madam Bones' office just before she arrived in the morning.

And if, for whatever reason, Madam Bones couldn't do anything about Lockhart with the evidence she had, Carl kept a copy of the memories that he could send in to the Daily Prophet to break the news to Lockhart's adoring public that he was a fraud. If his plan A went through, it was important to have backups available.


	29. HP 6

Carl was enjoying his lunch sitting between Hermione and Luna with Harry, Neville, and Ginny sitting across from them. Seeing the facial expressions and colors on Ginny's face was amusing.

When he and Hermione had entered the hall for lunch, they had seen Harry and Neville waving at them from the Gryffindor table, so they joined the two lads. Once they had been seated, Luna and Ginny had wandered in, so Carl made sure Luna knew she was welcome to join them.

Seeing her friend sitting with the group, Ginny had gathered enough courage to sit next to Harry Potter, her idol. It had taken a supreme effort of will on the star struck girl's part to make that move.

As the group chatted, and Ginny struggled to be included, Carl got Hermione's attention, and briefly nodded in Ginny's direction in question to query if they should make the effort to make the girl more at ease.

Carl had a pretty good idea that Hermione would decide to be helpful, because of her own past history at having a difficult time finding friends. He was happy to see that he was right, and Hermione started working on using conversation and questions to bring the young redhead out of her shell.

Carl switched places with Hermione so she could more easily converse with Luna and Ginny, and Carl could easily chat with Harry and Neville.

After several minutes, Carl noticed that the majority of the people in the hall suddenly went quiet, with a watchful air about them. Looking around to see what had caused the silence, Carl saw everyone watching three adults approaching the head table. The adult in the lead was a stern looking middle aged lady with a monocle, and the two adult males behind her were dressed in Auror robes. Several more Aurors were milling about at the doors.

Carl realized the lady in the lead was Madam Bones. As she started speaking with Dumbledore quietly so her voice didn't carry to Carl, the silence was broken as the students started speculating about just what brought the Aurors to Hogwarts.

Dumbledore's face went through several micro expressions in seconds. Irritation at what he was hearing, annoyance, resignation, and finally his facial expressions calmed down to polite accommodation.

Carl laughed in his head at the thought that the old headmaster was feeling quite put out at the unusual invasion of his demesne. Maybe if he didn't keep hiring incompetent teachers, he wouldn't have to worry about problems like this cropping up.

"Students, the professors will be assisting the DMLE in an investigation, so classes will be canceled for at least this afternoon. Prefects, kindly escort your house to the common rooms and stay there. The aurors and professors will be by momentarily to ask questions. Thank you." Dumbledore announced, before he left the hall with Madam Bones in tow.

Carl turned to his group and grinned. "Free study time."

"More like party time." Harry snarked as he got up. "At least for those of us in the cool Gryffindor house."

Carl's group laughed, enjoying the jokes about stereotypes.

* * *

"Everyone sit down and shut up." The stern, almost angry voice of the new defense professor came from the front of the classroom. Carl sat down with his classmates, and looked expectantly at the new professor.

"My name is Stanely McWolf, as you heard the headmaster introduce me earlier. In this classroom you will address me as Professor McWolf. I've been an auror for 12 years, and if it weren't an order of the head of the DMLE, I wouldn't be here teaching you bunch of snot nosed brats. But as long as we're both forced to be here, I'm damn well going to make sure that you learn something."

Carl felt a smile tugging up at the edge of his mouth. He enjoyed the gruff and blunt way the man spoke. It reminded him a bit of Sakaki Sensei back in the HSDK world.

"Now, by raising your hand, who here keeps up a daily regimen of physical exercise?"

Carl raised his hand, and saw that only two other students, who were quidditch nuts, did so as well.

"Damn, it's worse than I thought." Professor McWolf muttered to himself. "Right, put your hands down. Now, with a show of hands, who here spends at least an hour a day practicing your spell casting and making sure you don't forget your spells?"

Carl raised his hand, and was surprised to see only one other student also raised her hand. Professor McWolf sighed in resignation.

"Right, that's going to change. From now, until the end of the year, your daily homework, aside from anything else I assign, is to spend at least half an hour on physical exercise, and an hour on spell casting."

The gruff and goateed face of the professor scanned the classroom. "I'm not joking or blowing hot air here. If you don't keep up the program, I will fail you and you'll have to repeat the year. The reasons are simple. Our magic is like a muscle. You need to exercise it regularly to make it the strongest it can be. And our magic health and physical health are intricately connected. If you're physically sick, your magic can't express itself strongly. If you're magically weak or sick your body will suffer too."

"I'll give you an example of how our magic and physical condition maximize our ability. Your headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, is old. He's like a hundred and twenty years or so. And over a dozen years ago, when he was still over 100, I saw him take on a group of Death Eaters that thought they could attack Hogwarts with impunity because they thought he was too old to put up too much of a fight."

"He single handedly defeated 10 death eaters. They couldn't land a spell on him because he moved too quick, dodging or blocking everything they threw at him. Another example is the professional duelists. You won't find a single one of them who aren't incredibly fit, magically and physically."

"So, I expect for my students of defense to put in the effort to get fit so you can defend yourself. You can't very well defend yourself even from a Crup if you're not fit, let alone a werewolf."

"Now, as to what we're learning this year, it's a mix of low level curses and jinxes, and XX level beasts, so get out your quills and start taking notes." Professor McWolf waited until everyone was prepared. "The Chupacabra, or goat eater, is mostly seen in the new world, but occasionally, due to muggle shipping, one will slip across the ocean and find its way to our shores…"

Carl enjoyed the rest of the class and the blunt way the information was passed with no nonsense and no frills. Sometimes academics got so caught up in their cleverness and ability to turn a phrase that they forgot their sole purpose was to educate, not entertain.

He was pretty glad he'd gotten rid of The Ponce. Now that they had a proper teacher, he was content to settle into the routine of classes, homework, training, and the occasional relaxation.

* * *

"I still don't see how Harry getting an invitation to a Death Day party translated into all of us joining him." Carl muttered to Hermione and Luna as the three made their way to join the three Gryffindors for Nearly Headless Nick's party.

"Ohh, someone is a grumpy goose today!" Luna sing songed, which caused Hermione to break out in giggles.

"Come on, you've got to admit you're just as curious as we are about what a Death Day Party is like." Hermione remonstrated Carl.

"Fine, it will probably be interesting." Carl finally admitted, giving up his fake reluctance. He didn't expect it to be that interesting based on what the Harry Potter books had described it as. But he couldn't deny he was a little bit interested.

The three Ravenclaws soon joined Harry, Neville, and Ginny outside the room where the party for the dead was to be held. The moment Carl arrived outside the door his very sharp senses picked up the smell of rotted food.

Carl quickly cast a spell on his nose so he didn't need to smell the disgusting smells. Prior to getting his highly tuned senses, Carl had wondered about how he would react to enhanced senses.

In his original world he'd had a couple dogs, and he'd of course noticed how dogs reacted to scents. They found even some disgusting things _fascinating_. So Carl had wondered if, when he got highly advanced senses, he too would be interested in disgusting scents. If they would smell different and more interesting to him.

But he'd soon realized that it must have been due to the chemistry and brain structure that dogs find those scents fascinating. He was still human, so he still found many of those smells disgusting, only dialed up to 11. So he was immensely glad that he had found some good spells in the Harry Potter world that he could use to regulate what smells got to his nose.

After greeting Nick, who was the host of the party, Carl began circulating amongst the ghostly guests. Carl soon found that on average, the older the ghost, or rather the longer the person had been a ghost, the less likely they were to open up and talk to the living. They seemed to mire themselves in their dead culture, and ignore the living.

Carl realized that a large part of that may be that since they seemed to be a kind of spiritual snapshot of a person at their moment of death, they weren't as adaptable as living people. Seeing the immense changes in landscape, culture, and the people just drove the older ghosts into retreating from the ever evolving society of the living.

Carl actually found a couple of wizard ghosts that had been killed by Voldemort, and engaged them in talk about what the last war had been like for them.

The two men had been shopping in Hogsmeade when a Death Eater ambush had happened, catching them unawares and ending their life. They weren't part of the government so they could only really tell Carl the commonly known gossip and what the news papers reported. But what they told Carl about the miasma of fear and uncertainty that had enveloped the nation as Voldemort waged his guerilla war insurrection made Carl happy he had ended Voldemort when he had. No need to let the second blood war happen and ruin so many people's lives.

After a couple of hours, the group of living students seemed to have their fill of the Death Day Party. The group trooped on to the fifth floor where the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room was.

Carl had arranged for the House Elves to deliver food for the group, since they wouldn't be able to eat anything at the party for the dead. Carl enjoyed spending a couple more hours just relaxing and joking around with his group of friends. He made sure that none of his friends worried or cared about the ineffectual glares they got from silly Ravenclaws that felt their territory was breached by having Gryffindors there.

Professor Flitwick had firmly put his foot down the first time someone complained to him about Gryffindors in their house. There were absolutely no rules against friends showing up in the common rooms of other houses, and it used to be common practice when Flitwick had gone to school, so he was actually happy to see the practice returning.

'Now how should I go about stealing some Hufflepuffs from their collective, and intrigue some Slytherins into our group so we can hang out in all four common rooms?' Carl thought before going to sleep that night.

* * *

"What are you doing?" The frosty voice asked Carl as he was formally seating Hermione, Luna, and Ginny at the table across from the owner of the voice.

Carl looked into the ice blue eyes of Daphne Greengrass, noting the frown on her face and totally ignoring the displeasure displayed. Tracy Davis, seated next to Daphne, was smirking in a knowing manner. Blaise Zabini, on the other side of Daphne, just blankly stared, not giving anything away in his facial expression. Unless one had Sherlock like observation skills and could see how interesting he found the situation.

"Why my dear Miss Greengrass, I thought it would be obvious, we're joining you for breakfast." Carl answered just as Harry and Neville arrived with Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott in tow. "We decided-"

"You decided." Neville interrupted.

"That's what I said." Carl deadpanned without missing a beat. "We decided we were being too exclusive, only having two of the Hogwarts house in our super secret club that is plotting world domination." Carl almost laughed when he saw Dumbledore flinch out of the corner of his eye. So, the old coot was eavesdropping. "So, we graciously voted on new members-"

"Again, Carl decided." Harry snarked this time after having sat down with the two Hufflepuffs on one side of the Slytherins.

"Quite right, old bean. We voted and you five were the lucky winners of a one time, no entrance fee required, invitation to The Club." Carl indicated the three Slytherins and two Hufflepuffs.

"We reject your invitation. Now remove yourselves from our table." Daphne ordered flatly.

"Too late, you missed the window to reject the invitation. I'm afraid you're stuck with it now." Carl airily asserted.

"Just when was this time that we could have rejected the invitation?" Susan asked, amused at the byplay.

"Oh, about a week ago. Sorry, you'll have another window open sometime next year. I'll let you know when." Carl stated with a straight face.

After a couple laughs from several of the girls and guys that noticeably didn't include Daphne, the group settled down into getting to know each other. Only Daphne refrained from joining in the chatting.

Carl was amused at the standoffish attitude of the girl. It only took a week of never going away when she demanded it before she finally resigned herself to the fact that they weren't going away, and that she was now part of a larger group.

From then on, the group would spend at least one night a week hanging out in each of the common rooms. There was naturally a little bit of blowback when a few Slytherins showed up in the Gryffindor common room, most notably from Ron Weasley, but most of the other students couldn't really care. And after the detention Ron got for running his mouth, he simmered down and accepted it, ungracefully.

Carl was sure if the "innocent" Death Eaters still had their magic and weren't in comas, then the Slytherins would have protested their group's activities more. But without Snape inflaming their stupidity and protecting them, even Draco had learned how to keep his head down and not be such a public bigot, in order to not make himself a target anymore.

So the World Domination Society continued their meetings, study sessions, and just generally hung out. It was a good year.

* * *

_§Speak to me, Slytherin, the greatest of the Hogwarts four.§_

The basilisk slowly woke up after hearing the phrase the hatchling Tom Riddle had set up years ago to wake her up. Sighing at having to respond to the summons of the twisted one, she slowly began slithering out the exit.

She sometimes wondered just why her original master had given her the command to listen to anyone of his lineage. As evidenced by the activities and attitudes of Riddle, not everyone descended from her master could be as noble as her master.

Resigned to her likely fate to do distasteful tasks for Riddle, she was surprised to see the back of a small human when she slithered out. Tasting the air, she confirmed he wasn't Riddle.

Before she could decide what to do, the small figure threw a small red, white and blue ball over his shoulder at her. Rearing back so it didn't hit her, she warily eyed the innocuous looking ball as it sat right in front of her.

Suddenly a light shone from the ball, and she felt a sucking motion. Despite trying to escape, she was sucked into the little ball and consciousness faded away.

* * *

Carl sighed in relief when he no longer sensed the Basilisk behind him. Patting his sheathed Katana shaped goblin made sword where it rested on his back, Carl turned to look at the empty chamber.

"Looks like I won't need to use my new sword after all." Carl mused as he moved to pick up the Masterball from the Pokemon World that he'd used to capture the basilisk. He had commissioned the goblins to make the sword for him, and it had taken nearly two years to make.

He had briefly considered simply trying to get his hands on the Gryffindor sword so he could own a goblin made blade, but decided against it for a number of reasons. It wasn't the shape he wanted from a sword, it was too ornate, and it should remain with Hogwarts.

He was happy with the sword he'd had made, it was similar to the style he'd practiced with from the HSDK world. It was a Katana shaped sword with a blade that was 38" long. The wrappings for the hilt were a deep blue color that matched the color of the scabbard.

After questioning the Goblins, who were very straight forward, Carl had learned that the Goblins didn't automatically believe that anything made by Goblins were owned by them. Most of the wizards who commissioned the creation of an artifact only paid the renters fee, not the ownership fee. The ownership fee was a couple orders of magnitude more expensive than renting. And the cost to rent an artifact was _expensive._ So when wizards left their rented items to their heirs instead of returning them to the Goblins, as per the contract, they were cheating on the contract they themselves signed.

Even though it was incredibly expensive, Carl had set up a payment plan so by the end of ten years he would own the sword he commissioned. He only kept a small amount of his revenue back to pay for school supplies and living expenses.

Carl still felt it was completely worth the cost. The ability of Goblin swords to assimilate anything that would make it stronger included magic itself. That's why the Gryffindor Sword, that had sat in one of the most magical places in Britain for 1000 years passively soaking up magic, was able to allow a 12 year old Harry Potter in another version of the world to kill a 1000 year old basilisk.

Most ordinary swords, even if thrust into the brains of the basilisk, wouldn't have killed the snake quick enough for the 12 year old to survive from being crushed or chomped to death. But with the Gryffindor sword, not only had the sword killed the basilisk immediately, it stopped the giant snake in its tracks so Harry could survive. That was an impressive killing tool.

And while Carl was impressed with the Gryffindor sword, he better liked the idea of getting his own sword, built to his specifications and for his adult frame, made from scratch that would grow with him as he imbued his magic into it. That plus his forearm guards would continue to grow as he did, and remain powerful tools for his use.

Carl bent down and picked up the master pokeball from where it landed after capturing the basilisk.

"I knew keeping these things around would be useful at some point." Carl laughed. Putting the master ball into his pack, Carl started exploring the Chamber of Secrets for Slytherin's hidden library or treasure room or whatever.

A half hour later, Carl stood in front of a vault door on the wall inside where the Basilisk had rested in its hibernation slumber.

"Well, I'm guessing Slytherin left his snake here more to protect whatever is behind this door than the school." Carl mused as he looked at the heavily built vault door that had locks and wards that prevented him from getting inside for the moment. "It would make sense, really. A basilisk is a bloody dangerous creature that could do as much damage to your own side as the enemy from a stray glance. And what crazy person would use a basilisk to protect a school, especially when he didn't give the headmaster or anyone else a way to access said weapon? No, I think the basilisk was left here solely to guard his treasure." Carl concluded.

_§Open. Open sesame. Give me the cash. Slytherin says open. Pureblood. Down with Muggles.§_ Carl spent another five minutes trying to guess the password before giving up. All the other passwords around the castle were pretty simple, but Carl guessed that the key to opening the vault was not so simple. Otherwise he was sure Riddle would have gotten his grubby hands on whatever was inside years ago.

"Well, add curse breaking to the list of things I need to learn." Carl sighed as he stared at the vault door. He was much more wary of trying to bypass the protections on the vault via Phoenix travel than he had been to steal the Philospher's stone from Dumbledore's traps. These were protections set up a thousand years ago by a paranoid and, reportedly dark, wizard that were still strong and viable. The man had put a freaking basilisk there to guard it. Carl would be crazy to take those protections lightly, or assume Slytherin didn't account for Phoenix travel when setting up his defenses.

His portal magic might bypass all the traps that Slytherin setup, or it might not. It wouldn't really hurt Carl any to be cautious and wait until he'd studied wards and ward breaking before testing it. At the moment he had nothing but time available to study and prepare. It was something he wanted to learn anyway, and using the vault as a standard for his accomplishment appealed to him.

And he was wary of using the spells he'd learned in the BtVS world to directly read the defenses. That would basically be the same as casting spells with his wand, and he didn't want to chance that the defenses would sense the intrusion and lash out at him through his magic.

Carl opened a portal to leave the Chamber of Secrets. He had waited until the end of the year when all the students were away for the summer to sneak in and take care of the basilisk, just in case something drastic went wrong his friends wouldn't be around to be casualties. No one else knew about the chamber, and Harry, the only other parseltongue around, had no reason to seek it out. So he could afford to take his time with it.

* * *

The rest of the summer passed by quickly for Carl, since he kept himself busy. Anytime he wasn't hanging out with his friends, he was either training or studying while copying out the immense library in the Room of Requirement.

His friends had long gotten used to Carl gifting copies of rare tomes lost for ages on their birthdays and Christmas time. It just made it easier and cheaper for him to make a few more copies of each book he was gifting away than to go spend money that he didn't have buying a gift. And since he was technically an orphan in this world, they didn't really expect him to have a lot of money at the moment.

By the end of the summer, Carl had finally finished making copies of every book in the library. As he'd gotten more skilled with the auto scribing spell, he'd been able to copy multiple books at once, which sped up his efficiency.

By the time Carl's third year began, he had studied and practiced far enough ahead in the main subjects of Transfiguration, Charms, DADA, and Potions that he felt he could shift his focus for the next year to learning as much about Runes and Arithmancy as he could, now that he was taking those two classes along with Care of Magical Creatures.

At the opening feast, Carl learned that the DADA post this year would be shared between Remus Lupin and Sirius Black. As they went through the school year, Carl soon discovered that Professor Lupin would do the majority of the teaching and grading, while Sirius, or Professor Black, would mostly use the position as an excuse to come and hang out with his godson and Harry's friends, flirt with the younger female professors, and occasionally fill in for Professor Lupin (during the full moon). Carl assumed that some of Professor Black's time was spent filling his role as Lord Black and the proxy of the young Potter heir.

The Potions Professor for the year remained Professor Slughorn. Ever since Snape was incapacitated Professor Slughorn had apparently decided he would come out of retirement for a few more years and network a bit more, especially with making a contact with Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived.

During the past two summers Carl had already met Professors Black and Lupin quite a bit, as they had become Harry's guardians. They were entertaining to hang around, and always willing to teach a bit extra to Harry's friends about stuff they learned from their time as pranksters.

The addition of Professor Lupin as the DADA professor their third year, after Lockhart had initially been their teacher second year, was solidifying Carl's assumption that the world liked to follow its plot script, even if the whole thing had already gone off the rails.

When Carl saw Hermione's heavy schedule that she could only attend with the help of a time turner, he figured the world was stretching things to cover the plot holes he left by butterflying them away.

Carl frowned as he watched Hermione scurry away from the group after their first class of the morning to find a private place to turn back time so she could attend one of her electives class. When they walked into the next class and Carl saw Hermione already sitting inside, looking like she'd already had a long day, Carl decided he needed to do something about the situation before it became a problem.

He spent a few hours that afternoon working with a couple House Elves in an empty classroom before he was satisfied he had things prepared properly. House Elves were truly efficient beings when it came to work. If Carl wasn't so poor at the moment, he would probably bring a few into his "family". He would definitely have to swing back to this world later and pick up a few if he had the chance to add them as companions.

That evening, he had Hermione follow him to the classroom he had prepared. He ignored all her questions, with a standard reply. "When we get to a secure place, I'll tell you. Until then, I'm not answering anything."

They arrived outside the door to the classroom. Hermione was looking around in puzzlement. She didn't see anything they should have stopped for.

"What are we doing here, there's nothing here?" Hermione asked Carl.

Carl smiled at the young girl enigmatically. Good to see that his preparations worked like a charm. "Here is your key." Carl handed one of two keys on a chain to his friend. "Now, look at the wall behind me while holding the key."

Looking over at the blank wall, Hermione gasped to see a door appear. Or rather, it became visible to her perception, since it was simply hidden to all who didn't have a key.

"That's your copy of the key. Let's get inside, and we can talk more." Carl kept his own copy of the key on a chain around his neck.

He opened the door and the two entered. The inside of the classroom had been remodeled. When they first entered, there was a small sitting room with a table and two chairs set up in the middle. Directly across from the door to the exit, there were three doors on the wall.

"Go ahead and look around first." Carl said as he sat down at the table.

Hermione looked around the room. On the wall next to the door leading outside was a large whiteboard with a monthly calendar already drawn on it. Opening each of the three doors she saw identical rooms. Each room had two twin beds across from each other, and two desks and chairs. There was also a door in each room that led to a bathroom.

After seeing the three rooms, Hermione returned to the main room and sat down across from Carl. "Okay, I'm confused. What is this?"

Carl smirked at Hermione. "This, my dear Hermione, is our Time Room." At her gasp and guilty expression, Carl laughed out loud. "Yes, I know about the Time Turner. Don't worry, I haven't told anyone else. I'm pretty sly and can figure these kinds of things out." Carl placed his finger alongside his nose in a joking manner while Hermione snorted in amusement.

"I don't know why you decided you needed all the extra study – wait a second, let me finish." Carl said when it looked like Hermione was going to interrupt him with a rant. "I don't even need you to justify it to me. You made the decision to do it, and that's fine with me. This is my efforts to help back you up in your decision. You can't be the only one turning back time, you'll go crazy trying to keep it a secret from everyone. So I'm joining you. Not negotiable."

"With the number of classes you've taken on, and the amount of time turned back we'll do, we'll need plenty of rest and study time in a secure area where you won't fret about being caught. So I set this room up for us so we could spend the extra hours in here, studying or napping to keep our health up. That way you won't be burning both sides of the candle and burn out before we even get to the Christmas break."

"There's a whiteboard on the wall to keep track of our weekly schedule for time turnings, classes, solo study times, our group study and relaxation times, nap times, etc. Can't forget social down time, after all. The three rooms will have a light above the door that lights up when they are occupied so we will not chance running into our past or future selves, but still have a place to spend the extra time relaxing or studying without the chance of destroying the fabric of time. And only the two of us who have keys can get in here, or even see the door." Carl finished off proudly.

"So, what do you think?" Carl asked with a smile. He was a bit unprepared to have Hermione lunge out of her seat to tackle him with a massive bear hug. Seriously, that girl could _hug_.

"Thank you, Carl. This is great."Hermione mumbled into his chest as she hugged the stuffing out of him.

Carl could tell that she was as touched by the fact that he didn't try to argue with her decisions and just acted to back her up as she was by his preparations of the room. Carl beamed down at the girl, feeling a sense of accomplishment.

"Well, should we get our schedules and start planning?" Carl asked with a smile when Hermione finally released him from a hug.

"Yes, let's!" Hermione responded with enthusiasm as she started to plan how to use the room he'd built.


	30. HP 7

Carl grimaced down at his homework as he carefully worked at relearning to write. He hadn't realized it before taking the Runes class, but most of their lessons and homework was memorizing the different runes and making sure they could recreate them perfectly.

Which for Carl was a struggle, since he had never been good at art or calligraphy before. It hadn't seemed important, so he'd spent many years just "getting by" with his crappy handwriting. Now that he needed clear and flawless handwriting to be able to recreate the runes, he was struggling far more than actual 13 year olds like Hermione, Daphne, or Blaise, and playing catch up.

They all had impeccable handwriting, so they didn't have to put in all the work to overcome their bad habits. And the runes required precise proportions, angles, and curves to work properly. He could blow his hands off if he tried to charge a poorly drawn rune.

So Carl was spending a large portion of his time simply practicing his handwriting just to catch up to where everyone else seemed to already be.

"You're doing so much better now, Carl. You'll definitely get there before Christmas at this rate!" Hermione teased him from over his shoulder.

Carl snorted. "Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up." He said with a smile and a laugh in his voice so she'd know he didn't mean anything by his words. "You know I'm already suffering for my sins of not practicing calligraphy in primary, you don't have to add to my burdens." He finished with a put upon sigh.

Hermione just laughed at Carl, not bothered in the slightest by his grumbling.

Carl set his quill down, and stretched to get the kinks out. "So, is it time to go to the Halloween Feast?"

"We've got about five minutes till we have to leave." Hermione nodded.

"Why couldn't we have had the time turner last year so we could go to both the feast and the Death Day Party?" Carl lamented in an over the top manner.

"It might have been worse if then, if we'd been around those rotted foods after having just eaten. I could barely stand it on an empty stomach." Hermione declared.

Carl finished packing his bag by then. "Well, shall we be off then?" Carl offered his arm as escort.

"We shall. A night of feasting and revelry awaits!"

And with a laugh the two time travelers made their way to join their friends.

* * *

Carl finished running laps when he saw the last of the group had dropped out. The previous year Professor McWolf had a few empty classrooms combined and built into an indoor track and field that students could use for their daily exercise due to the cold and snowy climate around Hogwarts.

While many of the students this year had dropped the physical fitness schedule Professor McWolf had forced on them, Carl had encouraged his group to keep up their exercise schedule. He didn't want his friend to be lazy and weak.

"I swear, it's unfair how you aren't even sweating or breathing hard, Carl." Harry panted from where he was laying on the ground as he eyed Carl. Harry, as usual, had been the last to drop out of the run. Carl suspected it was because of his Harry Hunting years with his cousin that he was as good as he was. Carl always ran with them to encourage them to work harder and try to run longer. Most of the time it just got him cursed at.

Carl laughed in response. "What can I say, if you ever get as fit as me, you too will enjoy it."

"One of these days…" Harry mumbled.

Luna chose that moment to dance barefoot past the two young wizards. The young girl was twirling and leaping to the music only she could hear. Because she had a cassette player with headphones on, so no one could hear what she was listening to. Carl was particularly gratified at how much she liked her magic enhanced muggle music box, or walkman.

Carl had snagged many broken electronics that he practiced the reparo charm on before casting the charms to protect electronics from magic dense areas, thus saving a lot of money.

When Luna had asked Carl what he was doing when he had been charming a multitude of small muggle electronics to ensure they worked at Hogwarts so he could sell them to other students, he had taken the time to introduce muggle music to her. Luna had taken a great liking to the music the muggle world offered. With her music, Luna never simply ran the track, she danced around it. It was much more fun, she claimed.

Carl smiled after the young witch. She was very entertaining to have as a friend. Always saying unexpected things and having blunt, yet inoffensive, observations. She had a good heart.

"Well, time for a shower, then." Carl said as he stretched out a hand to pull Harry to his feet, before then chasing after Luna to let her know that exercise time was over.

* * *

Christmas rolled around before Carl knew it. As usual he chose to stay at Hogwarts over the holiday.

From what Hermione had told him of Muggle Studies and Divination, Carl was glad he didn't join Hermione in the extra classes. After several weeks of the useless classes, she somewhat regretted taking the extra classes, but was still determined to finish the year up, just to prove she could handle the load if for no other reason.

He had his own studies and projects that took up his time while he accompanied Hermione in their time turning. But with the Time Room setup, Hermione was handling the stress of the extra classes just fine, and she was determined to last the year, just to prove she could, even though she had concluded the extra classes were a waste of her time.

Carl enjoyed his time at the CoMC class under Professor Hagrid. Because of the humbling of Malfoy in their first year, the first lesson with the Hippogriffs had gone very well. No one insulted the prideful Buckbeak, no one got hurt, and so Professor Hagrid was not attacked by Lucius (who had no more magic, take that death eaters!) and so Professor Hagrid never lost his confidence in his lessons.

After the first lessons of Hippogriffs, they had moved on to more moderate animals to take care of, but nothing so boring as Flobberworms.

While taking care of the different magical creatures, Carl found that there was a lot of cross over with the skills he'd learned in the Farmville world while handling the animals. While he didn't have the same basic knowledge and instincts about magical creatures that he did for mundane beasties, there was a lot of crossover traits, since many of the magical creatures seemed to have mundane analogs.

Hippogriffs for example combined the traits of both horses and eagles. They were a herd animal, but at the same time they had the pride and independence of the avians they partially were.

As a result, Carl was able to easily interact with most of the creatures and had a general idea of what each creature likely needed and how they would act, based on their base types.

With the opportunities provided by the Care of Magical Creatures class, Carl was able to bring many magical animals into his farms so they could be scanned and produce the different magical animals of the Harry Potter world.

Carl was doing much better in Ancient Runes now that he had vastly improved his handwriting. They were now practicing the spells with their wands to carve runes into wood blocks. After the New Year, they would move on to using the spells to carve runes into metal.

Once Professor Babbling determined they were good enough at the basics of carving runes, they would move on to setting up basic rune spell clusters. They would only learn how to charge their basic rune clusters at the end of the year.

Arithmancy was an interesting class for Carl, because it was an actual maths class for the most part. A lot of it was memorizing different theorems, equations, and charts, and working out the solutions for multiple variables.

While Carl had taken many maths classes in his past worlds, he wasn't very advanced in the field. But even as a layperson he could see many of the differences. Besides the basics of addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication, there wasn't that much similarity to the science based mathematics he was used to.

For example, the muggle science maths were used to describe the physical world. They were used in many engineering fields to figure out the proper dimensions, supports, and foundations needed to have muggle technology work properly.

But what muggles did with science, like knowing the dimensions and material properties needed to have a house be sturdy enough, wizards accomplished through applications of magic. They didn't really pay that much attention to the physical dimensions and properties of things, so much as how they interacted with magic.

As a result of wizardkind not really needing to pay attention to basic physics, Arithmancy had more to do with how magic interacted with the world, different materials, and itself, than it had to do with describing the physical world that muggle maths was focused on.

The more Carl studied Arithmancy, the more he realized where the Wizarding World could get their attitude towards the muggles. The great thinkers and innovators of the wizarding world all focus on magic and its applications, instead of science. As a result, educated witches and wizards know a great deal of how magic works and interacts the world around it, but very little about basic physics or science.

Take away magic, and wizards were clueless about how muggles accomplish what they do. It's like an audience member watching a stage magician doing their prestidigitation routine. The audience member knows there must be some explanation for how the magician can do what they do, but are at a complete loss on how it's done.

With that insight about Arithmancy, Carl was intrigued at the possibilities available by possibly merging an understanding of muggle science with magical "science", or Arithmancy. What could Technomancy accomplish if the knowledge of magic was combined with science and technology?

It was just too bad he never worked hard to get himself degrees in the sciences in his previous worlds, so he was still a layman in those fields.

"Another subject of study to add to the list." Carl decided he would spend a few years in university after graduating from Hogwarts so he could start getting the basics down. This world didn't have very advanced tech, but at least he could build himself a foundation of scientific knowledge for the future. He was bound to get a high tech world in one of these jumps. Carl decided that each summer he would test out for his accreditation in the muggle world.

* * *

"Are you sure you want to turn in the time turner?" Carl asked Hermione as they stood outside the door to Professor McGonagall's office at the end of the year. They had just finished the last of their end of year tests when Hermione had announced that she would be turning in the time turner and dropping Divination and Muggle Studies next year.

"I thought about it for a while. It's been a great year, actually." Hermione smiled warmly at Carl while thinking of all the time they spent together. "I really like our time room, and it was great. But the amount of effort put into making sure everything went smoothly was just not worth it to study _those two _subjects." Hermione put special emphasis on the subjects that she had grown to hate over the year for their uselessness.

Carl could tell Hermione had a bit of ire pent up over those professors and their ridiculous ways and outdated or useless information, so he didn't argue with her decision.

"If it was important subjects, like Alchemy maybe, I might make a different decision. But for Divination and Muggle Studies, no thank you. It's not worth putting up with the poor professors and abysmal subject matter." Hermione snorted in disgust.

Carl chuckled at her expressions of disgust. "Okay, as long as you're sure. We at least still have the clubhouse for the WDS. I'll wait out here while you beard the dragonkitty in her den." Carl smirked. He knew it somewhat still urked Hermione when he made fun of a professor that she liked, but she had long gotten used to his habits.

After waiting for a good quarter hour, Hermione emerged from Professor McGonagall's office, looking like she had dropped a great weight from her shoulders. Carl pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against and fell into step with her as they headed to the Great Hall for dinner.

"So, now that you'll have less classes to worry about next year, what do you think about getting the WDS to join us for a project? A group project of accomplishing the animagus transformation?" Carl proposed as they walked.

"Oooh, that's advanced Transfiguration. It sounds interesting. We'll need to visit the library before leaving for the summer, though, so we can gather the necessary study material."

"What if we had a talk with Professor Black? He and Harry's dad accomplished it by their fifth year. What do you say we try for it by the end of our fourth year?" Carl interrupted Hermione from starting to drift off into planning while jumping over a trick step on the stairs they were climbing down. He had already found many informative books in the Room of Requirement, but it would be good to get the perspective from someone who had already accomplished the transformation. And Sirius wouldn't rat them out, like the stricter McGonagall might.

"Hmm, do you think he would have documented how they did it so young? Usually wizards and witches don't study the Animagus transformation until they are working towards their masteries." Hermione speculated as they arrived outside the great hall. "Maybe they found some short cuts to make it easier for them."

"Well, even if he doesn't have any advice, I've found a couple books I'm sure will help us along." Carl tempted the book loving girl. He enjoyed the enthusiasm that lit up her face as she turned to him. "And I'm sure you're smart enough to come up with a plan for us to accomplish it."

"Well, don't be stingy, Mr. Edwards. Let's see it!" Hermione demanded.

With a laugh, Carl pulled the book he had stowed in his bag out and handed it to her. He guided her to a seat while she immediately started reading the new book.

"Hello all. We've got a group project we want to get started on next year." Carl greeted the usual crowd at their table while indicating 'we' was Hermione and him. "We can meet in the clubhouse after dinner to discuss it when we're a little less public." Carl indicated the full hall with lots of listening ears to show that they should take the conversation to a more private location.

"A group project? That might be fun." Hannah stated.

"Count me in." Neville added quickly, betraying the fact that he had a bit of a crush on Hannah and anything she was up for, so was he. The rest of the group indicated they were in with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

The food appeared on the table at that time, so everyone put conversations on hold while bellies were being filled.

* * *

Carl easily landed from Rover flash teleporting him. Looking around, he saw that as usual Rover did a good job of transporting him to a location where no one was watching him. He reached up and scratched Rover on one of the spots he liked.

"Thanks for the lift, boy. You got any plans at the moment?" Carl asked his familiar. He received a mental impression of a series of Hot Springs that Rover liked to play in. Carl chuckled at his adventurous Canine turned Phoenix. "Nice. Enjoy yourself. I'll do most of my travel on the Knight Bus to avoid unwanted attention as usual. But if I need a lift or find some good foods to share, I'll call." Carl promised.

With an enthusiastic trill of agreement, Rover lifted off from Carl's shoulder before flaming away. Carl turned his attention to his summer abode, the orphanage.

He could have easily chosen to simply crash at one of his hotels that followed him from world to world instead of spending his summers at the orphanage, but chose not to for a number of reasons. The biggest reason was that it would take one more room off the market from making him money during the peak tourist season. And while he normally wouldn't care about the cost of one room, he had a loan to pay off. The sooner he finished paying off the Goblins, the sooner he could get his increased income back.

The other reason was that it simply didn't matter where he "slept". After his time in the SAO virtual world when he'd been grinding levels, gear, and farming materials, he'd gotten used to using meditation as a substitution for sleep. Only occasionally would he actually sleep at night. Most of his night time when not meditating was spent in his Warehouse studying books from his magical library he'd gotten from the Room of Requirement, or training his spell casting and combat skills.

The shadows were starting to get long on the ground as he entered the front door of the orphanage. He heard the sounds of food being prepared, so he made his way to the kitchen.

"Hi Miss Edith." Carl greeted as he moved to wash his hands. "Anything you need help with here?"

"Carl! Welcome back! Peel the potatoes, would you?" Miss Edith asked as she pointed at the spuds on the table. "So, how was school?" She asked as she worked at preparing the food while Carl started peeling.

"Oh, fine. Maths was easy. One of my teachers got after me for my abysmal handwriting, so I had to practice that at the beginning. And there were a number of _pets_ the groundskeeper kept around that we interacted with." Carl said, mindful of eavesdropping kids in the area. He knew she knew what he was talking about, so that was good enough.

"Sounds like fun." Miss Edith laughed. "You would not believe the hassle we had getting Tammy to eat her vegetables. She got it in her head that it would make her ugly when she grew up. I had to ask around to see who had been telling tales, and it turns out…" The nice orphanage matron started telling Carl some stories of what some of the kids had gotten up to over the year.

Carl enjoyed the time he spent there with Miss Edith. She was someone who was entirely comfortable with who she was and what her purpose in life was. It was very enjoyable and comforting to hear her ramble on about life at the orphanage. Miss Edith was another reason he didn't try too hard to find alternate accommodations.

He just soaked in the atmosphere as he enjoyed the evening. He could easily find worse places to be while growing up yet again.

* * *

With all of his extra time at night, and having studied ahead on Ancient Runes and Arithmancy throughout the past year, Carl began studying ward making and ward breaking.

The four subjects of wards, counter wards, Arithmancy, and Ancient Runes were inextricably linked. The best and most efficient method of disarming or depowering wards was through counter wards. Simply firing spells off at a ward with a wand was a good way to get killed, since in most cases the wards are set on a hair trigger that reacts to active spell casting.

Wards and counter wards were built by using Ancient Runes to create spell matrices on a ward stone. Arithmancy was used to calculate everything about the wards and how ambient magic flows through and powers the wards stones, as well as being used to calculate what counter wards need to be used to break down the wards.

Carl's study of wards and counter wards started first with memorization. He started learning all the basic rune clusters needed to be carved onto a ward stone to create a ward. Then he would carve a ward stone, and set it up. When he finally, after several tries, got a stable ward set up, he would move on to the next step.

He carved a series of counter ward stones that would simply analyze the wards they were focused on and create an Arithmancy reading on parchment. He would then analyze the Arithmancy and come up with a counter rune cluster scheme. After carving the counter wards, he would place them and power them up and watch as the magic did its job.

Even though he learned the theory perfectly from books, it still required him to practice what he learned to be able to turn it into practical knowledge. But luckily for Carl, with his perks, learning and memorizing abilities, and affinity to magic from his perks, he learned faster than most wizards or witches did.

By the end of summer Carl was prepared to at least attempt to read the ward scheme that Slytherin left on his vault. He planned to give it a go on September first, the evening after the feast.

Carl found himself feeling antsy while sitting through the sorting ceremony, feast, and announcements. The whole evening felt like it was taking so long. When Carl realized he was letting the anticipation get to him, he quickly employed his Occlumency to calm his mind and stay in the moment.

He also decided that in the future he would just do his burglary a few days before big events like the start of school if his anticipation almost got out of hand and ruined his enjoyment of rare events. Either that or he would have to step up his use of Occlumency to keep himself even keeled.

When Carl was sure everyone was down for the night, he had Rover flame him to the Chamber of Secrets. He made his way to Slytherin's vault through the mouth of the ugly statue. He pulled out his counter ward Arithmancy recording wards, and placed them carefully around the vault.

Once everything was in place, he activated his recording setup so he could get an idea of what he was working with. He watched as the power filled the stones, then it reached out a filament of magic to the vault's protection. Carl sensed when the vault took active notice of his ward stones attempt to read it.

His eyes widening in alarm as he felt the gathering energy, Carl yelled for Rover to get them out of there while cutting off his link to his ward stones. Rover flashed to Carl, then flashed them outside to the black lake.

After waiting for 15 minutes and petting Rover to calm himself down, Carl had Rover flash them back to the Chamber of Secrets. He made his way back inside to where the vault was once more. When he saw the charred and burnt spots where he had placed the ward stones, Carl shook his head in disappointment.

"Well, Rover. Looks like this is going to be a bigger, more complicated task than expected." Rover simply chirped in amusement. Carl made his way back to the main chamber and had Rover flash him back to his room.

Carl settled down into his Occlumency meditation to calm and recenter himself before resuming his normal schedule of training and studying.

* * *

The next evening found Carl and his ever growing group of friends ensconced in their clubroom that they had transformed for their use. While the Room of Requirement was amazing, he didn't really want it to become public knowledge. So aside from the one time they used it for a ritual room to remove the horcrux from Harry's scar, his group hadn't used it again.

Instead they had converted a couple of empty classrooms into their study hall / clubroom. That evening they all sat around on bean bag chairs as they started their work on finding their animagus forms.

The books he'd found describing how to become an animagus had three different methods. They all ended with the result of becoming an animagus, but they had wildly different quality of results.

The first method was to brew a potion that would send the user into a trance that would reveal their animagus form, and force their first transformation.

The second method was a small ritual that basically did the same thing as the potion.

The last method was a series of magical meditations and exercises to do until the witch or wizard discovered their inner animal. Then they worked another series of exercises culminating in mastering their animal form.

The biggest difference between the three methods was how powerful and comfortable the wizard or witch would be in their animal form. The potion would had a practically 100% chance of their animal form being a normal animal. The ritual was much more complicated, and would reward them with a more magically powerful animal. And going the route of doing the exercises and meditation would have the most magical and powerful animal form possible for the individual.

The potion method caused a sudden change that the wizard's magic struggled to catch up with. The new animagus and their magic were unused to their new form, so they and their magic had a hard time adapting to and moving around in their new form. They would be clumsy for quite some time in their new form until they relearned how to walk, fly, or swim.

The ritual was the middle ground between quickness in becoming an animagus and adapting their form to their magic. The animal forms were also a bit more likely to have a more powerful form if found through the ritual. Since the ritual used the wizard's magic and made the transformation through a fundamental change that greatly utilized their magic, their animagus form would be more magical and powerful than if they simply took the potion.

The marauders were a perfect example of the potion and ritual methods to attain the animagus form. Sirius Black and James Potter made use of the ritual. Instead of a simple dog, Sirius' form was that of a Grim, a magical dog. James Potter's form of a stag was more than a simple deer, it was a slightly magical version that could have been described as a lord of the forest. Pettigrew, on the other hand, had chosen to use the potion and ended up with a form of a common rat.

The final method of becoming an animagus would take a lot more time, but it would find the most appropriate magical version of their animal. When they finally finished all the meditations and exercises, they and their magic would be completely adapted to their animal forms, and their form would be a powerful animal version.

Needless to say, Carl chose to use the third method. There was no way he was settling for less than the best animal form he could attain. The rest of the group also chose to use the third method.

In another time, Harry or Neville may have settled for being less ambitious, or settled for mediocrity, feeling they wanted to be normal or from lack of confidence. But things were different in this world. Very early in their first year the bullying influence of Snape and the Purebloods disappeared as if by magic. So the two possible chosen children were allowed to simply focus on friends and school. And with their friend's influence, they sought to be the best wizards they could be.

Carl was proud of his friends for their decision to join him in the tougher but more rewarding endeavor. The group decided they would dedicate at least two nights a week on their animagus pursuit. If anyone wanted to put in more work, they were more than welcome, but the two nights a week would be dedicated to their exercises to become animagus.

* * *

"All I'm saying is that we don't have to let the tournament stop us from enjoying Quidditch for an entire year." Carl heard Harry saying a week after the start of term as he, Hermione, and Luna joined the rest of the group at the Hufflepuff table. Carl saw that Harry was talking with Cedric Diggory and several other Hufflepuff Quidditch players.

"Yeah, but how do we get the professors to sign off on it? You know they are just going to tell us no." While Cedric was looking interested, one of the other Hufflepuffs just complained.

"Why should we even ask them? We're just playing "pickup" games, and if it so happens to be one House's team against another, why, what a coincidence!" Harry argued back. "Hermione, back me up on this! Is there any rules whatsoever against having pickup games on our time off?"

Put on the spot, Hermione froze for a second, before drudging through her memory. "No, nothing in the rules. But there are some rules about needing professor oversight for official house games."

"There, you see! It will be the unofficial house cup. Nothing official about it. And we can even make it fun for everyone. Maybe instead of just house teams, anyone who wants to can field a team and be in the running. That would ensure there are more games than one every month and a half."

There were mutters among the crowd as everyone seemed to be warming up to the idea.

"Hermione, Luna, you two don't seem to be into quidditch, right?" Carl turned to the two girls next to him while ignoring the organization of the quidditch nuts. Even Malfoy had wandered over with some Slytherins to get in on the quidditch games.

Carl had been quite surprised just how different Malfoy was from the books by this point in time. He had started out just as arrogant and willing to throw his weight around as he was in the books. But after his death eater father had been taken out with the ritual that ended Voldemort, his mother had apparently taken a stricter role with him and straightened him out.

Apparently being well versed in the culture and politics of the wizarding world let Narcissa Malfoy realize that they couldn't continue to push their weight around when all the support her husband had enjoyed had just disappeared into the wind.

So Carl was surprised to find that if Malfoy was "reformed" early enough in life before he became set in his ways, he could actually employ his cunning and intelligent side. Which didn't mean he trusted Malfoy one bit, but he was at least tolerable now.

Carl let his momentary amusement at Draco's transformation fade as he focused on his Ravenclaw girls' response.

"You know I don't like to fly. I'm even less interested in being attacked by cannon balls while flying." Hermione said with a scowl, remembering the one time that Harry had convinced the group to participate in a pick-up game.

"I'm with Hermione on the subject of the sport." Luna said as she kept most of her attention on her food. "My interests lie elsewhere."

"Since none of us are going to be participating in the tournament, what would you say to us taking advantage of the event to open up concessions? We could cook or bake some nice treats and sell them to the crowds to make some pocket change. Might as well do it for the Tri-wizard events too."

"That might be fun. I like to eat tasty and exotic things." Luna dreamily smiled. "One summer while we were hunting for Crumple Horned Snorkacks in Sweden we had a Lingonberry Ice Cream that was simply divine."

"Luna, are there any food recipes that can only be made by witches? Cause I would _love_ to learn about them." Hermione also seemed interested in participating for the opportunities to learn.

Carl smiled at his two Ravenclaw friends as they seemed to forget all about his original question in their conversation about international and wizarding world food. He knew they would eventually circle back around to his original question about concessions, and in the meantime, he had a conversation about food to participate in.

* * *

A half moon shone down on the sleeping town of Little Hangleton, casting shadows on shadows at night. On the outskirts of town was an overgrown plot of land that was all but buried in the brush and trees, except for the area immediately around a solitary run down shack.

Carl was crouched at the edge of the clearing, looking over the scene carefully with all his senses. He didn't see anything unusual, but his magical senses were going wild.

"Well, looks like this is it. Finally tracked down where you hid your ring, Riddle." Carl muttered to himself. While he knew the property was somewhere around the town of Little Hangleton, that was still a lot of area to find when it had been in a wizard family for centuries and not on the muggle registrars.

He started moving around the edge of the clearing, dropping his ward reading stones in the correct positions. Carl was understandably wary of the defenses set up around the place. They had done in Dumbledore in the canon story, so he wasn't about to let his guard down.

When he'd finally deployed his ward stones, Carl activated their ward and curse reading function, and waited by his recording station for the results. It only took about half an hours time to finish reading and recording everything he would need.

Looking over the parchment, he looked at the map generated and took note of all the nasty curses and defenses that Riddle had placed around his ring horcrux. Looking over the Arithmancy, he decided he would crunch the numbers and come back in several days to finish the job.

Carl backed off from the property before calling Rover to transport him back to Hogwarts. He loved having a Phoenix familiar. Sure he could use the sling rings he'd built with his memories from the Sorcerer Supreme to travel around, but he enjoyed making use of each particular world's resources and abilities unless there was an emergency. And in the Harry Potter world, Phoenix travel was high class.

Once back in his room Carl started working out the Arithmancy on the readings he had taken. He sighed as he had to do the math by hand on reams of notebook paper. He really needed to pick up some computer programming skills so he could write some Arithmancy programs to make it so much quicker. Maybe one day even have the devices that measure spells and wards to channel the input directly into a program.

"One more thing to add to the study list." Carl muttered. "And despite how long the wizards and witches have been working on it, I'm wondering if their Arithmancy is completely accurate, or if it needs improvement."

Carl didn't finish up his calculations by the time he had to get ready for class, so he packed it all away to finish up later in the evening.

* * *

A week later in the middle of the night Carl returned to the Gaunt shack where Riddle's mother grew up poor and where Riddle had hidden one of his horcrux. Since the ring included the Resurrection stone, Carl was determined to obtain it.

He was still debating with himself if he should try to unite the three Hollows to become the "Master of Death". He wasn't sure what would happen, if he would simply get a power boost, if only those with Peverell blood would be able to unite them, of if nothing would happen.

The biggest sticking point was that he would have to take the cloak away from Harry to unite the three. Eventually Carl had decided that his idle speculation about what would happen wasn't enough reason for him to be a traitor to his friend. He wasn't that power hungry, especially when every ten years he would gain more powers in a new world. Betraying his friends and himself like that just wasn't worth it.

But after a few years of watching Dumbledore in the aftermath of all the Death Eaters falling into comas and losing their magic, Carl had decided that he wouldn't leave the ring horcrux sitting around for the old man to get himself cursed to death.

While Carl didn't like a lot of the decisions that Dumbledore had been making, he still kinda liked the old man in some ways. There was no way he would trust Dumbledore with his secrets or to make decisions for him, but he felt the old man at least _tried_ to do what was right. And now that Snape wasn't around to whisper lies in his ear, it seemed the old man had been getting better. Or at least, making less poor decisions.

So ultimately Carl didn't want the old man to find the cursed ring and die from putting it on. Let the old man enjoy the rest of his natural life.

Carl returned his attention back to the curses and wards that Riddle had placed to protect his horcrux. Carl placed the first set of counter ward stones down. Taking everything down without it exploding in his face was like taking down a jenga tower. He had to start in the right place, and continue taking away blocks from the top as he dismantled the tower. Only the blocks of this jenga tower were all kinds of different shapes, which made it trickier to balance.

The first set of ward stones set down diverted certain alarms placed. Those alarms would have noticed if there was anything overt done to the wards placed by Riddle, and would have kicked things into a higher alert sensitivity or sprung several traps immediately.

Once the alerts were diverted, Carl began the next set of dismantle wards. First he took down the flesh rotting gas that would be breathed in if someone simply walked in. Then some acid pools left around the area for intruders to step in. A few earth snake golems that resided underground just waiting for the unwary to step on them were deactivated.

There were pathways through the traps that seemed safe and clear, but that had confuddling-the-senses fields that would lead the overconfident straight into the traps. A few more rotting curses like what Riddle had put on his horcrux was placed on fake gold strewn around the area for someone to pick up, and in their greed damn them.

Illusions to confuzzle the senses of the intruder into believing they had overcome the traps only to unwarily stumble into the next death trap were then dispersed into the wind.

By the time Carl got to the actual shack, even he was sweating a little bit despite his increased physique. He had to concentrate on several different things at once to keep from setting any of the traps off. Most curse breaking teams were just that, teams. While he was trying to accomplish everything himself.

This would at least be good practice for him. Even though he tried to ignore what he knew about the wards and scenarios he set for himself to practice with, it just never measured up to the real thing. The way Riddle thought was very different from the way Carl thought, so running into the various things Riddle created was very different from what he would make.

And using Riddle to up his game would hopefully get Carl closer to cracking the defenses on Slytherin's vault. After spending so much time on preparations to crack Slytherin's vault, if Carl included time spent in classes learning the subject matter, he was so ready for the payday.

Carl looked inside the shack from the outside, impressed despite himself. Riddle had managed to get an amazingly dense number of curses to play nice with each other inside. He felt like he should be taking notes, figuratively speaking. He already had his Arithmancy notes. Now he needed to take notes on how to be a right evil bastard.

Putting thoughts about admiring evil geniuses aside, Carl started clearing the traps from inside the shack.

It took him a good hour to tease all the puzzle pieces out, to disarm the traps one at a time, and sometimes two or three at a time, until the inside of the shack was finally clear. Carl only had one word for it: Intense.

But he was finally looking at a small lock box that contained what he had gone through all that effort for. Standing several feet away, he levitated the lid open, and allowed the compulsion to wear the ring to batter against his occlumency shields.

It was a good tactic for Riddle to use. The intruder wouldn't know what was in the box, and a subtle and clever compulsion charm for one last curse just when they thought they had their prize and had let down their guard would work on most people. Carl, on the other hand, had Dumbledore's mistake to act as a warning for him. So he stood back further than normal with even more increased wariness.

A few waves of his wand and the compulsion and rotting curse were gone. Carl cast several more diagnostic spells to ensure he had got the last of it. When everything came up clean, he closed the lockbox once more and made his way outside, collecting the large number of ward stones he had employed to dismantle the defenses and traps left by Riddle.

No sense leaving his personally made tools behind when they would save him time in future endeavors.

Carl smiled to himself as he rode the Rover express back to his dorm room. It was a good night's work.

* * *

[AN: I just wanted to throw out a blanket Thank You to all those who read and especially comment on my stories. I enjoy seeing people enjoying each chapter, so thank you.]


	31. HP 8

Carl paused to watch a particularly good play by the amateur chasers as they scored a goal, before continuing to wander the stands selling various snacks that he, Hermione, and Luna had made. Since the vast majority of customers were students, they weren't selling them for much, but everything they brought in was pure profit, since it came from stockpiles in Carl's farm and warehouse.

The change of pace from studying and the excitement that the crowd brought was actually pretty fun for Carl. And spending time with Hermione and Luna while whipping up some tasty treats had been enjoyable.

The games were scheduled to only last 3 hours, unless the snitch was caught early. Since they weren't official games overseen by the staff, and Hogwarts was an institution of learning, they couldn't have several hour to several day long games.

Carl sold his last treat and made his way back to the concession stand where Luna and Hermione were set up at. He was surprised to find the other girls of the group with them. Susan, Hannah, Ginny, Daphne, and Tracey seemed to be having fun making some baked goods under the directions of Luna, while Hermione would occasionally intervene when it seemed necessary.

Carl decided he could afford to slack in his sales. It was all for fun and play anyway, and hanging with the group of girls as they baked was much more fun and interesting. Snatching up an apron, he soon joined the group.

* * *

For once the group was broke up to their separate tables due to it being an "official" feast on Halloween as they waited for the choosing of the champions. Carl, as usual. sat next to Hermione and Luna while the Beauxbaton students sat in a block at the front of their table closest to the professors table.

"I'm not saying that the Tri-wizard tournament is going to be a disaster for sure." Hermione was saying to one of the wizards in their house. "I was just pointing out that historically, there have been at least one death, if not more, each time they held the game. So they have a lot of history to overcome, now don't they?"

"There's one thing I think you need to factor into your assumptions." Carl suddenly interjected, bringing Hermione's attention away from Terry Boot, who she had been debating with. "St. Mungo's hospital has a regular influx of wizards that need help fixing whatever they messed up when playing with magic. Be it accidently giving themselves antlers or flippers, to cursing away their memories. Wizarding society is genetically predisposed to enjoying crazy. So this little tournament? Has a high chance of being crazy." Carl grinned madly as he finished.

Hermione groaned. "Thanks, Carl. That makes me feel _ever_ so much better."

Carl just put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a half hug. "Well, Hermione. At least it will be entertaining from the spectator seats." He amusedly said. "Just because we might have to defend ourselves from there is no reason not to enjoy the games, right?" Carl laughed at Hermione's groans about daft wizards.

After a few more minutes, it was time for the choosing of the champions. Carl enjoyed watching Dumbledore's theatrics as he caught each name that popped out of the Goblet of Fire and announced them.

"The champion for Beauxbaton is Fleur Delacour!"

There was polite applause by the Hogwarts and Durmstrang students, while the Beauxbaton students barely bothered, and several of the stuck up princesses of Beauxbaton actually cried at not being chosen. Carl rolled his eyes at the display.

Apparently Fleur wasn't well thought of in her own school. Carl could guess it had to do with her Veela allure. Most of the guys probably made a fool of themselves while she was around, and then were subsequently upset when she didn't fall over herself accepting them, while the girls were upset and jealous at the effect she had on the men.

"The champion for Durmstrang is Victor Krum!"

And there was a lot of cheering from everyone. Krum had a pretty decent following for a 7th year due to having participated, and almost won, the Quidditch cup that summer. The solid figure of Krum got up and joined Fleur in the antechamber to await instructions.

"The champion for Hogwarts is…" Dumbledore paused in shock, shooting Carl a look before finishing his sentence. "Carl Edwards." Dumbledore flatly stated.

Luna gave him a knowing smile, while Hermione seemed very shocked. Carl stood up and moved up to where Dumbledore was staring at him very intensely. He wasn't surprised to notice that there wasn't a lot of cheering for him. Everyone was wondering how he, an under aged student, had gotten picked. Quite a few older students were glaring him for getting picked ahead of them.

Before he joined the other two champions, he stood facing the students, and cast the sonorous spell on himself. Time to set the record straight before the gossipy students mangled the news. And there was no way he was relying on the professors to pass the word.

"Now, I'm sure a lot of you are wondering how I, a 15 year old entered my name?" Carl had decided that his "birthday" in this world would be September 2nd so he would be the oldest student of his year. "Now, I didn't expect my name to be chosen, because I only put my name in on a lark to see if I could bypass the age line."

That was a total lie. He fully expected to be picked over everyone else. But hey, this announcement was all about public relations.

"Here, let me demonstrate my amazing technique on how I beat the age line."

Carl then transfigured a cup into a replica of the Goblet of Fire, balled up a parchment and, while standing twenty feet away, lobbed it in. Carl chuckled at the whispers that particular act produced. He saw Fred and George face palming at how easy it was to get in.

"Tadaa! I never crossed the age line. Glad we got that cleared up." Carl smiled around before entering the antechamber where the other champions were waiting.

In the lead up to the tournament, Carl had thought long and hard about whether or not he wanted to enter his name in the tournament. On the one hand, his natural inclination learned from the BtVS world was to strike from the shadows on unsuspecting enemies before they can counter him. And being highly visible in the tournament was against those instincts.

On another hand, his time in the HSDK world spent fighting martial artists had encouraged him to be eager to test himself against opponents and challenges, so the challenges of the tournament appealed to him. He expected he would come out number one in the tournament challenges, but he still wanted to test himself.

And on a third hand, or first foot, he could use the fame generated from being in the tournament when he finally got around to his goal to make 90% of the population of the isles believe in magic. Being a visible public figure in the Wizarding world would help him direct how the wizards and witches of the UK and Ireland reacted to having their world outed to the muggles.

Finally, on the fourth hand, or second foot, there was Fleur Delacour. With his interference in the plot of this world, he wasn't sure if she would still meet and marry Bill Weasley. A lot of the relationships and actions of people during the terrorism and war with Voldemort would never happen in this world, for good or ill. So he wanted to take the time during the tournament to interact with the hot, talented witch to get her to join his larger group.

Through his friendship with his various friends at Hogwarts he was already networking with a large majority of the canon cast. Everyone that was worth a damn, and some that his group was helping to become worth a damn, he was working to make friends with.

Fleur was not just a hot and talented witch, she had a whole network of people that she brought to the equation.

All those reasons had led Carl to be leaning towards putting his name in the cup, but another big reason trumped them all. He was broke at the moment.

Despite how big of a head trip Monopoly was, he had come out of it expecting to never be poor in a jump world again. And then the moment he learned he could purchase a goblin blade, he had impulsively jumped at the chance, signing away almost all his income for the next ten years to pay for it.

'I should have just spent the cp for the goblin blade, dammit.' Carl thought to himself after spending three years poor with minimal income. He was getting tired of having minimal funds and supplies that limited what he could do with his projects. 'Even though my blade is pretty badass.' He patted his extendable pouch where his sword was resting and soaking up his magic, slowly growing its power.

Once he entered the antechamber, Carl introduced himself to Fleur and Victor. They spent a few minutes chatting while the teachers and tournament officials were dealing with sending the students on their way. Since Carl was already a mature 5'10" at 15, and would reach his 6' within a year or so (his full height), his fellow champions assumed he too was a sixth or seventh year student.

Carl didn't do anything to indicate otherwise. If he could make a friend of Victor too, and not just Fleur, Carl would be happy to add him to his group. He was after all a powerful wizard and a popular quidditch player.

When the Headmasters, Headmistress, and tournament officials entered, no word was said about Carl's under-aged status. It certainly wasn't as offensive to the other schools as Hogwarts having two champions to their one. And Headmistress Maxime and Headmaster Kostov thought that having an undertrained wizard as Hogwarts' champion would improve their champions' chances of winning. The more fool they.

Barty Crouch Sr and Ludo Bagman were the tournament officials from the ministry. Ludo Bagman gave his spiel about how the first task was a test of their ingenuity and bravery in the face of the unknown, so they wouldn't be learning about the task until the day of.

Carl snorted in disgust in his mind. Like Ludo Bagman knew anything about ingenuity or bravery. He certainly knew about cheating at gambling, but not enough to keep himself out of trouble.

Once that useless briefing was done, Carl found himself requested by the Headmaster to remain behind for a moment.

Carl wasn't exactly nervous, but he did feel a moment of disquiet. Despite his barmy-ness and human foibles, Dumbledore had a reputation as a brilliant and powerful wizard. Being stared at and considered from close up by those ice blue eyes that weren't twinkling with mirth was an uncomfortable situation earlier. And Dumbledore was a man that Carl had looked up to when he read the books, similar to Gandalf or Belgareth. Men and mentors who had been around for a long time and, when the time was needed, could bring the hammer down on their foes.

So Carl really didn't want to encourage Dumbledore to think of him as an opponent or enemy. It would make the next several years uncomfortable to have Dumbledore's focus.

So Carl reminded himself that he was made of sterner stuff than the average student and firmed his backbone and stared right back in Dumbledore's eyes. He was trying to show Dumbledore that he had confidence in himself, he had nothing to hide, and almost dared the old man to use Legilimency on him.

"I find myself unsure of just what to do with you, Mr. Edwards." Dumbledore eventually mused. "I placed the age line for a reason. This tournament will bring great danger to you as a fourth year and I'm afraid you are missing a great deal of training that would help you through it."

'Dumbledore…is worried about me?' Carl thought with dawning glee at the old mentor of his childhood stories showing that yes, he cared. Ignore the parts where Dumbledore hadn't lived up to the hype, he was still an impressive wizard. 'That is so nice of the old man. Good thing I got rid of that trap so he won't die in two plus years if he discovered the ring horcrux.'

"Thank you for your concern, Headmaster. I've actually studied ahead in a number of topics, so I'm probably not as far behind as everyone assumes." Truth. And if he knew Hermione as much as he did, she was probably even now thinking about what they needed to study to get him "caught up". Bless her heart.

"I certainly didn't expect to be chosen by the goblet over the other students who put their name in." Lie. Carl had far more experience and power, physically and magically, than any seventh year student. He had fully expected to be chosen if he put his name in. He just didn't want the old man to worry too much about his motives and whatnot. If Dumbledore thought he just did it on a lark to see if he could get away with it, then that would be nice.

"But since I was chosen I'm going to do my best to represent Hogwarts." Truth/Lie. He would do his best, but it wasn't for the honor of Hogwarts. He couldn't really care less about that. He was in it for the galleons, networking, and fame. But he knew Dumbledore cared a great deal about his school, so no sense not buttering up the old man.

Dumbledore hummed in acknowledgement. "Very well, Mr. Edwards. Good luck. The rules of the tournament prohibit the professors from helping the champions prepare for the tasks, but if you find yourself with some…extracurricular questions about school material that you just have to know early, I or some other professors would be happy to make ourselves available. Good night." Dumbledore dismissed Carl for the evening.

Carl wandered up to Ravenclaw tower in a slight daze. Dumbledore, _Dumbledore_ had just offered a loophole for training, for _cheating_. Carl laughed as he climbed the steps. "The old man is alright. He really does try his best, despite having too much on his plate." Carl laughed to himself.

He paused outside the Ravenclaw tower, girding his loins and preparing himself for the coming ordeal he was sure was coming. Opening the door, the first thing he saw was the unhappy faces of Hermione, and the slightly mischievous face of Luna. He smiled at their concern, and to show that he appreciated their care and friendship, he just folded them in a threeway hug before Hermione could start on her rant.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it. I just didn't expect that my name would come out of the goblet, and I only did it on a whim in the first place." Carl said.

Pulling back from the hug and seeing Hermione's flustered face, he was hopeful that his derailing tactic had worked. And it did, for all of 30 seconds. Hermione then let him have it with all her worry and concern she had been working herself up with over the time since he entered the antechamber.

"Do you have any idea what you're in for with this tournament! I can't believe you entered yourself with no consideration…" Carl just accepted that Hermione needed to vent, and let her work out her concern.

He peripherally noticed the presence of Padma and Sue Li, and further away was the rest of the house. Those two had been partially part of the group he'd gotten together. They came for the studying, but not much for the socializing, although they had been slowly showing up more and more over the past three years. He was more than happy to have them along in their friends list.

It seemed the entire house was willing to wait until Hermione had finished her rant before they celebrated. Carl appreciated their wariness of his witch. They certainly weren't the house full of bullies that he'd read about in canon Harry Potter, Carl had made sure of that.

And over the past three years of working on their stupid traditions, he'd at least made an impression on the younger years to change a bit. Most of those in their year and above were still stuck up credit thieves, due to their "traditions", but he had a good start on changing the younger years to be decent people.

Once Hermione wound down, the butterbeers came out, and the party started. Carl just sat back with his core group, enjoyed the music, and relaxed as Hermione, Luna, Padma, and Sue Li started planning out his training schedule.

Carl just sat back, amused at the girls in his life "taking charge" of his study/training schedule. He didn't want to dampen their enthusiasm or rain on their parade, so he just let them do their thing. He had already studied past his Owls and was into his Newts. He had plenty of time at night to study and train, so he wasn't worried about the upcoming trials. But if it made the girls feel better to be so involved, he was fine with it.

* * *

[AN: Just so everyone knows, I have zero working knowledge of French or Bulgarian, or many other languages. I'm not even going to try to write accents out. I'll trust that the readers can use their own imagination to flavor an accent in.]

Over the next couple of days, Carl was amused to note that some of the upper years seemed a bit put out with him for snatching the glory of being the champion that they wanted. They didn't do anything about it except glare at him during mealtimes, so he didn't bother about them.

He had confirmed only last night with a trip around the school grounds that yes, indeed, the ministry was building a stadium where the champions would face dragons. Since he wanted to make friends with his fellow champions, he decided doing them a little favor would be a good offering to start a friendship.

"Hey Fleur." Carl greeted the French witch at the door to the Great Hall at the beginning of dinner. "Got a moment?"

"And just what do you need a moment of my time for, Mr. Edwards?" The blonde arched a suspicious eyebrow at him in question. Carl was sure that she was used to lots of wizards drooling over her and making a scene, so he wasn't surprised she was acting so wary.

Instead of getting upset at her standoffish behavior, Carl simply smiled at her. "Well, I had something that I found out last night that I'd like to share with you and Victor. Speaking of which." Carl noticed Victor entering the castle with his group of school mates. "Hey, Victor, since I've got you and Fleur here, got a moment before dinner starts?"

The dour looking young man glanced back and forth between Carl and Fleur for a moment, before deciding that he was interested in what was happening. "Yes. But only a moment. The boys will likely not leave me anything to eat if we don't hurry."

Victor's friends just laughed in agreement as they trooped by. Carl led Fleur and Victor away from the mobs of students to get out of earshot. Once he had their attention, he began.

"Last night I was wandering around the grounds and saw the construction they were doing to prepare the site for the first task. I overheard the people talking about what the task was going to be. They are importing three dragons to be the obstacle we have to get past. Three nesting dragons." Carl paused as he saw the shock on the two champion's faces. "Yeah. So the object is going to be a golden egg that we have to snatch from a mama dragon's nest."

Carl had to pause what he was saying because the two champions had two very angry and vocal reactions to the news. Carl made a note to file the words he was hearing in his creative curse words mental file at the end of the day. Eventually they calmed down a bit.

"Why tell us, Mr. Edwards? You had a lead on us you just gave away." Fleur asked.

"Please, call me Carl, you two." The two nodded in agreement. "The most honest answer I can give you is that I want to make friends with you two. Just because only one of us can win the competition in the end is no reason to turn this into a bitter feud. It's a matter of sportsmanlike behavior. And I don't want to see either of you injured or dead. The more time you have to prepare, the more likely we'll all be standing on the winner's podium at the end." Carl smiled at the two.

"I like your honesty. I'll extend the hand of friendship, then." Victor said as he held out a hand to shake. Carl shook his hand with a firm grip. "And we can't leave out the most good looking competitor of the lot, now can we?" Victor said, and then reached out and shook Fleur's hand.

"Indeed, the belle of the ball can't be left out." Carl smiled in amusement as he also reached out to shake Fleur's hand.

"Good! I'm glad we understand each other. Just so long as you both understand that in the end the best witch will win." Fleur smiled confidently at the other two champions, causing them to laugh.

"Indeed, may the best Bulgarian Wizard win!" Victor said.

"Aye, this British Wizard will happily wait at the finish line for you to join him." Carl joined in on the boasts, since it seemed like the thing to do. "So, dinner?"

With nods of agreement, the three champions entered the Great Hall as one. Victor split off to join his friends at the Slytherin table, but Fleur, at Carl's invitation, joined his friends at the Hufflepuff table for dinner.

And because Carl had long since made everyone in his group study Occlumency, Fleur finally found a group of wizards and witches in control of their emotions and thoughts that didn't lose themselves if her control over her Veela allure slipped a bit.

He was pleased to see the group readily accept her into their numbers. He had let them know the day before he would be trying to befriend the other champions, just so it wasn't a surprise for them.

Over the next month leading up to the first task Fleur was often in Carl's company with the group of fourth years and younger. Victor only occasionally joined them. It seemed strange to those on the outside that Fleur and Victor would be associating with students so far beneath them, but it was a different matter for those in the know.

Carl had been including the decent students who had a thirst to learn in each year batch into their general studies group, just to continue to instill decent ideals in the younger years. They would get a copy of the Occlumency book and receive tutoring. They were always welcome to join them in their clubroom for help in study and spellcasting. They didn't discriminate against any house, and they all focused on becoming the best wizard or witch they could. So the average knowledge base and casting ability of each member of the WDS was far above their year level. (WDS was the World Dominating Society that Carl had jokingly named, but the name stuck.)

So with the benefits of Occlumency and being the overachievers that they were, Fleur and Victor found that even though they were only fourth years, they had a very nice grasp on spell casting and theory that rivaled even those in their seventh year.

And while it looked odd to those on the outside to see a couple of older students happy to associate with students that were several years younger than them. To those in the know it was obvious that Fleur and Victor benefitted just as much as the rest of the students in the WDS.

* * *

"That was quite the mesmerizing performance by the Beauxbaton champion as she overcame the Welsh Green! Now it's time for the Hogwarts champion, come on out, Carl Edwards!"

Carl snorted at the announcements by Ludo Bagman. It wasn't that he did a bad job of the announcing job, it was just because he had no respect for the man. "One too many bludgers to the head."

Carl stepped out of the tent and saw his opponent for the day. A Chinese Fireball. The smooth scarlet colored scales on the dragon made it seem even more serpentine than some of the other dragons. It had a short snout and a fringe of gold colored spikes around her head.

The moment Carl stepped out onto the battlefield, he saw the Fireball zero in on him. She hovered protectively over her eggs, glaring at him. Carl looked at the nest she was protecting and saw the one gold egg among the crimson colored eggs speckled with gold.

The Fireball didn't like Carl looking at her eggs and blew out a mushroom shaped fireball in warning. Carl smirked back at the dragon.

Taking his wand in hand, he started transfiguring different rocks around him into various creatures. He made some dogs and cats to run around on the ground outside the Fireball's range. Then he conjured up large flocks of birds that swarmed around the area while staying one step ahead of the Fireball's fire.

Carl did that to create a large distraction for both the dragon and the crowd. Meanwhile he applied all the stealth spells on himself. Sight, sound, and smell were blocked off. He also added one more for heat. He wasn't sure if the dragons actually had heat sensing organs, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

While he was doing all this, Carl was circling the edges of the arena, dropping off his next set of distractions. Once he was done, he positioned himself for the action. With a whispered command, the fireworks he had placed went off all at once, blinding the dragon, but more importantly, also blinding the entire crowd.

Carl was already in motion. His second master pokeball landed at the feet of the Fireball, sucking it in. Carl was at the nest, dropping the eggs and the master pokeball into his warehouse for later.

Holding aloft the golden egg, he stood posed in a dramatic fashion for when the fireworks finally died down and the crowd regained their sight. Carl smiled at the gasps of shock the audience let out upon seeing that he was standing there with the egg, the dragon nowhere in sight.

Carl had taken a page out of the stage magician's handbook. Misdirect the audience, blind them to what was actually happening, and presto change-o, magic happened. The only remaining thing to do was to ham up the mysterious magic act.

"Uh…the dragon is gone and Carl Edwards is all that remains in the arena." Bagman announced once he got his sight back. "And now Edwards is taking a bow to the scattered applause of the audience. Yes, well done. But how did he _do_ it?" Bagman almost whined at the end, which put a larger smirk on Carl's face.

After the judges conferred with each other for several minutes, Carl received his score of 47, which put him in first place by a couple points. He didn't worry about the points overly much. Even though he should have gotten a perfect score for that performance.

"Before you leave, Carl Edwards." Bagman spoke up before Carl could leave the arena. "The audience is dying to know how you did what you did. And just _where_ the dragon is now?" He plaintively asked.

Carl took his time, tucking the egg into the crook of his arm. He then lifted his wand to his throat and cast the sonorous charm. Looking around the audience that was on the edge of their seats, he smiled. "Why, it was done with magic. And a magician never reveals his secrets!"

Carl then strode out of the arena, ignoring all other shouted questions. With the clue provided the muggleborn might be able to figure out that he had done some misdirection stage magic if they thought about it, but he was sure no one would guess the specifics about his extra dimensional Warehouse space. Maybe an expansion trunk or other such things, but good luck to anyone trying to find his Warehouse.

After a quick checkup with Madam Pomfrey to insure he wasn't injured, he soon joined his friends in their clubhouse for a party, where he continued to have to dodge the question. He finally settled them down with a "I can't tell you right now. When the time comes that I can tell you, I will. Besides, if I tell, they may try to ban it on the next task for being too easy for me, or that I'm stealing ministry beasties or something."

He just wasn't willing to drop the big bombshell that he traveled from world to world to his group of friends just yet. He was hoping to eventually include all his friends from different worlds into his crazy adventure, but at the moment he couldn't promise them anything.

If in the future he found he could only take one person from each world, how bad would he feel for getting everyone's hopes up prematurely? He certainly didn't have a manual or a Jump-chan around to tell him what he could get away with and help him milk the system for all it was worth. At most he had vague promises of good things from Spere 037.

He hadn't run into any rules that said he couldn't talk about his world jumping, but human nature being what it was, once he started telling people these things, they were bound to talk about it where just anyone could overhear them. So unless he made his friends take really strict oaths not to talk about it at all, which show of distrust could damage his friendships, Carl had long since decided he would keep certain secrets secret until he was a lot closer to the end of his jump. Or if he felt that they were mature enough to keep the secrets. Or when he felt like it. Carl just didn't feel like getting into it at the moment, really.

And there was another example of the HSDK world messing with him, making him super open and trusting of the Masters of Ryozanpaku. Sure, they were trustworthy, but for him to just blatantly open himself up to them and reveal all his secrets had been wildly out of character for him.

Thank Merlin for Occlumency! Mental defenses for the win!

* * *

After a week of fending off the ministry officials who wanted their dragon back, even though Carl won it fair and square in a possibly deadly fight, Carl was starting to think that being a showboat and openly and blatantly stealing a dragon and her eggs for his Farms was actually a bad idea. He should have done it sneakily instead.

He just had no idea they would be so dogged in wanting to know _how_ he did it. Just goes to show that following the rule of cool, while awesome in the moment, had repercussions that he might not like.

It took him writing a letter to Madam Bones, the head of the DMLE, detailing their harassment and citing the ministry laws that allowed him ownership of the XXXXX class creature that he defeated in combat so she could come down on them like a ton of bricks before they would leave him alone.

Carl promised himself he would do his future heists much more stealthily and not get the ire of freaking bureaucrats without the proper forms to get them off his back.

* * *

With the Yule ball coming up Carl decided that just because he was a Ravenclaw didn't mean he couldn't hope for a bit of fortune favoring the bold, so he soon found himself sitting in a room with Hermione and Luna shortly after he was informed of the Yule ball and his need of a dancing partner.

"There's a Yule ball coming up, and I thought about this long and hard. The two girls that I'm closest to are you two. I like you both a lot, you're both super intelligent, super gorgeous, and while I don't want to ruin anything with our friendship by diving into a relationship at this point in time, I'd like to take both of you to the ball as a group of friends, just to have fun. No pressure for romance or anything since we're still so young, we can just have some fun. What do you say, will you both go with me, or do you have your eye set on someone else?" Carl threw out there.

Luna seemed about to answer, but Hermione shushed her up and dragged her to the corner of the room, put up a silencing ward, and talked with Luna for a while.

After several minutes, Hermione dragged Luna back in front of Carl.

"Give us some time to think about it. We'll give you an answer soon." Hermione stated.

Carl smiled at the two girls. "Sure, take your time thinking about it."

He wasn't too bothered about Hermione's reticence to agree immediately. If she decided she wanted the whole romance and single date thing with someone else, he was fine with her choice. If she was willing to join him and Luna in a friendly date, he was fine with it. He could see that whatever Hermione decided, Luna would agree to be his plus one to the Yule Ball.

Even if both of them rejected him, he wasn't exactly a normal 15 year old that would get petulant over being rejected. Their friendship meant a lot more to him, and they were still pretty young at the moment so romance and sex weren't in the cards for another few years anyway.

So Carl continued to act like he always did as they attended classes, studied, and trained.

* * *

A week later, Carl finally got his answer from Hermione; she was willing to join him and Luna in going to the ball for a night of fun and frivolity.

He had been really amused over the week watching how Hermione was watching and evaluating their fellow students for potential dating material.

Anytime her eyes drifted to certain Gryffindors or Slytherins, Carl couldn't help chuckle at her shivers of disgust. Ron wasn't necessarily a bad sort overall, but he was very immature for his age and didn't have very good table manners. Dean and Seamus on the other hand were very aware of girls and were open horndogs, which always seems to turn away girls who would like a little bit of class in their wizards. Neville had his eye on a certain blonde Hufflepuff, while Harry was acting as his wingman and taking a certain redhead Hufflepuff to the ball.

While Malfoy had improved markedly since his father left his life, he was never the friendly sort with what he saw as blood traitors and mudbloods. Many of the other Slytherins seemed to revel in being very thug like, which was a huge turn off for a girl like Hermione who was so invested in intelligence.

The Ravenclaw boys had permanently tanked any chance they had of a date with her when they stole her work and tried to get her in trouble with the professors. She still hadn't forgiven them after four years. Carl didn't blame her.

And the Hufflepuff boys seemed incapable of straying from the Hufflepuff crowd, so they were out.

Eventually, since no one who might have appealed to Hermione approached her for a date, she decided a night with friends was more appealing than a last minute date with someone she found to be skeevy.

The ball itself was pretty enjoyable for Carl. He got to see Professor McGonagall give him the stink eye for having two dates. He danced and talked, and joked around with his two friends. He shared a dance with a couple of his other friends in the WDS and Fleur. He truly enjoyed the face Hermione made when Luna dragged her onto the floor for some dances.

Afterall, Luna's logic was impeccable. They weren't there solely as Carl's dates, they came as a trio of friends. So it was only right for Luna to get her dances in with Hermione too.

One other accomplishment of the evening that Carl was pleased with was that he found Rita Skeeter buzzing around in her animagus form and stunned her, putting her away for later. During the weighing of the wands, he had tagged her with a tracking spell so he would know when she was around, looking for secrets that weren't hers. Finding her in her animagus form gave him a perfect opportunity to have her disappear for an evening's talk without raising suspicions, since she basically came to him.

He had often wondered, though, just how she, as a beetle, handled the winter weather of Scotland. Eventually he figured it was her magic keeping her alive, even though her form would normally have suffered greatly from the cold.

Carl was somewhat on the fence about Rita. One the one hand, she was a despicable human that ruined people's reputations and lives for her benefit. On the other hand, she wasn't complete scum that tortured and murdered people, so ending her life was a bit extreme.

He eventually decided that he would set down some rules for her to live by, administered as magical oaths. She needed strong boundaries to keep her from destroying just anybody's life, but at the same time Carl recognized that there were a lot of corrupt and evil people out there that he could use her to dig out and expose.

And he would have her available if he ever needed her particular skills in media, so she could be a useful tool. It was certainly quicker to suborn her to his service than to have to build up someone from scratch to take her place.

So during the break he took the time in the middle of the night to bind her to her new oaths and ways of doing things.

* * *

Over the first few weeks of February Carl spent time under the Black Lake as he practiced for the second task. He was familiarizing himself with the landscape under the lake so he would have no problems when the time for the task came.

He tried out Gillyweed that Harry had used in the original story a few times. And while the experience was fun, he didn't like it for the purposes of the task. He was unable to talk while breathing water, and he was stuck like that for the whole hour. And while the webbed feet did give a little boost for underwater maneuvering, with his physical abilities he already didn't have any issues being mobile, so it was unneeded.

And finally, with his enhanced senses, he could already see perfectly well in low light and watery environments, so he didn't need the boosts from Gillyweed.

With all his practice and study with the girls, by the time that the second task rolled around, Carl was more than prepared for the event.


	32. HP 9

Carl sat down for breakfast the morning of the Second Task and looked around at his friends who were there, noticing a missing face.

"Anyone seen Hermione this morning?" Carl asked. Carl receive a negative answer from everyone. Looking around he saw some worried faces for Hermione among his friends. "Well, it looks like they chose Hermione to be the hostage for this task as the thing I would sorely miss. Bunch of wankers." Carl growled as he gave Luna a hug to comfort her after he noticed her stricken expression.

Carl had known it was coming, and told all his friends about the possibility of being a hostage, and thought he was okay with it. He had even discussed the high probability with his Yule Ball dates. But now that it happened, he was surprised at how angry he was at it actually happening.

Reading about the Tournament on the pages of a book for kids while he was safe didn't really convey the sense of urgency and worry that was inherent in the situation. While Carl had been reading the story he knew that the author wouldn't kill off one of the main characters. But this was real life, and he had no real guarantees that something wouldn't go wrong.

So he was eager for the task to start so he could get Hermione out of that damned lake.

Carl showed up at the lakeshore early with his friends wearing board shorts, flip flops, and a short sleeved scuba top. His wand was in his holster on his right arm next to his forearm bracers, and he had a knife strapped to each of his calves. He was rocking the warming charms to keep from feeling the cold.

He spent the time until the task started by watching the crowd trickling in, hating every second that he had to wait for the task to get started. Looking at the faces of the crowd, he thought how the second task at the lake would be incredibly boring for everyone in the audience, since they sat lakeside for an hour with nothing to look at. But then he thought how they were all here to watch what amounted to gladiator games, and his anger returned.

Fleur and Victor arrived. Carl saw that both his fellow champions were pretty worried about their hostages in the lake, although Fleur seemed extraordinarily worried about her sister. Carl knew just how they felt.

Carl had made sure his two competitors knew about the task early on, so they could get all the preparation time they needed. Carl had made the offer a few days ago for all three of them to travel as a group to get it done quickly, but Victor and Fleur's pride apparently made them choose to complete the task solo. Carl wondered how they thought about it now that the moment was upon them and one of their loved ones were in danger.

Carl wasn't too bothered at their rejection at the time, since he hadn't made the offer for his own benefit. He wasn't too invested in the idea, he was just kind of playing around with the different tropes and plot points he remembered reading from different Harry Potter stories. In some of the stories the hostages were in real danger of dying since the safety spells weren't well done. So while he may let things play out as they would, he wouldn't be leaving any of the hostages below the lake. Especially now that everything felt more real, and not just an abstract idea.

And now, just before the start of the event, Carl was wracked with questions and concerns. Would Hermione be safe? Carl looked over at Fleur. What about Fleur? In some of the stories told, she lost limbs or was seriously maimed or even died in this event because her fire/air nature greatly weakened her under the cold water.

He was torn between competing desires. On the one hand he wanted to go straight to the hostages and help Hermione immediately. On the other, he wanted to make sure nothing happened to Fleur while under water.

The task was set to start at 10:00 a.m. so he waited impatiently, thinking over what he should do, while watching as the audience members finished filing in. He was anxious to get this over with. It's not that he didn't trust Dumbledore's spell work to keep Hermione safe, but he really didn't. Things and accidents were always a possibility, so he couldn't be complacent.

Finally the time arrived, and with a cannon blast from Bagman's wand, the second task began. Carl cast a bubble head charm on himself at the same time Fleur did, while Victor did his partial shark transformation.

Carl then did a 1 ½ flip off the pier to dive into the water headfirst. He had been planning that small action for some time before the task started, so despite his worry to get moving, he still showed off a bit, and it gave him some nice momentum to dive down. If that was the extent of the show that the audience got, he felt sorry for them for wasting their time. Oh, no wait. He didn't really feel sorry for them.

At the last moment Carl decided that instead of rushing for the hostages, he would shadow Fleur. She was also one of his friends, and according to the way the plot wanted to go, she might very well get in trouble while being attacked underwater. He wasn't willing to chance that she might be hurt badly or die without intervention on his part.

While keeping his distance from Fleur, Carl kept track of her progress as he swam. After a short 10 minutes, he saw that he was right to shadow her. Carl saw Fleur entangled with a large swarm of Grindylows. She had swum too close to some underwater vegetation that was hiding them, so they were able to ambush her before she could put up a good defense. He swam closer and started blasting the little critters away.

His attacks gave Fleur the room she needed to maneuver and resume her defense. Between the two of them, the Grindylows were driven off quickly. He looked over Fleur, and saw that aside from some light scratches that would have been worse if he didn't help her, she looked fine.

"Thanks, Carl. You came at just the right moment." Fleur smiled at Carl.

Carl smiled back reassuringly at his fellow competitor, somewhat enjoying the look of relief on Fleur's face. While their voices were muffled from being underwater, the bubblehead charm allowed them to communicate.

"Well, shall we go and rescue our hostages, lovely lady?" Carl asked, managing to maintain his calm façade.

"Indeed, Carl. I have rethought the idea of journeying together. Let us make short work of the obstacles in our way." Fleur stuck to the formal phrasing. It somehow seemed appropriate in the moment.

"I've got a tracker on Hermione on the off chance she was my hostage. Follow me." Carl then said, as he turned to swim directly to the Merfolk village.

It was only another few minutes until they arrived at the outskirts of the village. Thankfully they were able to avoid any other obstacles by remaining clear of the lake bed. Even in the books, there wasn't much for Harry to fight against, so Carl wasn't too surprised they made it just fine.

Once in the village and seeing the crowds of Merfolk, and the hostile and angry looks the Merfolk were sending Fleur's way, Carl figured there was some truth to the idea that Veela and Merfolk didn't get along. He was glad he and Fleur could watch each other's backs here.

Carl kept his wand ready and a wary eye out for sudden attacks. The Merfolk guards kept their distance at first, likely due to Carl's ready stance and apparent willingness to fight them. They soon arrived at the large rock pillar the hostages were tied to.

Hermione, Gabrielle, and a girl that Carl recognized as Victor's date to the ball were tied to a large stone pillar, unconscious. He was relieved to see there wasn't any problems with the spells keeping them in stasis, and they seemed fine.

"Here, Fleur. I'll stand guard while you get them free." Carl palmed one of his knives, and handed it off to Fleur while keeping guard against the Merfolk, who looked increasingly angry. One of them started floating a little too closely, so Carl angrily sent a depulso his way, flinging him away.

"Back off, bitches. Just try me, and see what you get!" Carl yelled, and bared his teeth in an angry scowl. While the Merfolk didn't seem very intimidated, since they had numbers on their side, the group was a little more wary now that they saw how quickly and easily Carl would curse them if they got close. Carl was just fine with them hesitating to attack. If they truly did attack, he wasn't going to hold back.

"They are free, Carl. Come, take your Hermione and we shall depart." Carl heard from Fleur behind him.

"Sounds good, Fleur." Without turning his back on the Merfolk, Carl reached back and grabbed Hermione around the waist with his off wand hand and started swimming, keeping pace with Fleur.

Once they got away from the Merfolk village, and no more of them were around, Carl relaxed a little bit. He turned to Fleur. "Is it just me, or do they not like you?" He sarcastically asked.

"Yes, our people have a long history of conflict. Whoever chose my sister as a hostage to put in the lake with no guards against the Merfolk will pay for their arrogance." Fleur darkly spat. "If we had not rescued her, there was a good chance she would have had, as they say, an accident."

Carl scowled at that thought. "It's one thing to put the champions in danger like that, we signed up for it. But for them to do the same to people we care for, especially in your little sisters case, is unforgivable. Let me know if I can do anything to help." He offered.

Fleur flashed him a smile. "Thank you, Carl."

They then turned their efforts back to swimming back to the docks. They kept well above the lake bottom, having realized that just about anything could be hiding there. Fleur and Carl arrived at the docks with 15 minutes to spare on the time limit. Once they broke the surface, the spell keeping Hermione and Gabrielle unconscious broke, and the two hostages started shivering from the cold. Carl and Fleur thoughtfully put warming charms on them as they made their final approach to the docks.

Madam Pomfrey was there to cast some drying charms on the four before wrapping them up in warmed blankets and thrusting mugs of hot chocolate in their hands. Her angry mutters against whoever decided the tasks, "first dragons, now swimming in the lake in February? Imbeciles!" greatly amused Carl.

Victor arrived just a few minutes after the time limit. While he had been able to breathe underwater thanks to his half shark transformation, he didn't have the tail of a shark so he had been stuck at his slow human swimming speed, and had had some difficulty gnawing away the ropes on his hostage, thus falling into last place.

Fleur and Gabrielle, with their parents blessing, joined Carl and his friends as they celebrated in their clubhouse for a few hours afterwards. Everyone seemed to think Gabrielle was the cutest thing, even if her rapid French was difficult to understand, and she was pretty much adopted as everyone's little sister.

When the party ended, little Gabrielle didn't want the fun to end, but she had to be returned to her parents at the end of the day, no matter how much fun she was having.

While everyone was busy at one point in the party, Carl contacted his journalist "friend", Skeeter. He wasn't too happy with the pointless use of hostages in the second task, and wanted to hurt those who made that decision. So he gave Skeeter the goal of giving the ministry and those who chose the task a black eye.

It wasn't nearly as satisfying as literally punching them in the face, but it would have to do for now. At the very least it might push some of the wizards in the ministry to think twice about stupid schemes if they were aware they would get castigated by the public for their stupidity.

Over the next few days, Carl followed the news closely as he saw a series of articles talking about the political concessions the British Ministry gave to the French Ministry. Carl sighed. That wasn't exactly what he'd been hoping for. He was hoping to see some people arrested. But in hindsight, that was rather naïve of him to expect the whole situation not to devolve into politics.

And while the British Ministry might give up some concessions, actually arresting those responsible due to something that only could have happened was not something the British Ministry decision makers were willing to do. It would hurt their political capitol too much.

* * *

Several nights later Carl had finished his fourth set of different ward stones to try reading the wards on Slytherin's vault. The past three attempts had all been counter attacked by whatever ward scheme Slytherin had placed. Carl hadn't given up yet, and kept researching the theories and principles behind the Arithmancy probes.

The previous three attempts he had basically just copied what others had done before. But this fourth attempt he had left the beaten path and changed the method to be a bit more sideways in the way it gathered the information. It was experimental, but he was hoping the more passive method would not trigger the wards that Slytherin put up.

It did make him wonder sometimes. Slytherin had put up the defenses 1000 years ago. How were the wards still so good compared to the modern techniques?

After some thought, and remembering many of the stories he had read in his original life, Carl came to a startling realization. It was bloody obvious, but he hadn't thought of it before now. The wizarding world and knowledge wasn't like the modern muggle science world.

Hell, even in the muggle world, information wasn't freely shared like some idealists liked to believe. Information, recipes, patents, all different kinds of knowledge that were used to make money were tightly guarded. Freely sharing that information was not something that is done.

Sure, many muggles have the idea that information should be shared, but that's only applied practically to very basic knowledge. Advanced knowledge has to be paid for and protected since it was used to make money. And governments and businesses safeguard the knowledge they need to operate. Information was not a universally and freely shared commodity.

And that kind of attitude wasn't new. There were all kinds of stories of lost wizarding civilizations, like Atlantis, that was a marvel of magical feats. But all that knowledge was lost when they sank into the ocean.

Merlin was reputed to be the most powerful Wizard in history, and no one has matched his feats and knowledge since. Just because one wizard or civilization in the past knew how to do something, didn't mean it got passed on to their current knowledge base. They more often than not jealously horded their valuable knowledge.

All these puzzle pieces led Carl to the realization that the general knowledge of wizard kind didn't necessarily advance steadily over the years like muggle tech had over the past 100 some years. Even today, the wizarding world's ministry kept a tight hold on the reins on what was considered appropriate magic and what was forbidden Just another example of much knowledge being restricted.

Which meant that there was probably a lot of magical knowledge out there that had never been brought into Hogwarts wards. For Slytherin to have researched some particularly powerful wards and never pass the knowledge on wasn't that unheard of, really. It made sense now why he was having so much trouble with Slytherin's old wards.

Carl landed easily when Rover flamed them to the chamber of secrets. Smiling at how convenient having special transport was, Carl once more made his way inside the mouth of the statue.

He carefully placed his wardstones, making sure they were aligned properly to work as a whole while scanning the wards. The mathematics of magic that he had been learning had greatly increased his knowledge of how magic interacted with other magic and materials.

Due to his studies in Arithmancy at Hogwarts, he was actually starting to understand how the rituals he used back in the BtVS world worked. Before he had basically been putting his magical coin in the cosmic vending machine. He had no real understanding of just why it worked. He just knew that if he added certain ritual ingredients along with his magic, he got results.

Once Carl had double checked the placement of his ward stones, verifying that everything was in place, and making sure that Rover was on standby so he wouldn't get caught in the backlash, Carl activated the diagnostic stones and began feeding them magic. He glared at his wardstones, just daring them to not do the job this time.

After a minute of watching his activated wards soak up the ambient magic of Slytherin's defenses, Carl let his expression relax. It seemed that fourth time was the charm. He smiled as the parchment that was starting to fill up with the arithmancy formulas that represented Slytherin's ward scheme.

"Success!" Carl crowed in triumph. "Take that you crusty old bastard!" He laughed at his success, and he laughed at himself for taking such pleasure in defeating someone who was already 1000 years dead and gone.

He hadn't even broken into the vault yet, so he shouldn't feel quite so happy. But whatever, Carl still felt good about his accomplishment.

Carl spent a good 45 minutes channeling his magic into his ward scheme while it mapped out the arithmancy of Slytherin's ward scheme. When he finally had everything recorded, he turned off his ward stones and packed them up. He then made a duplicate of the results. He would work with the copy so he didn't accidentally ruin the original results and have to repeat the performance.

After he was all packed up, he got Rover to give him a lift back to his room, before Carl sent Rover off on his way to play.

Looking over the many pages of Arithmancy, Carl sighed. This would be the long and tedious part. Sighing despondently once more, his earlier excitement having completely drained away, Carl picked up the first page and began the time intensive task of crunching numbers to figure out just what made up Slytherin's Jenga tower, and how he was going to dismantle it.

* * *

One Tuesday evening at the end of April while Carl and his friends were doing their animagus meditations. Carl finally got to the point where he was ready to shift to his animal form. By that time everyone had found out what their base animal was.

Luna had actually been the first to discover their animal through the meditations. Carl figured it was because she just had that open and accepting nature that made it easy for her to discover herself. But everyone had followed along within a short time, seeming to be spurred on by Luna's success.

"Okay, I'm ready to give it a go, guys. Give me some space to make my transformation." Carl said when their small snack break was over during their study time. He didn't want to interrupt anyone's meditations or exercises so he waited until everyone had paused for a bit.

Carl gathered his magic and ran it through his body in the now familiar pathway while visualizing his change. His body changed quickly and without pain. In his place stood a very large black panther.

Carl easily stood up on four legs and stretched, completely comfortable in his new form. It was a benefit of the long and tedious method, that when he finally shifted forms his magic was already adapted to the new body shape.

Carl looked at himself, and was pretty surprised at the sheer size of his animal form. He knew he was a panther, but he didn't expect to be so large. As he stood on all four paws it looked like he was nearly five feet tall at the shoulder. He was a freaking huge cat. Where did the extra mass come from? Magic, of course.

He settled back on his haunches and raised his front right paw. He flexed his muscles and the large claws unsheathed. He admired the sharp and deadly natural weapons for a moment before resting his paw back on the ground and looked around at his friends surrounding him.

Carl quite enjoyed the exclamations of surprise his friends had at seeing his form. He heard an exclamation of "Kitty!" before Luna launched herself at him, landing on his back and clamped on, rubbing her face up and down on his fur. Thankfully he had control of his instincts and didn't freak out over her sudden actions.

Carl then settled down on his side, lounging like a cat while Luna draped herself over him. Hermione was the next to approach, settling in next to his head and petting him behind the ears. It felt amazingly good to be petted while in his panther form. The rest of the group then got close, emboldened by the control he had and that he wasn't lashing out at anyone.

Now that he was in his animagus form, he instinctually got a sense of just what type of cat he was and what his abilities were. He was a Shadow Panther. He could dive into shadows and travel the shadow paths from location to location. He could also cloak himself in shadows and silence, enabling him to be a better hunter.

He would have to spend some time in the next few days practicing those skills at night when he had time. He wanted full control over them.

Eventually he changed back to his human form, much to Luna's disappointment. He already had incredible senses from his body mod, but they were still human senses ramped up. Now that he had fully embraced his animagus form and animal senses, he felt like his senses were a broadened a bit. It felt like a bit of the cat transferred over to him.

Over the next few days he soon discovered that he now had a bit of the animal brain and instincts needed to have a different perspective on different smells, sounds, and tastes. When he was around other wizards and witches in the Great Hall, he found himself irritated by the strong artificial scents of some of the perfumes that various witches wore. They smelled so fake, and disgusting, they made his nose itch.

His sense of taste was affected too. He gained a greater appreciation for the taste for meat. He could practically taste the difference from animal to animal, and could likely pick them out of a blind taste test. Even the smell of raw meat was a bit more appealing to him. He tried eating some in his panther form, and found it was de-licious.

But the thing that impressed Carl the most was that as delicious as his Root Beer was to him as a human, it was damn near Nectar of the Gods to him in his animal form. Words could not describe just how delicious it was.

It was very delicious.

Over the next month and a half, the people in Carl's group started to change into their animagus forms one at a time. The WDS always made a big production of it, since it was such an accomplishment.

It was a lot of fun each time someone perfected their form, seeing how they acted in their animal forms, and watching as some of the traits of their animal forms carried over to their human forms. Carl was especially amused each time he set out a bowl of Root Beer for them to try in their animal forms. Watching his friends in their animal forms acting like he'd just set out liquid Ambrosia, laughing as they lost all dignity in their haste to slurp up his Root Beer was especially amusing.

While some of the group had appreciated his Root Beer before, they never seemed to really give it the respect Carl felt it deserved. Hey, if a multi-dimensional god like being like Spere 037 thought it was _tasty_, then it was officially tasty, dammit. Carl felt quite smug at seeing that they all finally appreciated his Root Beer as much as he did.

Luna was the first after Carl to turn into her animagus form. She turned into a magical White Rabbit that was nearly the size of a St. Bernard, and she had a single sharp pointy horn on her head. Carl wasn't sure what her abilities as a rabbit were, but she became incredibly sneaky even in her human form. He got the sense that she was somehow linked to water, but he wasn't sure just why.

Carl just about busted a gut though when Luna declared that her animal form wasn't a bunny, but a Crumpled Horn Snorkack. That could explain why she was so sneaky, since her supposed imaginary creatures were sneaky enough that most wizards and witches thought they didn't exist.

Hermione had the form of a golden Lioness. Her form felt like it was connected to the Earth to Carl. Her cat form was as large as Carl's panther form, which she was amused by for some reason. Carl and Hermione had a fun time playing around and wrestling in their cat forms, with Luna often pouncing on them out of nowhere in her Snorkack form, bouncing on them a few times and then disappearing before they could retaliate.

Harry of course was a bird linked with the winds. It made sense he would have an avian form, since he was such a natural flyer. He had a falcon form that stood nearly four feet tall. It was a very large bird, and he was _fast_ in the air, they discovered.

Neville was a truly massive bear. When he first changed, he bumped his head against the classroom's ceiling. Carl sensed that Neville's bear form seemed to be linked to plants in some way. It made sense to Carl, because Neville's biggest gift was his green thumb. Neville had already been growing quite confident through the efforts of his friends over the years, but after finding his animal form his quiet confidence seemed to become somehow deeper and more dangerous. Carl didn't think anyone who woke Neville's anger would fare very well, like waking a sleeping bear.

Susan's form was an enormous Red Fox that had two tails. Her form seemed to be linked to fire. It reminded him of Fiona, and he spent some time remembering his time in the Pokemon world. He was still missing his Pokemon and was upset that he couldn't bring them out to join him in the Farmville world. They would have enjoyed having a near constant assault of animals to hunt, for entertainment if for nothing else.

Hannah was amusingly proud to have the form of a badger. She was a Hufflepuff through and through. The sheer size of her badger form was intimidating, since a normal one foot tall badger could back down bears, her three and a half foot tall badger that seemed linked to earth was not one to mess with.

Daphne's lightning linked horse was a creature of beauty. She seemed pleased with her form, she liked to run in her animagus form, and she could move.

Tracy's form of a mongoose amused Carl, since she was a Slytherin. Instead of being a snake, she was a snake hunter. Her two foot tall form was quick as lightning, and nothing to mess with.

Blaise was one of the three that had a bird form. He was a large Crow, linked to earth of all things. An earth linked bird, it just amused Carl at the dichotomy.

Ginny's form was a very large Weasel, that was also linked with the earth. She got teased a bit for being a Weasley Weasel, but took it with good grace. She had come into her own as she was integrated into the group, and no longer showed her clumsy, ditzy side from being dazzled by the celebrity in their midst.

Fred and George had red chimpanzee forms that Carl swore were linked to chaos. He swore to the heavens that if they started flinging poo, very bad things would happen to them.

Fleur was the last bird of their group. Carl thought it made sense that she would have a full avian form, since she already had a partial change due to her Veela heritage. Her white bird form linked to fire was absolutely gorgeous. She was as large as Harry's bird form, and it was entertaining to see the three large birds wheeling and flying in the air when they finally got outside.

Every one of their animagus forms were much larger, and felt much more powerful, than normal animals. Needless to say, they kept their forms secret for the time being from the ministry.

Once the last person in the group accomplished their transformation, they threw themselves a party to celebrate. They held their party in the forbidden forest, animal forms only. Carl had a lot of fun running wild in his panther form with his friends. With the number of extremely large magical animals playing around, nothing else in the forest bothered them during their party, afraid to be targeted.

And it was a riot. As they played, everyone started to learn a bit of how they could express magic while in their animagus forms. Magic related to their elemental affinity were quite easy to make use of.

Carl found that being able to travel through the shadows was nice for a shortcut. The amount of ground that he could travel was shortened, or had shortcuts, while he was in the shadow paths. So he could travel a great distance in only a fraction of the time.

From then on the group would occasionally sneak out at night to really let loose with their animal forms. Carl even hunted some of the acromantula he found. His animal instincts made the hunt fun, and he actually thought the spiders were a bit tasty, like lobsters.

Carl also made sure to catch some live small acromantula to introduce to his Farmville farms so he could add them to the animals he could produce. Being able to produce their silk would be a welcome addition to his finances. He had already been snagging cuttings from different plants they went over in Herbology to add to his farms. There was no way he was leaving the Harry Potter world before he had the vast majority of plants and animals needed for potions making secured.

At some point in the future he would have to sneak onto a dragon reserve to snag eggs from the other species besides the Chinese Fireball to add to his ranches. There were a lot of magical animals out there.

He felt like it was a return to his Pokemon days, when he felt like he had to catch them all. Only instead of being part of his army of pokemon, they would be his meal ticket and production resources.

* * *

The crowd was loud the evening of the third task as Carl, Fleur, and Victor arrived at the maze. The excitement in the air for the finale of the tournament was palpable.

Carl snorted in amusement. 'We'll see how long they can be excited when they realize they are just staring at a bunch of hedges.'

"Fleur, Victor, it has been a fun year." Carl said to his new friends of that year. While Victor had not become as close a fiend as Fleur was to Carl, due to having his own close friends, he was still a good man to know. "May the fastest one win." He then shook each of their hands. It made a good PR moment that the camera men for the papers took advantage of.

"Yes, this has been a good year. Excitement, learning, and new friends. I am glad I joined." Fleur said.

"Indeed. It has been a good competition. You are worthy opponents." Krum said in his usual stoic way.

"And the finale of the Tri-Wizard tournament is about to begin!" The announcer voice of Ludo Bagman sounded out, enhanced by the sonorous charm. "Would the competitors make their way to the starting line. This is a very close race! Carl Edwards is currently in first place and will enter the maze first. Second will be Fleur Delacour 10 seconds later. And 25 seconds after that will be Victor Krum. But don't be worried! The maze and the obstacles inside will ensure that each contestant has a chance to pull ahead in this last task!"

Carl looked over at Fleur, who had a superior smirk on her face, like she knew something no one else did. 'Hmm, just what are you planning, Fleur?' Carl thought.

"At the sound of the bang, the first champion, will enter. In 3! 2! 1!" The loud bang saw Carl dash into the maze.

The moment he was out of sight of the audience, he shifted to his panther form and shadow walked the few steps needed to bypass the maze and obstacles. He came out of the shadows in the clearing with the winner's cup.

He also saw a very large acromantula skittering around the clearing. It seemed to be kept inside by magic, keeping it from exiting the clearing so it could act as an obstacle. Carl gave the equivalent of a smirk in his panther form. Gathering the shadows around him to keep him from being noticed, he positioned himself, and then pounced on the spider.

His jaws and claws were so much stronger and sharper than regular animals in nature. The big cats usually had to kill their prey by either strangulation or bleeding them out over time after wearing them down to exhaustion.

Carl, on the other hand, was a magical kitty. And his animagus form was equivalently strong to his human form, which, being nearly a grand master of martial arts, meant his panther form could just _tear_ through the spider. It only took him a few seconds to kill the spider.

Carl then trotted over next to the trophy and began licking himself clean. The spider blood tasted like butter soaked lobster to him, so delicious. The grooming activity of a cat was just one of those things that required the animal instincts. Doing that kind of grooming as a human would have had him gagging, not to mention the spider blood would have made him puke.

Just as he finished with his left paw, Carl noticed a very large white bird come gliding in over the hedges of the maze. That particular bird was the same color as Fleur's hair. Carl kitty laughed aloud. It was a good thing he had his shadow panther form to shadow walk, or Fleur would have stolen the win out from under him.

The four foot tall bird landed and glared at him in frustration from seeing him already sitting right next to the cup.

Carl shifted back to human form, and a moment later so did Fleur. Looking at Carl's smug face just seemed to anger Fleur even more, as she pouted for not being the first to the cup.

"Your smile gave you away, Fleur." Carl finally explained, when it looked like she wasn't going to say anything. "At the entrance to the maze. You looked entirely too knowing and complacent. Like you knew you were going to win. So, I took a shortcut, just in case."

Fleur eventually sighed in defeat. "Fine, you won. Congratulations. Why have you not taken the cup yet, then?"

Carl shrugged. "I wanted to finish cleaning up first after taking out the spider." He casually pointed at the acromantula carcass. "And I wanted to see how long it took the beautiful flower to show up." He declared with a grin, before grabbing the cup.

Sure, he liked Fleur quite a bit, but he wasn't going to hand away his legitimate win just to be noble, or some nonsense. That would be an insult to both him and Fleur, who would feel like he was looking down on her and her abilities. He wouldn't expect her to share a win with him if she got to the cup first, after all.

The cup portkey hooked into Carl's navel, pulling him along to land on his feet at the winner's circle. All told, the maze didn't even last 5 minutes.

Fleur and Victor were soon retrieved from the remains of the maze, and joined him in the winner's circle for interviews and the award ceremony.

Carl casually accepted the accolades, but he was more happy with the sack of galleons he received that would supplement his meager income. Tangible benefits outweighed bragging rights, even if the popularity would help him network and gain allies.

The news interviews and everyone wanting to congratulate him was a bit of an annoyance to get through, but he had some experience in his life in the SAO world with dealing with the press. Not only had he been one of the players stuck in the game, but he had been heavily involved later with his Grandfather's company in developing the technology. He hadn't been able to get out of interviews, and so his Grandfather had given him a bit of training and tips on how to handle it.

After an hour, Carl was able to get away and join the celebration his friends were throwing. Butterbeers and Firewhisky smuggled into the castle made the party entertaining, and a fun end to the night, the year, and the Triwizard Tournament.

* * *

Over the summer, aside from meeting up and hanging out with his friends and crunching numbers on the Slytherin wards, Carl started work on two new projects. Or rather, one new project and one new area of study.

The area of study was computer programming. He knew enough now about Arithmancy that he felt he could do a decent job of creating a program to crunch the numbers. He just needed to learn the programming language needed to create the program.

The project he started was researching a rune scheme that would act like a muggle battery by converting ambient magic into electricity.

He had all kinds of plans in store for the rune scheme. But he needed to get everything just right. He needed to figure out how to get the needed rune schemes into a device the size of muggle batteries. A rune cluster for gathering magic, converting the magic to electricity, discharging the electricity in a measured way, and of course anti-piracy defenses. And finally, one little bit of contract magic expressed in runes.

With his full schedule, the summer passed by quickly. By the end of summer, he had the battery product planned out, but he needed a bit more research into how to make the end produce small enough to work as a muggle battery, and how to mass produce it.

Once he solved those problems, finished paying off the goblins, and got his revenue stream back so he could fund the project, he would be set up to accomplish the scenario the jump documents detailed for him.

In the meantime, it was time to return for his fifth year. He was a little miffed that Professor Flitwick assigned him the prefect badge. He may have thought about rejecting the badge for a bit, but he knew Hermione would never forgive him. So he sighed and resigned himself to having to do patrols at night when he could be doing better things with his time.

"Oh, but at least I'll be doing patrols with Hermione. So it won't be too bad, actually." Carl realized. "And with Hermione having enhanced senses from her animagus form, I don't have to hide my own enhanced senses. It will be very easy to catch people out of bounds. So it won't really be that much of a chore."

* * *

After the start of the year, when Carl saw just how much the first years looked up to him as a prefect and listened to his every word, he could see how some students would let the position go to their heads. Suddenly, they were _important_. It's no wonder some of them abused their rank and privileges a bit.

Carl of course couldn't be bothered with the ego trip. While having followers and political capital was a form of power, Carl was more interested in developing his direct power and abilities to ever let a little thing like being prefect go to his head.

Besides, it wasn't like Hermione would let him have fun by marshalling his forces of first year Ravenclaws for prank assaults on the other houses, now would she? No matter how much he argued that it would be freaking hilarious.

So he settled down and resigned himself to being a "model" student, for Hermione's sake. Luna was no help as she rolled around on the ground laughing for some reason. He still didn't know why...

* * *

"And what is up with the weak locking charm? Are they even trying?" Hermione muttered derisively as she broke the charm before slamming open the broom closet door, exposing the two sixth years as they were in the midst of getting to know each other intimately.

The couple froze in shock, before they broke apart and started gathering their clothes, fumbling them on.

"Seriously though. Did you even make sure to use anti-pregnancy charms? And how unromantic can you get, going at it like rabbits in a closet. Are you sure he's worth it, girl?" Hermione kept up a continuous rant at the girl's stupidity while they dressed.

Carl just sat back and let Hermione get it out of her system. It was an amusing scene, after all. They eventually escorted the two Hufflepuffs to their dorms, with points and detentions assigned.

"Feeling better?" Carl asked with a smile.

"Yes. No." Hermione immediately answered, then changed her answer. She scowled at Carl for a moment. Carl could see the moment that she made a decision. "You've been avoiding it enough, Carl. It's time for you to take your responsibility seriously."

Carl gulped. Just what was going on? He never bothered to use his Sherlock like insight on his friends, that would make interaction with them boring. So he had no idea just what she was on about.

"This weekend is Hogsmeade. You will take me out on Saturday. Luna gets Sunday. No, you don't get a say in this." Hermione scowled at Carl, daring him to reject her. "You started something last year at the Yule ball, and I've been patient long enough. But you can't just leave us hanging like that, mister. It's long past time you step up and act responsibly."

'Well, this is different.' Carl thought as he was blindsided by her declaration. 'Only one thing to do in this situation.'

"It would be my pleasure if you would join me on a date this Saturday, Hermione." Carl smiled at her. He reached out and took her hand, gently laying a kiss on her knuckles while keeping eye contact.

Well, if she was ready and demanding a date and romance, it would be the height of foolishness to deny her. Especially since she seemed to have decided they would be a trio. Only a fool would deny his girls. And Carl tried not to be a fool if he could help it.

* * *

A week later in the middle of the night Carl was pacing back and forth in his Warehouse. The dates he had with Hermione and Luna were fun. There wasn't a whole lot to do in Hogsmeade, but spending time with them on what they both knew was a date had a different feel to just hanging out. And he hadn't tried to take things too far with them, just a couple kisses.

But now he was facing a conundrum. Just when should he share his biggest secret with Hermione and Luna? What would be the consequences, how would they react?

Carl abruptly paused in his pacing and outright laughed at himself, giving himself a face palm for good effect. This was the kind of nonsense that superheroes agonized and stewed in their angst over. And he always made fun of them for it. Carl always thought their drama and angst could be easily solved with a bit of straight forward communication.

"Yeah, no way am I going to be that guy." Carl decided. "While trusting too early is bad, keeping the secret for too long will just poison a relationship. Yup, time to come clean with the girls before it goes any further. If they decide they are in, bonus. If not, we can still be friends, I'm sure. And at least I won't be in danger of brooding like a certain souled vampire."

With that decision made, Carl felt better. Two more days until the weekend. He could tell the girls his tale on Friday night, thus giving them all weekend without classes to digest his story.


	33. HP 10

"Why are we going to the ritual room, Carl?" Hermione asked as they stood in front of the door he had requested of the Room of Requirement the next Saturday morning.

Carl looked at the two girl's faces. Hermione looked a bit impatient because he hadn't told her just what he was dragging them away for. Luna only looked mildly inquisitive, like usual. Luna was pretty good at reserving judgment until she'd heard all the facts, or all the sides.

"Well, I never really explained this room very well before. Let's get inside first, then I'll tell you." Carl ushered them inside.

He was amused to see their expressions at the room they got instead of a ritual room. It was set up to be a comfortable lounge, with a large fireplace and a couch in front of it. In the middle of the room was a table with chairs around it, and a pensieve on the table. There were doors for bathrooms off to the side.

"Welcome to the Room of Requirement." Carl said after he closed the door behind them. "This room will become whatever you require of it. The only thing it can't do is create food for us, or create something that can be taken outside its borders."

Luna clapped in excitement. "Oh, this has so many _possibilities_!" She gushed, while Hermione seemed a little lost in thought.

Carl smiled back at Luna. "It really does. I'll tell you about what I've done with the room later, but for now, let's sit at the table so I can tell you why we're here."

Once everyone was settled, Carl looked back and forth between the two girls, thinking of how to start.

"So, I've got a really big secret that I've never told anyone in this world." Carl began. "Ever since we started to get closer, I've been planning to tell you two eventually. But when you practically demanded dates, I felt I had to disclose the information early." Carl was grinning to let them know he was teasing the two girls.

"Like we had to twist your arms to get you to agree to the dates." Luna airily stated while Hermione frowned at him.

Carl held up his hands in surrender. "Yes, it was _such_ a huge sacrifice on my part." He said in a pretend suffering voice.

"Well, if it was such a hardship, I'm sure there won't be a repeat performance anytime soon." Hermione grumped at Carl in retaliation.

Carl just chuckled back at Hermione, not willing to be baited. "Well, it's about that I really needed to share this secret. It's only fair that you know about it before we get any more serious. This might get a bit deep, but to understand about my secret, I need to explain it in depth."

"There's this thing called Multiverse theory. It's the idea that there are infinite permutations of the universe out there somewhere. That each time we have a decision to make, whether to turn left or turn right on a path; whether to go to Hogwarts or Beauxbaton to study; whether to ask someone out or not, a universe is created or split off or whatever for each of those decisions."

"Well, all of those universes created out of different decisions floating around are only for one world. For this world. That's basically the multiverse. All the possible versions of this world, this universe."

"Somewhere further out there are universes that greatly resemble the fiction stories here on this Earth. So somewhere out there is a universe where Jedi are real, and there is a galactic empire. And that universe has its own multiverse."

"The collection of different multiverses lead to a metaverse. A collection of different metaverses lead up to, well, it's all theory really." Carl stopped and scratched the back of his head as he chuckled. "So, basically, the idea is that everything, everywhere, and everywhen adds up to make up the the Omniverse, if it can be imagined, and even if it can't, somewhere out there it's real."

Carl paused for a bit to let Hermione and Luna digest what he'd said. He could see that they understood his explanation, but soaking up the idea usually took people a few minutes. It certainly took quite a bit more than a few minutes for Carl when he started living it.

"Keep in mind the understanding that everything is possible somewhere out there." Carl waved vaguely as he continued his explanation when he saw the two girls were ready. "Now I need to tell you about a little something called a Jumpchain, and how I got stuck on one…"

And Carl spent the next few of hours, telling his story to Hermione and Luna. He answered their questions, and showed them some of his memories in the pensieve. Carl was pleased they seemed to be taking it well.

However, he noticed that Luna's eyebrows were scrunched up, indicating she was thinking about something. Carl just sat back and waited for her to verbalize her thought.

"You mentioned that the stories we have here are reality elsewhere. Were we a story to you before you came here?" Luna eventually asked. Hermione perked up at the question, looking at Carl for an answer to the question.

When he heard the question, he could only grin wryly at the too smart for his good girls.

"Yes." He answered. If he was coming clean, he had to be honest. "It was a seven book series, made into eight movies. And your lives were very different. Are you sure you want to hear about it?" Carl asked. He wasn't sure about how much they wanted to know.

"Ooh, ooh, yes!" Luna cheerily answered. Hermione nodded agreement.

Carl winced. "Okay. The first book was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The book started when Dumbledore, Hagrid, and McGonagall met on a dark street to drop off a baby Harry with the muggle sister of his mother. Over the next ten or so years he would not be treated with love or kindness. He was burdened with a very large number of chores, and his bedroom was the cupboard under the stairs. One day…"

Over the next several hours, Carl related the tale, only pausing for tea, food, and bathroom breaks. He could see that Luna was sad that she wasn't even in the story until the fifth book, and the little she could tell, her life would have been miserable alone in Ravenclaw. And when she heard about her time in Malfoy manor being tortured, she shuddered in relief. She knew from old issues of the papers exactly what kind of treatment she could expect from Death Eaters.

Hermione felt great relief that she wasn't stuck in Gryffindor with a friend like Ron with whom she obviously didn't get on with and a repressed Harry that didn't study. She was also happy that she didn't have to get involved in the "adventures" each year that nearly killed them. She was happy when she thought about the effort Carl had gone through in their third year to make sure she stayed rested while messing about with time.

"…19 years later, on platform 9 and ¾…and that's how the story ended." Carl finished.

"I would have married trash compactor Weasley?" Hermione asked disbelievingly.

"Well, he's gotten a lot better lately. And that was a very different you, in a different universe." Carl responded.

"Okay, fine. He's gotten better. But I still can't see me ever getting close enough to him to marry." Hermione scowled.

"So, that ritual we did to get rid of Harry's scar curse?" Luna asked.

"Yup, we transferred the horcrux from him." Carl nodded in affirmation. "I later used the horcrux as the link with a version of the ritual I'd used back in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world to basically suck up all of Tom Riddle's magic and soul pieces and place them in some storage stones. I've since cleansed them of any taint of dark magic or any hint of Tom Riddle. He's never coming back. I just didn't expect that the Dark Marks he placed on his followers would yoink all of his followers magic too and put them in comas. Not that I'm sad about that. Not having to put up with Snape is a godsend, really. I mean, we're actually learning about potions without being insulted."

Eventually though, Hermione brought up her biggest concern. "So what does this mean for us?"

Carl very carefully didn't shrug in response. He maintained eye contact, switching between the two. "I'm a bit older mentally, even if I am 16 physically. I don't really go into these worlds with plans to seduce gorgeous women like you two." A little bit of honest flattery never hurt, judging by their faint blushes. "I like hanging out with our friends, and you two lovely ladies especially. When you all but demanded dates, I figured it was time to let you know about me so you don't go into a relationship with me blind."

"I leave each world after 10 years. But I've been told that time for this world will freeze while I'm gone and that I'll have the opportunity to come back after a certain number of worlds so that I can 'recruit' people into my jump. So the decision is yours to make. Are you interested in a relationship? And are you interested in eventually joining me in the Jump Chain? You have all the information. The choice is now yours."

"I'm telling you this to be completely open and transparent about what our relationship would entail. How far or fast we take our relationship, or even if we even have a relationship at all is up to you to decide. I won't pressure you in any way." When he saw their hesitation, Carl tried to reassure them. "I know it's all a lot to take in. Do you need time to consider things before answering me?"

Carl watched as Hermione chewed on her lip, thinking deeply about her answer. Luna mostly watched Hermione while she thought about it.

"Why don't you go do something and let us girls have some time to talk about it, Carl." Luna finally jumped in when Hermione was taking too long. Luna gave Carl a reassuring grin, then continued to look intently at Hermione

Carl nodded. The girls had some things to discuss. He stood up and hugged Hermione and Luna before making his way to the door. "No matter what you decide, it won't change the fact that we're friends, and will always remain so." Carl offered with a grin before departing the Room of Requirement to let the girls work it out.

'That went well.' Carl optimistically thought as he went on his way to find something to occupy himself with that didn't involve brooding. Brooding was baaaaad.

* * *

Telling the girls the original Harry Potter story had reminded Carl about something that he should have taken care of back in first year. He wasn't sure just why it had slipped his mind for so long.

'Probably because Neville is so used to not talking about it, that I just forgot.' Carl thought as he made his way into St. Mungo's in the middle of Saturday night.

The single healer on duty at the desk didn't even look up as Carl ghosted past him. He had applied the sight, sound, and smell blocking charms on himself to sneak in easier. There weren't even any alarm or security wards, since there really wasn't anything worth stealing.

After checking what floor the long term care ward was on, he climbed the stairs instead of using the elevator. Peeking out into the hall, he saw the coast was clear. The hospital was very quiet at night with no one wandering the halls.

He started checking the rooms of those who stayed on the floor, and eventually found the Longbottom room. Looking in he saw two beds occupied by a man and a woman. He quickly checked to see if there was an alarm spell to alert the nurses if the occupants wandered. There was no alarm, but the door was locked to prevent them from leaving.

Carl quickly and easily unlocked the door, slipping inside and closing the door behind him. He looked over the sleeping forms of Neville's parents, frowning at their wasted look.

'Man, I wish I had done this earlier.' Carl thought. 'But better late, then never.'

He opened the portal to his warehouse and saw that Rover was perched just inside, looking at Carl inquisitively.

"They are the parents of a friend that's going to get a round of healing in the bed, Rover." Carl replied to his familiar's look. Rover chirped encouragingly.

Carl levitated them to the medical bay. He placed Alice in the bed first, and had the medbay scan her. When the diagnosis was complete, Carl hit the button to heal her. A short time later, she was just starting to open her eyes, when Carl stunned her. Even though he was wearing a different face, he didn't want them to see him or start asking all kinds of questions. Let the whole thing be a mystery when they woke up in the morning.

He levitated Alice off the medbay bed, and moved Frank over. A quick scan and heal later, and Frank was also healed and stunned.

Carl then levitated his friend's parents back to their beds in St. Mungo. It was an easy in and an easier out operation.

"Hey Rover, how about a ride back to Hogwarts?" Carl asked his familiar. With a light hearted little chirping, Rover flamed them back to his room. Carl spent some time thanking his little dog turned bird for the taxi ride before starting his evening's study and meditation routine.

* * *

Neville had visitors show up Monday morning. His grandmother and parents took him out of class for a few days so they could catch up and get to know each other.

When he returned, Neville seemed was really happy, and shared the good news with his friends. Luna gave Carl a knowing look. Hermione had still been wrestling with the issue of whether or not she wanted to get involved with Carl due to him being so much older than she thought. But when Hermione saw Luna's reaction to Neville's news of his healed parents, she realized that Carl had been the one to heal the Longbottoms, and she made her decision.

That night Hermione dragged Luna and Carl to the Room of Requirement for a talk. Usually Carl would think that the phrase "we need to talk" would be a precursor to a break up. But he cheated a bit with his Sherlock ability and could tell that he wouldn't be getting the "it's not me, it's you" talk.

"I realize it must have seemed bad for me to hesitate so much after I demanded a date." Hermione took the lead. "It's just the unusualness of what you shared had me questioning everything. I thought I knew you, Carl, but then I found out you had such a big secret, it made me wonder if I really knew you." Carl nodded attentively, showing Hermione he was paying attention.

"But then, when I realized you were the one to heal the Longbottoms over the weekend, I realized that I did already know you. You are still the good man I got to know over the past four plus years. And I realized that there was no need for me to hesitate anymore. Knowing that there was even more to you than I knew, actually made the idea of dating you more exciting."

Carl smiled warmly at Hermione, reaching out and holding her and Luna's hands. "I'm glad you feel that way. I'm also honored to be accepted by two such lovely ladies."

"I was just waiting for Hermione to clear out the Wrackspurts so we could have some threesomes." Luna piped up.

"Luna!" Hermione gasped in shock. Carl just grinned, enjoying the idea.

"Yes, more dates with the three of us. Why? What did you think I meant?" Luna innocently asked. The little glint in Luna's eye told Carl that she was teasing Hermione.

Hermione apparently realized it too, if the firming of her jaw was any indication. "I thought you were talking about sex." Hermione bluntly retaliated, hoping to out-embarrass Luna.

"Oh, are you offering? I wouldn't mind a taste of two. I wonder how the taste compares to my favorite pudding?" Luna almost purred.

"A different flavor, to be sure. But no doubt just as sweet." Carl added, enjoying the red flush running down Hermione's face and neck.

"Oh, you two!" Hermione grumped, but Carl could tell she wasn't really upset. She still wasn't ready to move beyond a bit of snogging, but Hermione was enjoying the heavy flirting they engaged in.

After some time, Carl took the girls on a tour of his Warehouse and Farms. The two girls acted suitably impressed, especially when Rover flamed in and sung them a song.

They were very happy when they found out about Carl's very large library. Until they realized that Carl had been keeping the library from them for several years. Then he had to make it up to them by making his library available to them on demand. Carl didn't have a problem with that, he was mostly amused that the two Ravenclaws were so excited about his library.

Carl also showed them the Chamber of Secrets and what he was working on as far as breaking into Slytherin's vault. The two girls took a look at his Arithmancy calculations and dove right in to helping him do the work. He was glad that he had a couple of brilliant witches as girlfriends to double check his math.

It was times like those that he kind of regretted not getting the **Brilliant** perk from the BtVS world that would have made him a prodigy at maths, physics, sciences, and inventing. But at the time he had been more worried about surviving, and magic had offered the best bet he had to do so.

Thankfully everything worked out in the end. And if he had to put a lot more work and study time in to attain the same knowledge base as he would easily have gotten with the perk, then it just meant his accomplishments felt more like accomplishments.

Not that he would turn down perks that would boost his abilities, he wasn't that dumb. And at least he did have a wit boosting perk from entering Ravenclaw that helped him learn Arithmancy, since he was previously piss poor at maths.

* * *

The following weeks of Carl's fifth year proceeded without any outstanding things happening. They didn't have an evil toad teaching DADA, there was no Dark Lord hiding in the shadows while plotting the subjugation of society, and they didn't have a sneering bat with a bullying problem teaching potions.

The curse on the DADA job had long been broken, so Remus and Sirius were still teaching the subject, and Professor Slughorn seemed determined to stick around until Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, graduated from school.

All in all, Carl was very happy to be having such good instruction in his first time attending magic school. The only teacher he still had that was subpar was Binns, the ghostly broken record.

Sometimes Carl wondered if he should put some thought into getting rid of Binns, but he eventually decided not to do anything for the time being. He liked having a self study slot that he spent reading History books, especially the diaries of Professors that lived through the time periods they were ostensibly studying. The snarky comments about the questionable intelligence of certain ministry individuals that had shining reputations in the official history books amused the hell out of Carl.

Carl also thought that if he got rid of Binns, it may finally get Dumbledore to start seriously investigating and make it more difficult for Carl to move around unimpeded. He didn't need that kind of attention while he was still in school. Binns at least was tolerable. Unlike Snape, Quirrell, or Lockhart would have been. He didn't regret their absence one bit. Carl didn't feel like he was missing out on the "Authentic Harry Potter Experience" by not having to put up with the bastards.

One of Carl's goals was to combine his use of magic with his martial arts skills into a coherent fighting style. It was a difficult prospect and would require plenty of work, because most of the combat spells presumed that the caster would be staying at range. They didn't expect for the caster to be fast enough to beat his stunner spells downrange.

Another problem was the reliance on incantations, wand movements, and even having a wand. The flimsy stick of wood that was a wand was amazing for precision magical work. But using such a fragile tool in high speed combat was almost asking for it to be broken.

When Hermione and Luna saw just how fast Carl was when practicing his martial arts, they were quite impressed. The two Ravenclaw girls strongly expressed interest in learning some martial arts too in order to gain such a significant advantage in any encounter they may have.

At first Carl was very hesitant to teach them, because he didn't think he could be as cruel to them as Akisame Sensei was to him in order to teach them. When Carl showed his hesitation, Luna was able to cajole the reasons out of him.

After seeing some memories of the Devilry that Akisame Sensei thought up, the two girls agreed that they didn't want Carl to treat them like that. But then the two girls tag teamed him in arguing their reasons for wanting the lessons, and how they would be safer the stronger they were, and wore Carl down until he gave in and promised to teach them in a less sadistic manner.

The therapeutic massages that Carl gave the girls after each workout was a greatly appreciated bonus for the girls. And Carl finally got to utilize the martial medical knowledge he'd gained in the HSDK world to help the girls adapt quickly to the stresses of Martial Arts.

By the time OWLs rolled around, Hermione and Luna were still only low level disciples on the martial front, but with the unconscious direction of magic to boost their abilites as well as their animagus instincts and senses, they would handily win against mid level disciples and give high level disciples a run for their money.

Carl had already gone through the whole of the Hogwarts curriculum. He could cast every spell with a wand and the incantation. He knew all the Runes and Arithmancy formulas and charts. He could brew every potion the curriculum required, so he was more than ready for his OWLs.

But once he was finished with OWLs, he planned to start working on casting all his spells without words or wand movements. He wouldn't consider the curriculum fully mastered until he could cast every spell wandless, and have it integrated into his fighting style. He may have to spend some time reworking spells via Arithmancy to better utilize with high speed combat.

Hermione and Luna spent a lot of time with Carl in independent studies, and they too were eager to advance their craft beyond the curriculum. They did have the disadvantage of not being able to stay up all night with Carl studying and practicing, so their progress was somewhat slower. But with how smart Luna was, she was already prepared for the OWLs. She received a huge disappointment when she petitioned the professors though. They rejected her request to take the OWLs a year early.

"The old fuddy duddies said something something, social peers, something something, wouldn't want to deprive you of a childhood, blah blah." Luna grumped to Carl and Hermione while folding her arms and pouting. "But all my friends are a year ahead of me and will leave me alone here in a few years." She complained.

Carl noticed Luna conspicuously didn't mention Ginny. Apparently they were still on decent terms, but they weren't as close as they might have been if they both had no one else to be friends with.

"I'm sorry Luna. You know we'll still sneak in to the castle most of the time, yeah? No way are we leaving our Little Moon alone for a whole year!" Carl enveloped Luna in a hug, and Hermione joined him a moment later in smothering the girl in affection.

A smile appeared on Luna's face. "You will?" She asked hopefully.

"I daresay it would actually add a bit of excitement, if we were breaking the rules in order to be with you." Hermione commented with a bit of a sexy smile of her own, thinking of how much more fun selectively breaking the rules had been since the three occasionally snuck out when they shouldn't, especially when they were gaining knowledge in those jaunts.

"We will." Carl promised Luna, enjoying the bright smile full of feelings of love, and the subsequent kisses he and Hermione received from her.

* * *

The OWL testing was generally considered extremely stressful for the students. Many of the fifth years could often be seen frantically cramming at the last minute, afraid they would get a poor grade, get scolded by their parents, or not be able to take a NEWT course that was required for their chosen profession.

Which is why Carl's WDS group was quite an odd sight as they relaxedly passed the testing period with hardly any stress. Their occlumency skills ensured they knew the material forwards and backwards. They hadn't wasted their time throughout the five years of schooling, so they didn't need to cram at the last minute.

Carl was somewhat amused at the almost angry, bitter, and jealous gazes of the students that weren't part of his group, or peripherally attached to it. Padma Patil wasn't a key member, but she was at least friendly with them. As a result, Padma had been gifted a book on Occlumency to help her. She had then shared it with her sister, Parvati, and Parvati's best friend Lavender. Which mean that those three at least were also amongst the few students not stressed out.

But many of the rest were currently acting salty. It amused Carl, because while he had sought out specific students that seemed quite bright and interesting to join his group, they weren't insular or unfriendly. If any of the currently bitter and jealous students had made the effort to fit in and be a proactive member of their group, they would have given them a chance.

But since they had been content to drift and not apply themselves for five years, Carl felt absolutely no guilt in not going out of his way to help them.

Once the school year was over, Carl spent a few days at the orphanage, chatting with Miss Edith and getting reacquainted with the kids that lived there. Most of the kids his age or older had their own things going, so he didn't see much of them. He was only there a couple months a year, after all.

But there were plenty of younger kids that were running around the grounds, not old enough yet to have summer jobs or friends outside the orphanage to hang out with. And Carl enjoyed playing around and helping those kids adjust a bit. The smiles Miss Edith gave Carl let him know his efforts were appreciated.

A week after summer began, Carl walked into Gringotts to make his annual payment. Carl smirked at the scowls he got from some of the Goblins. While it was true that Goblins would stick to the exact letter of their agreements, it didn't mean they couldn't make the agreements as beneficial to them as possible.

One of the stipulations of his contract was that if Carl failed to make each annual payment and pay off the balance at the end of 10 years, then the goblins would confiscate his blade and he would still owe 90% of his annual income for the next 50 years.

Carl knew it was a harsh penalty, and normally he would have avoided a contract with stipulations like that like the plague. Especially because the Goblins knew that his money came from hotels and farms that were notorious for having variable incomes, and that it was likely, in their minds, that Carl wouldn't be able to keep up the payments. Sometimes drought and famine, acts of God, or terrorism prevented those kinds of businesses from staying in the black for 10 straight years, let alone produce the massive payment needed to buy a Goblin made blade.

But what Carl knew, and what the Goblins didn't, was that after leaving the Farmville world, his farms never experienced drought or insect swarms, or any drop in productivity whatsoever. They always produced the maximum goods. And his selling perk let him _always_ sell exactly what he wanted at the best prices. So he would never fail to make his payments to the Goblins. Especially because his income had greatly risen ever since he started producing and selling potions ingredients on the HP markets. They were very profitable.

As a result of Carl making his payments for the sixth year in a row, certain Goblins were beginning to get nervous. They were beginning to wonder if he was going to be able to fulfill the contract, be the first wizard in a thousand years to outright own a Goblin made blade, and "cheat" them of 50 years of his hard earned money.

They had been bragging so much to their rivals about their accomplishment of getting an 11 year old wizard to sign away nearly 60 years of his money to them, that if Carl actually succeeded, they would be mocked mercilessly in the future. But they couldn't do anything to prevent or obstruct him from making payments, or get anyone to do it for them. It was in the contract. And they were bound to the letter of the contract.

Carl smirked once more at the image of the faces of the Goblins he'd contracted with when he successfully made his sixth payment as he left Gringotts. They looked like they had sucked on lemon juice concentrate, they were feeling so bitter and uncertain. If that's what they looked like now, Carl couldn't wait to see the Goblin's faces when he actually paid off the contract in full.

Putting his amusement to the side, Carl started getting in the proper mindset for the coming conflict. This would be one of the two most important meetings this summer. He was meeting his girlfriend's parents.

It was very important Carl didn't laugh in her father's face if the man did his overprotective father routine. It would ruin the man's dignity and sour their relationship.

Carl was pretty sure his meeting with Luna's dad in a few days would be much more relaxed. But for now, Carl was to meet the Grangers.

* * *

Carl left the Granger's house late at night. It had been a surprisingly successful meeting. Hermione's parents, Nathaniel and Bridgette, had been surprisingly welcoming. Hermione's father was an average looking bloke at 5'10". Carl found out Nathaniel hadn't previously been in the military, which somewhat disappointed Carl that the fanfic idea of a militant SAS Dan Granger, dentist torturer wasn't present in this world.

While Nathaniel did take Carl to his study, it was more like an interview than an excuse to interrogate and threaten Carl to treat his daughter right, "or else".

Carl ended up sharing his ideas with Nathaniel about the company he was going to build soon that would sell magic powered runic batteries. Carl was at first surprised that Nathaniel offered to help him network with some people that would be helpful in establishing his company. But then he thought about the broad spectrum of people a successful dentist couple was likely to run into and make friends with, and it made sense.

It also made sense that Nathaniel would want to ensure that the man his daughter was dating was successful so that his princess could have a good life.

So Carl was left with a great impression of the supportive parents that Hermione had. Thank goodness a wizarding war wasn't about to break out and cause their daughter to alter their memories and send them into hiding so they couldn't be used to target the Boy-Who-Lived through her.

Carl's meeting with Luna's dad a couple days later went just as smoothly. Xeno seemed to care a great deal about his daughter, and since Luna was happy, Xeno was happy.

Over the course of the evening, the topic about the animals that Xeno and Luna hunted in the summer months came up. Carl was interested in the man's obsession with finding all the hidden animals and documenting them before they became extinct. Xeno was very knowledgeable about what was going on in the muggle world, and how much the muggles were changing the habitats of the world.

Many of the animals that were dying out were so elusive that even the magicals thought they didn't exist. Which is why Xeno was working so hard to find evidence of the animals to present to the magical world. Xeno was hoping to bring the endangered animals under the protection of the Magical Ministries.

Carl was very interested in Xeno's stories and ideas. Even among the muggles, as common as activists were, they were often looked at as strange. So it was no wonder that the majority of magicals thought Xeno daft.

But Xeno had made a great many friends and contacts that helped him in his work. Carl didn't see any immediate way he could help the man in his crusade. Maybe in the future he would be able to help him accomplish his goals.

* * *

[AN: When I got a couple of reviews from people telling me how much they hated Hermione and were angry that I had her as a romantic partner and focus of the story, I almost rewrote the whole HP jump to make it so Hermione would be the sole love interest, and give her much more screen time. But then I realized that indulging in that level of pettiness and childishness would ruin my enjoyment of writing this story.

And besides, I realized that if someone coming to my story can't differentiate between my AU characters with a certain name, and other author's AU characters with the same name who they apparently hate, then it was really no skin off my nose. Let them grump and pout and not enjoy my story due to their own mental hang ups. I can't be bothered.

So to everyone else, I hope you continue to enjoy!]


	34. HP 11

When Carl walked in the Great Hall at the beginning of his sixth year, he was surprised to see Fleur Delacour sitting next to Professor Flitwick up at the professor's table. She saw Carl enter and gave him a smile and a wink. Carl returned the smile warmly.

He hadn't seen Fleur since she left at the end of his fourth year, but they had kept up a correspondence by letters over his fifth year. He knew she was working on getting her Charms mastery, so he figured she had some deal with Flitwick to continue studying at Hogwarts. Although why she would want to return to the cold climate of Scotland, Carl couldn't fathom.

Unseen by Carl, Hermione and Luna exchanged conspiratorial glances when they saw Carl and Fleur's interaction.

Carl only found out later that Fleur had also been corresponding with Luna and Hermione. After Fleur had left at the end of Carl's fourth year at the end of the tournament, she found that she had missed the company of their group, and Carl especially. Eventually the three women had conspired to have Fleur apprenticed under Flitwick for the next few years while she attained her mastery. Her presence gave her the chance to fit into their dating group.

And, surprisingly to Carl, Luna and Hermione were not against bringing Fleur into the relationship. When Carl found out about their machinations, he couldn't help but wonder if it was the magic and his perks that caused Carl's abnormal luck with ladies in magic focused worlds. First the BtVS world, and now the HP world, the girls he hung around just seemed to be predisposed to group relationships.

Not being a complete idiot, Carl went with the flow and welcomed Fleur in as if she had always been part of the group. He naturally informed Fleur of the Jumpchain and what would likely be their future, if they chose to join him in world jumps sometime in the future.

To his surprise, Fleur didn't even hesitate and agreed to join them. She said she would be a fool to pass up all that knowledge, adventure, and excitement he offered.

And so Carl's sixth year was going nice, with no crazy shenanigans. Aside from having three girlfriends to keep happy, and who kept him happy.

Then one day in October Harry got called in to the Headmaster's office for a meeting. Carl wondered what that was about, but didn't pay it too much mind until Harry rejoined the core WDS group.

"I figure Dumbledore is off his rocker." Harry blankly stated when he arrived. "He told me that Voldemort was still alive, somewhere out there. He told me he had to start preparing me for our confrontation, and that I was the chosen one of prophecy to end Voldemort's evil. So he started some history lessons about some bloke named Tom Riddle that Dumbledore said became Voldemort."

Carl sighed in exasperation. The plot was raising its ugly head, trying to get things "back on track". He looked over at Hermione, Fleur, and Luna, who were the only ones he had shared the information about the Horcrux and the original plot with.

He saw that the girls agreed that they would have to have a talk later about just how much to share with the group.

"Harry. Who else was in your meeting with Dumbledore?" Carl asked.

Harry blinked, nonplussed. "Er, it was just me and Dumbledore."

Carl sighed at the oblivious nature in which Harry said that. It was just another piece of evidence how neglected he had been growing up that he saw nothing strange about not having his guardians with him for that meeting.

"Harry, if Dumbledore is calling you in for some meeting, at the very least your Head of House should be present for the meetings." Carl explained to Harry. "And since your Godfather and Uncle are always here in Hogwarts, there is no reason they shouldn't be involved in the meetings. Furthermore, if Dumbledore thinks that Voldemort is still alive out there, and thinks he's going to be a problem you have to deal with, then by damned sure your guardians should be involved. Maybe even the DMLE should be involved too. But at the very least, your guardians should be."

Carl saw the realization start to dawn in Harry's face. He blamed Dumbledore's "trust me" aura. So many people simply went along with what Dumbledore assumed was the way it should be without stopping to think about it, or think about alternatives.

"Why don't we go meet your guardians to talk about this. Voldemort is certainly not something that you should have to deal with alone, if he really is out there. And don't worry, you have us to help too." Carl urged Harry, and was echoed by loud agreement from everyone in their group. Harry was very moved by his friend's show of loyalty.

When everyone started trooping out of the room to meet with Sirius and Remus, Carl motioned for Hermione, Luna, and Fleur to hang back for a bit.

"What do you think?" Carl asked his girls. "How much should we reveal? I mean, if we don't at least prove that Harry doesn't have a Horcrux in his head, then Dumbledore will probably not ever let Harry go."

The four thought about it for a while.

"Why don't we at least have them do scans of Harry's scar? That should prove that he no longer has a Horcrux there, and so he won't need to be sacrificed." Hermione offered.

Luna and nodded in agreement, but had some more to add. "We shouldn't show the rituals to anyone, especially the one you used to kill Riddle. We don't want the ministry or Dumbledore to come after us. But if they find out he does not have that piece of nastiness in his head, it should make them back off from him a bit."

"The mysterious nature of the missing Horcrux will likely distract Dumbledore from focusing on him as he goes to research it. It will give him something to focus on. As long as he doesn't have any evidence that any of us were involved, then we should be fine." Fleur added on.

"Sounds like a plan." Carl agreed. "At the very least, having Sirius and Remus backing Harry up should make it harder to rope him into some scheme or other."

The four of them left to hurry catch up to the rest of the group. They arrived just as Harry started explaining to Sirius and Remus what had happened with Dumbledore.

After the explanation, and Carl telling Sirius and Remus about how they had gotten rid of the dark magic in Harry's scar without going into detail about the rituals used, Carl could see that the two adults were fully on board with protecting Harry. They were especially against the idea of just chucking Harry at Voldemort, if he was still around, all alone without backup. After some promises not to relay information about the rituals to Dumbledore, the two adults were all set to beard the old man in his den.

"Stay here for a bit while we go have a talk with Dumbledore." Sirius said. Carl could see he could barely contain his anger.

"Why don't you at least get Professor McGonagall to join you? She is the Deputy Headmistress and Harry's Head of House. She would be a great help to have on your side." Carl suggested before the two men could depart.

Carl chuckled when he saw the two men's faces at the idea. Their expressions were similar to Fred and George's before they pulled a prank. Evil smiles that promised retribution slowly grew on their faces.

"Good idea. Let's just see how he reacts to having his own professors keep him in check on this." Remus muttered before the two professors departed on a mission.

The group settled down in the DADA teacher's office, waiting for the professors to return and share the news. Some pulled out a book to read, others started playing a game, or practicing their magic spells.

Over an hour later, Sirius, Remus, and McGonagall walked into the room. Everyone paused what they were doing to hear the news.

Professor McGonagall looked over the group sternly. "You all did the right thing by bringing this issue to the attention of the professors. 10 points to each of you." She then looked at Harry. "Mr. Potter, if you receive a summons to the headmaster's office at any time, be sure to seek me, Professor Black, or Professor Lupin out first. We will accompany you to any future meetings."

Harry agreed to what Professor McGonagall demanded, and the WDS departed to continue their studies in their clubhouse.

Despite the scans showing that Harry's scar was clean of any magic, Dumbledore continued to insist on his meetings. Harry would continue to meet with Dumbledore over the year with his guardians and Professor McGonagall present. He would then share the background that he learned about Tom Riddle with the senior members of the WDS. There was no sense in scaring the younger years by talking about Voldemort.

Carl found the information that Dumbledore shared in the meetings interesting, but a bit useless. Riddle was already dead and gone from the world, so it was a pointless exercise.

However he and his girls didn't want to get the unwanted attention from sharing with the old man how they accomplished Voldemort's end. And if they didn't share the method, they knew the old man would never let it go until he got an answer. So they left the whole thing alone.

* * *

It wasn't until March that Carl finally finished his Arithmancy calculations on Slytherin's vault. He, Fleur, Hermione, and Luna had double checked everything three times, to make sure it wouldn't blow up in their faces.

Carl then spent his spare time crafting the various ward stones that he would activate in sequence to disarm the defenses of the vault. He had everything ready by the second Saturday in May to open the vault.

"Every time we come down here I feel like Indiana Jones." Hermione muttered to Carl and Luna as they were walking through the Chamber of Secrets.

"More like Laura Croft." Carl responded.

"Who?"

"Video game character. Think of a female version of Indiana Jones that runs around with short shorts and has two big pistols strapped to her legs. Very sexy. But not as sexy as you three." Carl cheekily answered.

"Video games." Hermione scoffed.

"What are video games?" Luna asked.

"I'll show you later, Luna. And they get a lot better than they are now, Hermione. In like 20 years you'll find it hard to find someone who doesn't play at least some kind of electronic game, even if it is only solitaire on their computer or phone."

"Hmm. You say these video games become very popular?" Fleur asked.

"Yeah, it becomes a huge industry." Carl nodded.

"Then we shall have to invest in it. The Delacour family has remained politically powerful in France in large part due to our large coffers. And our coffers continue to grow because we continue to invest in the explosively growing industries in the muggle world. So we shall emulate the Delacour's success, and reap the rewards." Fleur finished with an amazingly sharp grin.

"That sounds like a plan." Carl chuckled. Investing wasn't something Carl had really thought about, since he would be gone from every world after only 10 years. But since Fleur was invested in the idea, and it was an industry that became more profitable and popular as technology advanced, Carl was all for it.

Carl helped the three ladies climb up into the mouth of the statue and into the area where the vault was. After a quick scan to make sure nothing had changed since the last time they were there, the small group started placing the wards stones.

"Everyone ready?" Carl asked once they had finished.

After a chorus of yeses from the girls, Carl activated the ward stones. As each defense was disarmed, Carl activated the next part while Luna, Fleur, and Hermione monitored and adjusted the process to make sure nothing unexpected happened.

It took more than twice as long to disarm Slytherin's vault defenses than it took to disarm Riddle's defenses on the Gaunt shack, and there were four people working on Slytherin's vault, while Carl had soloed the Gaunt shack. But they eventually cleared away all the defenses. While the process was tense, there weren't any unexpected explosions or crises arising. Which meant that the group did the Ward Breaking job properly. A tense but smooth operation was a job well done.

In order to play it safe, they set up the Ward reading stones once more to double check that there weren't any more hidden defenses or curses on whatever was inside the vault.

Once they were assured that it was safe, Carl cracked open the door. Taking a look inside, Carl whistled at the treasure they had found. He felt like the kids in that movie Goonies when they arrived at the pirate ship and saw all the gold and jewels, but times that by more than a hundred.

Before they moved in, Carl made sure to do one more scan now that the vault door was open to make sure there were no curses that were sneakily activated once the door opened. He may have been a bit excessively paranoid, but better safe, then sorry.

After an hour spent looking at the treasure, Carl was amused to see how impatient his girls were. He kept his own impatience in check by deciding to be amused by their impatience. Which earned him a couple shoulder slaps and a few stinging hexes, but it was all in good fun.

Finally, with the all clear, the four moved inside the vault and just basked in golden light.

There were enormous mounds of gold and barrels of gems of all kinds. There were shelves full of books and scrolls under preservation runes. Cracking open some crates, Carl saw various ores and ingots, and some metals that he didn't even recognize. It was a treasure horde.

"This is amazing. I'm sure I can add some of these ores and metals to my farms to produce." Carl excitedly said as he looked over the magically imbued metals.

"Books. Library. Mine." Hermione drooled.

"Sparklies!" Luna cheered while playing with the gems.

"Yes, sparklies." Fleur joined Luna in playing with the barrels of gems.

"I can probably pay off the goblins a few years early with my cut of the gold." Carl laughed. "We'll all get an individual copy of the library. And the ores and gems I think we should keep instead of selling. What do you say?"

"Yes!" Luna didn't want to let go of her prizes.

"Many of these would make excellent jewelry." Fleur agreed with Luna.

"Well, we have a nice secure place to keep them here, once we place our own wards." Hermione absently stated while greedily running her hands over the book titles.

"That is a very good idea. We need to figure out a way so you three can get in here on your own if we're doing that. Maybe there's secret passages that leads outside of Hogwarts? Portkeys? Or something else?" Carl trailed off in supposition.

"We'll figure something out later. For now, I'm looking at this library."

Carl, Fleur, and Luna chuckled at Hermione, who joined them a moment later in good humor. Everyone was in a good mood with their new treasures.

* * *

Several days after Carl, Fleur, Hermione, and Luna had finally cracked Slytherin's vault, Dumbledore suddenly disappeared. No one could find him anywhere. The professors canceled class while they dealt with the search.

They even called in the DMLE, and the Aurors started a systematic search of the castle and grounds. There was some excitement the second day when they found the Forbidden Forest full of Acromantula. The search for Dumbledore was put on hold while the DMLE organized a culling and clearing. There was no way they were going to leave man eating spiders in the forest right next to a school with all their kids in it.

After several days of battle, and finally clearing the forest, the DMLE continued the search for Dumbledore. After several days of not finding anything, they left to search in other places around Britain.

The papers ran all kinds of speculation about just what happened to Albus. Without the man himself around to call in favors or defend himself, the paper ran wild with speculation. Some actual real dirt was dug up and presented to the public.

After a couple of weeks of finding no trace of Albus Dumbledore, they announced that he was presumed dead and held a memorial for the man at Hogwarts.

The crowd that came to pay respects to Dumbledore was very large, but not quite as large as it might have been before the DMLE found the Acromantula infestation that threatened the wizarding world's children. Or after all the dirt and speculation about his life that was being printed.

But despite all that, the man still had a large following. There were several speakers that talked about his life and what a large figure he had been in everyone's life. And they gave him a proper send off, leaving a small memorial on the Hogwarts grounds.

Through all of the commotion caused by Dumbledore's disappearance, Carl had an idea about what had happened, but he had no way to prove it one way or another without bringing suspicion to himself, so he just kept his mouth shut.

When everything finally settled down, and the DMLE and ministry workers had gone back to their routine, Carl made a trip with Rover to the orphanage that Riddle grew up in. It took him some time to even find the orphanage. He then spent some time investigating the outskirts of the town that the orphanage was located in, and finally found the magical traces that he was looking for.

Carl found himself standing in front of a cavern wall with faint traces of blood having been smeared on it. Using the idea out of a fic he'd read, he summoned a fish from the ocean behind him. Slicing open the fish, he smeared the fish blood on the wall. Nothing happened.

"Of course not." Carl then took a vial out of his pocket. He'd stopped by a blood bank and borrowed some donated blood. He really didn't want to cut himself and smear his own blood on the wall to open it. He splashed the blood on the wall. The cavern wall vanished. "Looks like it just needed to be human blood."

Carl walked inside, looking around the dark cavern. The floating globe of fire he had conjured earlier lit up the cavern. He could see a lake with a little island in the center. A small rowboat was pulled up onto the island, and a basin was standing in the center of the island. Carl could see a cup lying among the scraps of flamboyantly colored cloth that had been ripped from a robe lying on the island. Carl sighed sadly.

"Well, Dumbledore. You just couldn't let it go. No matter how many signs you had that Riddle was really gone, you just couldn't seem to stop obsessing about it, could you?" Carl said aloud. "I mean, just the fact that all the Death Eaters lost their magic and fell into comas should have clued you in. Then there was the fact that Voldemort hadn't been active or doing anything for so many years."

"But I bet you just felt so guilty over the whole mess that you couldn't stop obsessing and just enjoy the last of your life, could you? Well, I hope in the next life you find what you never could find in this life." Carl finished talking to the memory of Albus Dumbledore, renowned wizard who chased after salvation and forgiveness all his days for the "mistakes of his youth".

Carl turned around and left the cavern. Before departing for good, he set up some ward stones and cast fiendfyre inside the cavern. He stood outside the entrance, watching as the fiendfyre burned up the water in the cavern lake and all the infierus that Voldemort left in wait. Once everything was burnt to ash, Carl let the fiendfyre die down, shut the cavern entrance, gathered his ward stones and departed the place Dumbledore met his end.

* * *

Carl, Hermione, Fleur, and Luna spent the summer splitting the treasure up and cataloging and copying the library. Slytherin definitely had a secret way into the chamber that didn't go through Hogwarts' wards. If the books had gone through Hogwarts then Carl would have gotten a copy of them from the Room of Requirement.

When they finally copied and translated the books, many of which were in parseltongue, Carl found the clues needed to find the secret passages that Slytherin used, and he was able to key Luna, Fleur, and Hermione in so they too could use them without being a parseltongue.

They also learned a bit of Slytherin's true history, from his own mouth, or pen. The reason he got a reputation for hating Muggleborn was that his wife and youngest newborn son had been betrayed and killed by some muggleborn that they brought in to be taught magic. So he went on a rampage in the muggle world, killing the aristocrats that had used their own children as betrayers.

The great amount of treasures he stored in the vault came from the many wizards and muggle lords that he fought against or stole from over the years. Anyone who he saw as aiding the muggles in their pogrom against magicals became fair game to Slytherin. He would steal their libraries, their gold, and anything else of value in order to beggar anyone who persecuted magicals.

The journal entries ended abruptly one day before he was to pull one final heist. Apparently it had not gone well and he didn't return, leaving his treasure behind with no one aware of it or able to access it. Which allowed Carl, Hermione, and Luna to benefit from everything he had gathered.

With the gold that Carl now had, once the summer began he made a trip to Gringotts.

Strolling inside the bank, he looked over the lobby. Industrious Goblins did their work efficiently at their stations. Wizards and witches waited in lines to conduct business.

Carl made his way over to the collections station. Carl received a few sneers from the Wizards waiting in line. Evidently they thought he was particularly stupid or incompetent to have borrowed money from Goblins. Everyone knew their penalty clauses were ruinous.

Carl didn't even bother giving the wizards a second glance as he arrived at the teller in charge of collections.

"Yes, wizard?" The teller, Tendon-Stripper growled.

Carl smiled at the Goblin. Among the Goblins he interacted with, he had found some he liked, and some he didn't. Knot-Ripper, the first teller he interacted with was an okay bloke in his mind. But this one, Tendon-Stripper, was a jerk. He had worked hard to make the penalties on failing to pay off the contract particularly onerous for Carl. So Carl was going to savor this moment.

"Yes, teller. I'm here to make a payment." Carl smiled innocently.

"Fill out the form, as usual." Tendon-Stripper pushed a form and quill to Carl. The unpleasant Goblin's momentary hope that the human would be reporting that he couldn't fulfill the contract was dashed for another year.

Carl filled out the form, checking the box that indicated he was paying the remaining balance in full, signed it, and passed it back to Tendon-Stripper.

He watched carefully for the Goblin's reaction, and was quite satisfied when he saw the Goblin's jaw drop, his eyes go wide, and a look of horrified disbelief came over his face.

'Ahh, there it is.' Carl thought in satisfaction.

"No! This isn't right!" Tendon-Stripper growled.

"Ah, but it is." Carl stated in satisfaction as he placed an expanded bag with the proper amount of gold on the counter. "Go ahead and count it. I believe you'll find it all there, to the last Knut."

"But there's no way you could have paid back the gold, not with your revenue stream! You must have cheated, or lied on the forms when signing the contract!" The goblin was grasping for straws now. Carl fulfilling the contract meant that the teller would be losing a lot of Carl's gold as well as the loss of his own influence and reputation in the bank when it was told how a human got the better of him.

Carl chuckled. "Ah, but you know that's not true. If I wasn't truthful when signing those forms, a penalty would have been extracted from me. And since that didn't happen, obviously I was completely truthful about what was asked."

"Then how could you possibly have gotten the gold?!" Tendon-Stripper gritted out.

"Ah, well. Not that it's any of your business, really. But I recently came into an inheritance. The gold is mine, free and clear. The payment is yours, honest and clean. The blade is mine, paid and contract fulfilled." Carl smirked at the Goblin as he continued to grumble while counting out the gold.

Carl had no worry that he would try to cheat him on the count. It was in the contract, and Goblins always stuck to the letter of their contract. Even when it almost killed them.

They finished by signing on the "contract fulfilled" line on the contract. The contract turned into a certificate of ownership for Carl. Any Goblins that tried to repossess Carl's blade from that point on would be labeled as thieves, one of the worst insults any Goblin could receive.

Carl left the bank feeling very good after having seen Tendon-Stipper forced to fulfill the contract. Such satisfaction!

* * *

Once he had full ownership of the blade, Carl decided to formally name his blade the Blue Orchid, based on the rich blue color and flower ornamentation on the tsuba, or hilt guard.

Now that Carl once more had his revenue stream from all the properties that he owned from Monopoly, he felt it was time to get started on building his company. Carl interviewed and hired a CEO to build his company for him during the next year while he finished up his seventh year at Hogwarts.

With the charms that kept muggle devices working in high magic areas and his magic batteries, he charmed his Pokegear/Cell phone to work at Hogwarts so that his CEO, Catherine Grant, could contact him during certain times of the week and over the weekend to give progress reports and get his decisions on issues.

And now that he was hiring people, he finally had a use for his Headquarters building that he got from the HSDK world. Catherine, working out of the headquarters building, had the job to purchase land and start construction on his manufacturing facilities where they would build his magically powered batteries to sell to the muggles.

Over his seventh year, Carl found himself very busy. He was made the Head boy, and Hermione was the Head girl, so he had to help manage the prefects. He had many meetings with his CEO to arrange matters for his company. And he definitely needed to continue having dates with his three girls. One of the things that saved Carl was that the girls enjoyed each other's company and didn't mind keeping each other occupied when Carl had duties elsewhere.

He also spent some time learning to program. By the end of his seventh year he had finished a basic program and database that would make arithmancy much quicker. He just needed to continue improving it.

It was a good thing he had already mastered the Hogwarts curriculum and didn't need more than a couple hours of meditation each night, or he would have been overwhelmed that year. But the results were that when he and Hermione graduated, his company was established, he had a decent number of employees, and the factory to make his batteries was halfway complete.

During the following year after he and Hermione graduated they were either studying at University and taking some classes, sneaking into Hogwarts to spend time with Luna and Fleur, or making sure that his company, MagiBattery Co., was progressing well.

By the time that Luna graduated from Hogwarts and Fleur had finished her Charms Mastery, his company was all set to start manufacturing the rune scheme batteries that converted magic to electricity, with an additional little contract built in. When a customer bought their batteries, in order to activate them they simply had to say out loud the phrase "I believe in Magic" while holding the battery.

The phrase not only activated the rune scheme to power the battery, it worked as an agreement to a small contract compulsion that helped the person actually believe in magic. It was a very small nudge, but the longer the customer used the batteries, the stronger the belief became, until they would treat magic as a matter of fact.

Carl didn't think it was cheating to use magic to help the muggles believe in magic. It was only a very small nudge, and it would take several years before each person's belief in magic was solidified, or so Carl estimated.

Once Fleur and Luna joined Carl and Hermione in university, he no longer had to continue sneaking into Hogwarts, which saved him some time for more studies or snuggles, or other things that began with 'S'. He continued taking classes in university to expand his understanding of the muggle sciences, especially mathematics, physics, and anything relating to computers.

While the science and technology in the Harry Potter world wasn't anything special, it at least gave Carl a good grounding and background in science. He continued to tinker with combining magic and technology, making plans for more products that his company would sell to both the muggle and magical worlds.

Meanwhile his company continued to produce batteries of all kinds. The fact that his batteries never wore out made them very popular everywhere. By the time a year had passed his batteries were so prevalent in the UK and Ireland that he suddenly found himself back in his Warehouse one morning.

"Dammit! A little warning would have been appreciated!" Carl yelled when he realized he was alone and naked in bed between worlds. Sitting up in his bed in the Warehouse he scowled. "Next time I'm waiting to start the exit plan until I'm good and ready to leave a world. Well, guess I'll go take a cold shower and get dressed. I'm suddenly not in the mood anymore for some reason." Carl sarcastically said.

While cooling off in the cold shower, Carl realized that he hadn't accounted for the effect on the muggles that using multiple batteries would have. Or that so many batteries gathered wherever the muggles were would create a bigger "believe in magic" field. It must have had a multiplying effect, to take effect so soon. He had expected a few more years in the HP world.

Carl sighed. The things he only realized after the fact.


	35. ATG 1

[AN: A number of readers have pointed out that since I didn't write any details about Carl's company producing and selling the batteries that the way it just happened was somewhat unbelievable. And I admit they have a good point. The little amount of detail leaves too much in the air. I'll strive to do better in the future.

The points that I had in mind that made his business venture go smoothly is 1) his farms producing the materials needed for his product. 2) Automated machinery managed by workers that made the rune scheme batteries fast. 3) General incompetence by the Ministry of Magic. (seriously, the Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifact department was Arthur who couldn't even correctly pronounce Electricity. I seriously doubt they'll be on him like white on rice the moment he starts operating). 4) Carl's perk to be able to sell as much as he wanted and for decent prices. Before the Ministry could do anything about his product he would have sold millions. Good luck to the ministry being able to visit millions of muggles.

One of the reviewers seemed to think the name Magibattery for the company was lame. Yeah, it wasn't super inspired. /shrug. And why shouldn't Carl be using magic in the company name? So he could hide from the ministry of magic? Why would he hide that it's magic? That's the whole point of the scenario, letting the muggles believe in magic. There must be lots of muggle items labeled magic. Magic Card trick, Magic: The Gathering, video games about magic, etc. The incompetent ministry couldn't be on top of all that. They would be clueless.]

* * *

Carl sat up in bed, fully awake. After being ejected so suddenly from the Harry Potter world because he'd accidently finished the scenario, he had been a little miffed. He'd taken a cold shower, and used the terminal left by Spere 037 to add the Harry Potter magic and perks to his base body.

"Note to self. Be a bit more aware of how close to the goal you are in future scenarios." Carl said aloud just to hear his own voice in his almost empty Warehouse. Just then Rover flamed in, and seeing that Carl was awake, he started singing cheerily.

The magically soothing song did its job well, and Carl smiled and spent some time giving Rover attention. After some thought, Carl came to the conclusion that the reason Rover was able to join him in between jumps was because he was not a fully self aware entity and was his familiar. So a combination of those two made him a part of Carl, instead of a companion.

The Pokemon, on the other hand, were sentient and self aware creatures, so they counted as a companion and required a stasis pod to be able to join him in the jumps.

"Well, how about some breakfast, Rover?" Carl asked. At Rover's eager chirping, Carl laughed and jumped out of bed. He went downstairs and started preparing a feast using the household magic he'd learned in the Harry Potter world. The food was soon finished, and Carl and Rover dug in.

After Carl washed down his last bite with Root Beer, he sat back, satisfied. "I tell ya, Rover. The household charms and magical cooking of the world of Harry Potter alone was worth it." He looked over where the dishes were washing themselves before putting themselves away. "I find myself saying that a lot, you know. But it's absolutely true. There are some things I would gladly waste 10 or even 30 years in order to learn. And not having to do the dishes? That's one of those."

Rover chirped in agreement. He too liked the food that Carl made.

Carl eventually got to his feet and exited his house. He looked around the Warehouse, just now noticing how disorganized it had gotten, with half done projects everywhere. It was a good thing he'd made it a habit to keep everything of importance inside his Warehouse or on his person, since he had gotten kicked out of the HP world so suddenly. But now, seeing how he'd let it get so messy, he decided he might as well clean it up and organize it since he had the time.

So for the next couple of days Carl levitated things around, used his cleaning charms, shrunk things to be put in storage, and used space expansion charms to make more storage. Once he was finished, he looked over his Warehouse proudly. It looked good and organized once more.

He had purchased several computer servers that were sitting in a pocket space with only a terminal on the outside that contained a digital copy of his magical library and Arithmancy program. Carl couldn't wait until he could go to a scientifically advanced jump world so he could really start learning some advanced science and technology, and mix it together with magic.

Carl had used the time organizing his Warehouse to settle his mind, to compartmentalize his life in the Harry Potter world and put it behind him for the time being. He had long come to the conclusion that if he didn't have his head in the game and was totally focused on the current world, due to missing past worlds and people, then at the very least he would miss out on priceless opportunities. At the worst he might accidentally stumble into a jumpchain ending situation that he wasn't prepared for.

But now that Carl had his head on straight, and was ready for the next world, he went to the terminal and selected the option to start the next world. The introduction popped up on the screen.

* * *

**Against the Gods!**

Welcome to the world of **Against the Gods!** This is a world of cultivation, romance, death and violence, a world with legacies from ancient gods and devils, where fortunes rise and fall every day!

This is a planet full of amazing adventure, where mighty beasts roam the lands, hunting and hunted by great Practitioners. It is full of competition and jockeying, as strength is the only thing that matters. And it is full, absolutely chock-full, of so, so fucking many assholes.

* * *

Carl burst into wild laughter. "Oh, damn, that is so hilariously accurate." Carl said while brushing a tear away from his eye. "There's a reason people call cultivators in these types of stories 'murder hobos'. The main characters usually don't have a home, they just wander around trashing everyone else in their quest for strength."

"Arrogant young nobles run around these worlds looking down on everyone and calling in their elder brother or uncle to kill whoever offends them if they can't do it themselves. People stab each other in the back for drugs (cultivation resources). Girls will betray their betrothed at the drop of a hat if they aren't strong enough. And everyone, absolutely everyone, is obsessed with getting stronger. The only way to survive, is to fight and bite and claw for strength just as much as anyone else, while hoping you don't offend someone that can flatten your entire family."

Carl finally calmed down after a bit and started thinking how he was going to handle this world. "Okay, I know that with my Grand Master's fitness level I'll be stronger at the beginning than others of the same level, so that should give me a decent chance to survive until I can get some backing to keep the other murder hobos off my back. These kinds of worlds usually have large organizations called Sects that the cultivators join to get access to cultivation techniques, skills, and resources to advance their strength."

"So once I get in the world I'll have to find me a large sect to join so I can get access to all that and hope that there's not some plot induced sect destroying disaster happening before my ten years is up. Cause for these murder hobos, I mean cultivators, who live for thousands of years, 10 years is a drop in the bucket. Unless I get some perks that speed up my own cultivation, I'm not going to be anywhere near the top by the end of my time here. And I would probably not be able to survive a huge disaster."

Carl turned his attention back to the jump document. Maybe there was more information he could glean from it about just what was going on in this world he didn't know. At least a little bit of information that could help him survive his time in a very Darwinian world of only the strongest survives.

* * *

So, let's go over it. One planet, 97% water, three continents. One is the Azure Cloud Continent, another is the Profound Sky Continent, and the third is the Illusory Demon Realm.

If these names sound moronic…that's alright, they are.

Anyway, this is the world you need to be concerned about, at least for the most part. There are other worlds and other dangers, but they should be out of scope for this jump, barring exceptional circumstances, in which case you can bloody well go and learn about them yourself. In any case, you can be assured there is no imminent apocalypse coming up within ten years of your arrival, unless your meddling does something.

* * *

"Well, that is sooo reassuring." Carl sarcastically said to the jump document. Despite Carl's words, he actually was comforted. All he had to do was keep his head down for ten years and he'd likely be just fine. He continued reading.

* * *

The art of cultivation practiced here is called simply the Profound. There are nine major levels of it, each with ten sublevels. They are Elementary, Nascent, True, Spirit, Earth, Sky, Emperor, Tyrant, Sovereign. It is followed by the Divine way on other realms, but that's a different matter.

Practitioners above the Sky levels get additional titles as well, which are thus: An Emperor level is called a Throne, a Tyrant level is called an Overlord, and a Sovereign level practitioner is called a Monarch. Beside these there is the usual, what with there being many types of herbs being valuable, Profound Beast parts and cores being hunted, so on and so forth.

If you want to survive, you will most certainly need these **1000 CP, **so take them, and go write your own Saga!

Good Luck.

**Times and Places**

Regardless of location, you arrive just as Yun Che wakes up to live his third life back in his first life's body.

* * *

"So, I'm guessing that Yun Che is the protagonist of this story, then?" Carl shook his head. "The guy already has three lives, what is he, a cat? I'll have to see what kind of person this guy is. In some of these stories it's great to be the MCs friend. They'll share their insane luck with their friends, and pass on badass techniques and generally make sure their friend's lives are good. In other stories it is super bad to be their friend. They run around offending every Super Power Sect around and get retaliated against by the big sects killing their family and friends to give the MC the proper motivation to grow strong. Since I have absolutely no desire to be his motivation or stepping stone, I'll have to keep my distance at first to see what kind of dude he is."

Carl then read about the places he could be inserted in. He gained a small bit of data about the world from the descriptions. "Chances are that since these places are mentioned, this Yun Che will be visiting each place and making his mark at some point. So it doesn't really matter where I go, he'll show up eventually."

Carl then rolled the dice for his location. He rolled a 5.

**[5. Demon Imperial City** – The capital of the Demon Illusory Realm, this place is the heart of the only nation to cover an entire continent. There is, if anything, greater intrigue at work here than anywhere else. The royal family of the Empire, the Demon Royal Family is split between the main bloodline and the Duke Palaces. Of the former, only one girl is left, and far, far too many of the latter have varying opinions about this.]

"Well, as good a place as any I guess, even if there is politics. And if the people are busy scheming amongst each other, I can avoid notice while hiding in the cracks." Carl shrugged and dismissed any concerns from his mind. With the limited amount of information and no knowledge of the world, he couldn't really make any plans at the moment.

Carl then rolled for his insertion age. He rolled a 5 again. He would be inserting as a 15 year old. It wasn't the youngest he'd ever started as in these worlds, but it was old enough that he could conceivably be on his own without causing questions from those around, even without resorting to his metamorphmagus abilities to look older.

Next Carl had to choose an origin. **Drop In** 0 cp, **Young Master** 100 cp, **Elder** 200 cp, or **Smooth** 300 cp. Carl was unsure about what he wanted to choose, so he did a quick skim of the perks to see which would give him the best package with their discounts.

When Carl got to the description for the perk **Inheritor **500 cp, he immediately chose the **Smooth** origin. For 300 cp he would get three free purchases of **Inheritor**, and anymore purchases were half off. That was 1500 cp for the price of 300 cp. Just that discount alone was worth the purchase of the **Smooth **origin.

**[Smooth** – Yours is a strange existence. You may be the heir to a great family, but if so, it is far, far away. Or you may be a reincarnation of an ancient power, or any of a thousand possibilities. Or maybe even more than one at the same time. Only time will tell. Simply put, you have a protagonist's background in this world, with all that entails.]

Carl wasn't sure just what his protagonist background would end up being, but he was optimistic in being able to handle it with all the perks and skills he had available.

Carl then started reading though and adding perks to his shopping cart. **Cultivation **would give him the basics needed to start cultivating.

[**Cultivation 0 cp: **You are proficient in the Profound Arts, the cultivation style of this world. You start at the second level of the Elementary Profound Realm. Your profound veins are above average, but nothing particularly special. Roll a 1d20+10. That's the number of Profound Entrances you have open. You have slightly above average talent with one element, and start with knowing one low level Profound Art each for attacking, defending, and movement.

You may cultivate up to any level you want, with no restrictions. All of your power, along with any changes made to your veins or body are carried over with full effect in all future worlds. Once you reach Sovereign 10, you can grow Profound Veins in others with an injection of your own Profound Energy, giving them the ability to cultivate.]

He rolled a 15, so he started with 25 Profound Entrances open. From what Carl could extrapolate, the purpose of the Profound Entrance was basically to suck the world energies into their body that cultivators used to level up their cultivation and power their techniques. So the more entrances they had open, the faster they leveled up, and the quicker they could recover their battle energy. He wasn't sure just how many Profound Entrances there were in a human body in this world, but he felt confident with having rolled so high that he would be fine.

Looking over the options for elemental affinity, Carl saw there were five elements. Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, and Lightning. "Huh, it's like the Naruto world. Well, when in doubt, burn it with fire." Carl then selected fire for his affinity for his above average talent with one element.

One of the parts that Carl was especially liking about the **Cultivation **perk was that once he attained Sovereign level 10, he could help other people grow their Profound Veins, giving them the ability to cultivate. So, in future worlds, once he got strong enough, he could build himself an organization of murder hobos to be his employees.

"Excellent." Carl said while imitating Mr. Burns, tapping the fingers of his hands together with a creepy smile on his face.

Carl then read the perk for **Heavenly God's Spiritual Veins**.

[**Heavenly God's Spiritual Veins 100 cp /0 cp:** Discard the roll for Profound Entrances above. With this perk, you have all of them open, meaning your cultivation is thrice as fast as the average person. This perk is free for those who take **Genius Doctor** below. You get equivalent effects in all future worlds where these things are relevant.]

Even though Carl still didn't know how many Profound Entrances there were, when he saw that all of his Profound Entrances would be open and his cultivation would be three times as fast, Carl thought it was a must have. The perk would be free if he purchased **Genius Doctor**, which normally was 400 cp, but with the discount for his **Smooth **background, it would only cost him 200 cp. Carl knew a good deal when he saw it. So he purchased **Genius Doctor **to become a peerless expert on the art of healing, and get all his Profound Entrances opened.

[**Genius Doctor 200 cp: **You are a peerless expert without equal, when it comes to the arts of healing. Not only can you tell everything wrong with a person with a single glance at them, you also possess an unerring instinct that guides you as to the best possible treatment for said ailment.

For this world, your medical knowledge and skills completely equal the great Medical Saint Yun Gu, unquestionably the best healer on the planet. Just like him, you know long lost techniques to both heal and improve the body, and have an immense knowledge of peripheral skills like refining herbs and animal parts. While you don't start on quite the same level in the future, you're very close, and can catch up rapidly.

Also, you have a vast, encompassing knowledge of acupuncture and related techniques, such as opening profound entrances and all others. This gives you the **Heavenly God's Spiritual Veins** for free, and you can obviously grant them to anyone you want, at will. Can't take it back, though.]

Carl knew there were a lot of skeptics about the efficacy of acupuncture back in his original world, but in a cultivation world where the healer had Profound Energy to send through the needles, doctors were able to heal their patients with just a few pokes. Even in the HSDK world, he had Ki to send through the needles to make it work. He just hadn't had much need to use his acupuncture skills. But with the **Genius Doctor** perk, he would know how to use the needles with his Profound energies.

And while Carl hadn't read Against the Gods, he had read Library of Heavens Path, so he had some ideas about just what he could do with a peerless ability in healing. It would make it so much easier to make allies and gain favors to keep himself safe in a world of cultivation. Once he started networking and making a name for himself as a healer, enemies would have to think twice about all the backup he could call on before attacking or offending him.

The next perk that interested Carl was **Craftsman.**

**[Craftsman 300 cp: **This world has a lot of unique things of its own, from Profound Weapons to things like Arks or Transmission Imprints. They need someone to make them, you know.

You are now an exemplary craftsman and enchanter, an expert at making weapons and items of all kinds. You know how to use Profound Beast cores to make quality weapons, how to set up a Teleportation Array that can move people across an ocean, how to make Spatial Rings, Transmission Jades, and similar things seen in this world.

In future jumps too, you become eminently capable at enchantments, smithing and similar, becoming one of the best enchanters and artificers as appropriate to the local magic or Cultivation system.]

Both **Craftsman** and **Genius Doctor** were too good not to take, since they would be incredibly useful even beyond this world. The sheer amount of knowledge and abilities that he would get just from those two perks were completely worth it.

"But, I need to remember to keep my knowledge and skill in healing and crafting hidden, and only show as much as my strength warrants. Because in a cultivation world, there are likely lots of strong people who would think nothing of enslaving me to make me a crafting or healing monkey for them. And I refuse to be a dancing monkey for anyone."

"Okay, time to pick my **Inheritor** perks." Carl smiled while looking over the perk. He liked the look of several of them.

[**Inheritor: **You are beyond other, lesser, beings. In you is the gift of a god, or a god-like being such as a Divine Beast. You have special powers above and beyond anything possessed by mere mortals, barring those who possess similar gifts.

You may pick one Inheritance from the following list per purchase. **Smooth** people get three purchases for free, and a discount on more.]

[**Nine Profound Exquisite Body 0 cp:** Your body is utterly exquisite and unmatched. You have a 'small world' inside you, which allows you to hold far more power within you than would otherwise be possible.

Simply put, you can preserve your Profound Energy without needing to strain your Profound Veins, allowing you to perform techniques and measures requiring any level of Profound Cultivation without suffering the consequences anyone else would suffer in your place.

The inner world in you can hold any quantities of energy of any and all kinds, and you can channel this energy without any damage to your body. But it doesn't generate any energy by itself, requiring you to save it up.]

The idea of having a huge battery in his body that Carl could constantly have charging that would let him use techniques beyond his cultivation level, effectively hitting above his weight class, was too good to pass up.

There were so many examples in the books he'd read about how the protagonist would always have to fight someone that was a higher level than him, and only pulled off a win through abilities like this one. And since he was going to have a protagonists life, he needed the abilities to survive!

[**Heart of Snow Glazed Glass 0 cp: **Your mind is extraordinary, allowing you to perfectly remember and recall anything you have so much as seen or heard once.

You have incredible comprehensive abilities, allowing you to comprehend any and all techniques, whether or not you're capable of using them. Even techniques restricted to specific bloodlines or sects are open to you, although how well you can use them depends on your other abilities.

Finally, you're blessed by the heavens, meaning that you can instinctively sense danger in any situation, and look into people's hearts and see if they are good, evil, or anywhere in between.]

This was basically like having the Sharingan without the negative aspects of the Sharingan, like having to see one of his loved ones die in front of him, or kill his best friend, or whatever other nonsense the Uchiha got up to.

And while his Sherlock abilities helped him read people's body language, if someone was a master at controlling their body, they would leave him no clues to judge them on. It happened often with his masters in the HSDK world. When they went into battle mode, they were so in control of their bodies that he couldn't get a read on them. So being able to determine the quality of their character with a look would be very useful for his survival.

[**Supreme Attribute Beast Bloodline 0 cp:** You have the bloodline of one of the Supreme Beasts of either Fire or Ice, which are the Vermillion Bird, the Phoenix, and the Golden Crow for Fire, and the Ice Phoenix, the Celestial Qilin, and the Blue Dragon for Ice. You have received several drops of their blood, granting you their bloodline so you count as having descended from them, along with the power of their respective flames or ice. In terms of sheer destruction, the Golden Crow's Yang-rich flames are the most powerful in this universe, while the Vermillion Bird's power is the greatest when it comes to cleansing Devil and assorted creatures. There is likely a similar hierarchy for the Ice Beasts, but the details are unknown.

In the item section, this gets you the respective Profound Art Jade Tablet for free.]

Carl grinned savagely when he saw the Golden Crow's flames were the most powerful in the universe, and he picked that bloodline. "Burn, baby! Burn!"

[**Jade Tablet – Golden Crow 0 cp: **These are jade tablets, holding the complete details of exactly one Profound Art of the highest quality, that you are free to design by yourselves. This art is of extremely high quality, similar in level to world defying Profound Arts like the Evil God's Secret Arts, the World Ode of the Pheonix or the Vermillian Bird's Consoling Spirit Song. Indeed, you get the complete tablets for whatever **Supreme Beast Bloodline** you buy for free.]

Carl had been somewhat tempted to get the bloodline of the Phoenix because he had Rover as his familiar, but the idea that the Golden Crow had the most powerful flames tempted him too much to pass it up. Having the best and strongest flames would help him stay alive and kick butt.

And if anyone messed with him, then he would kill them with fire! With the bloodline of the Golden Crow and the Heart of Snow Glazed Glass, he would be a knock off Uchiha. No, he would be the superior Uchiha!

"All your techniques are belong to me. And actually, this is much better than being an Uchiha with their emo-ness from having to kill their best friend to achieve their Mangekyo eyes. At least I get a path to power without the trauma." Carl commented with a sense of smug superiority that would no doubt drive an Uchiha to say "Hn."

[**Evil God's Profound Veins 250 cp: **You have the Profound Veins of the Evil God himself, one of the True Primordial Gods of a Bygone age.

These veins do not provide you any qualitative advantage, in that they are not really much better than human veins when it comes to channeling Profound Power. But in your veins, there exist seven Gates. Each gate may be safely opened at a certain level of Profound Power, so that your body can survive the process.

The first gate multiplies your powers by three fold, the second gate four-fold, and so on. In addition, you also gain mastery of certain Profound Arts as long as the gates are open, one with each gate. These veins also let you absorb the **Evil God's Seeds** for various elements as you find them. In the item section, you get these at a discount.]

"And now I feel like I need to start yelling about the Springtime of Yooouuuuth!" Carl crowed to himself, thinking of Gai and Rock Lee from the Naruto comic and the chakra gates that they opened to increase their strength and speed. "At least they left off the eighth gate, the Death Gate."

[**Evil God's Seed – Fire 300 cp: **This is one of the elemental seeds of the Evil God, or a perfect copy of it, your choice. It gives you an affinity for one element, your choice, unmatched anywhere in Heaven or Earth at its height. You receive no damage whatsoever from this element, no matter the type or scale or nature, be it mortals, gods or demons trying to hurt you with it. It doesn't matter if it's a kitchen flame or fires from the depth of hell or anything in between, it does no damage to you.

At the same time, your control over the element is nothing short of ludicrous. The scale at which you can control it depends on both your innate profound power and how much time and effort you put into it, but you start out capable of controlling it on a personal level, such as tossing small fireballs or singular lightning bolts. You'd be surprised how quickly you can train it up, though.

Your control extends over all forms and aspects of an element, meaning that the fire seed lets you control even magical or divine flames, while the water seed lets you control ice and vapor too. As a matter of fact, this seed makes it so any elemental controlling abilities you have automatically develop these aspects, letting you control the exotic versions just as well and at the same scale as the base one.]

If Carl was going to be throwing around the most destructive fire around, he was damn sure making sure he didn't accidentally kill himself with said fire. The idea that he could, in the future, bathe in Fiendfyre amused him greatly.

After thinking about it for some time, Carl decided that he would also add the **Evil God's Seed – Water 300 cp** to his basket. The jump document kept bringing up water and ice, so he was positive that he was going to run into some asshole Hyoton user eventually.

"And there we are, another Naruto reference." Carl grinned in humor to himself. "Wonder if the Ice user is going to inspire me in forming my Nindo: My Ninja Way." After giggling for a while - 'It's not a giggle! Men don't giggle!' - Carl thought that as much as he was joking around about it, he was also seriously concerned about his safety. If he could get immunity to water and ice as well as all forms of fire, then he should be that much safer.

And water is the antithesis of fire, so usually people would usually expect him to have a weakness to water. So when they inevitably stab him in the back with torrents of water, he could just smile and smugly declare, "You've activated my trap card." Before proceeding to beat them black and blue.

"Well, now that I've got unparalleled affinity with fire and water through the Evil God Seed copies, I've got to pick a different element for the **Cultivation** perk." Carl muttered while looking over the document, trying to decide what to pick. "Lightning, Wind, or Earth. If it's anything like the Naruto world, Lighting will be speed and piercing. Wind will be cutting and maybe speed? Was that a thing? Not like Naruto ever took advantage of his wind element to become one with the wind. What a waste. But then again, Gai and Lee were fast without lightning, so maybe speed in their world was more about training and chakra application, than elemental use. Whatever, wind is speed." Carl eventually decided firmly. If he believed it enough, it had to be so. That's what he had learned from magic. "And, finally, Earth will be strength and defense."

"I can throw away strength as a consideration, since I've already got my ki enhanced body and will be picking some more body strengthening perks here shortly. I'm waffling about whether to get earth for the defense, even though the body strengthening perks and techniques should have me covered there. But staying alive is always a huge consideration."

"But with my body strengthening perks I should have some good defense and regeneration, but what's even better than tanking a hit? Not getting hit in the first place. So I think I'll go with some speed. So lightning or wind. My chosen blade is a katana style blade so I mostly do slashes, which would lean towards cutting not piercing, so wind it is." Carl selected wind for his above average affinity for the **Cultivation** perk.

[**Dragon God's Bloodline 250 cp: **You have six drops of the Dragon God's blood in your veins, and his marrow which will produce more, at a glacial pace of a drop every several years until you are 10% Dragon. This gives you extreme durability, to the extent that your bones are like tempered steel, and you gain a potent regenerative effect, regaining both your strength, health, and profound energy at a rapid pace even in the middle of combat. It also makes you massively more resistant to poisons and other harmful effects.

This perk makes it so that strictly speaking you don't even need to cultivate now. Any powers you possess will continue getting stronger as you grow older, with no upper limits except your lifespan, which is extended to several hundred years.

Finally, once per jump including this jump, you can produce a 'Dragon Seed', which you may impart to someone else of your choice through sex. This heals them of any and all injuries or illnesses they may have, and nearly doubles their powers and energies. With time, you can learn to impart it without the sex too, but one person can only benefit from it once. This changes to once every ten years after your chain ends.]

The idea that he would be 10% dragon and that his physical body would be that much tougher made Carl drool. So badass!

From novels he'd read, he had the idea that many cultivators focused solely on their cultivation levels, and relied on their cultivation energies to refine their physical bodies. But that the special cultivators that had body refining techniques in addition to regular cultivation would be much more powerful than others in their cultivation class, and almost unstoppable.

It was basically the idea that if the foundation was weak, then the building would be weak. So the idea of having his physical body being much stronger and sturdier appealed to Carl. And so he decided to splurge, and chose the next **Inheritor** purchase as well, since it added more power to his body.

* * *

[**Great Way of the Buddha 250 cp: **This is the Divine Profound Art of the Primordial Rage God, which allows one to achieve wonders with the body. It has Twelve Stages, each more difficult to achieve than the last.

This art does not depend in any way on one's profound veins or profound strength, working instead from your soul, and nature itself. Your progress on this path depends on your comprehension of it, with each level unfolding as your comprehension improves.

This art provides you two things to begin with, those being increasing strength, and increased healing ability. Both stem from the power of Heaven and Earth around you flowing into you through the mysteries of this art, enhancing your body dramatically.

At the first level, this art gives you a strength of almost two tons, and the ability to heal from all wounds in a couple of days.

At the second level, this art gives you a strength of four tons, and provides significant improvements to your healing speed.

At the third level, this art gives you a strength of ten tons, and increases your durability to the level of pure steel. Your healing abilities enter the realm of active regeneration here, although it will still take hours to deal with grievous injuries. The silver pagoda you manifested so far also turns into a faint gold color.

At the fourth level, this art gives you a strength of fifty tons and you enter the intermediate level of the art. The pagoda becomes a dull gold color and your blood is slightly tinted gold. Your body now cultivates at all times, providing a slow but steady benefit to you continuously, but fast enough that you could gain a level of Emperor rank in a couple months even if you do nothing else.

At the seventh level, this art gives you the ability to restore important bodily necessities such as vision but it is impossible to reach this level even at the Sovereign realm while remaining in the Mortal World. Trying will cause your body to explode.

Benefits provided by further levels are unspecified, except that the twelfth level is the peak, and it grants you the original physique of the Rage God.]

With his Grand Master's ability, he was already stronger than the fourth level of the **Great Way of the Buddha**, but Carl liked the idea of adding the strength he would get from this art onto his strength, especially when adding in the regeneration. More strength is never a bad idea.

He didn't know how the Jumpchain would handle the whole ascending to a higher plane thing, especially if he was in a universe that didn't have that aspect. But he figured he could always pause his cultivation of the technique before he reached the seventh level that would cause him to explode in the ATG world.

Carl moved on to the other perks.

[**Shadow Demon's Secret Retaining 100 cp:** You are a virtually unmatched expert when it comes to the art and science of information suppression. Be it the methods of rooting out spies, simple disguise, or concealment, or whatever, if you're trying to hide something, a person, an item, or just some news, it's very, very difficult for it to get out.]

"That perk will do nicely as a counterpart to my scenario reward from the Harry Potter world. If I want to keep things secret, they will stay secret. If I want it known, everyone across the world will know." Car chuckled.

[**Celestial Profound Basic Decency Inducement 200 cp: **This world…you don't know what exactly is wrong with it, but you can at least do your part in making it better.

You have the incredible power of making people act like rational human beings. Through a conversation, a beating, or whatever other method you like, you can beat the intricate mysteries of Common Sense and Basic Human Decency into people lacking them, and make it stick.]

Carl chuckled at the perk ability of being able to beat some common sense into people. It may not always take a beating to get through to someone, but it was a very useful perk to have in a world that was absolute chock full of assholes.

[**Advanced leveling 600 cp: **As your powers grow, as your strength reaches higher and more advanced levels, advancing further becomes ever more difficult.

Not for you. No one knows how, maybe you can somehow access the richer energies and better qualities of the Higher Realms, maybe you can just grasp certain crucial principles others miss, it depends on the circumstances. But the result is the same.

Where others would require decades, if not centuries to grow through a level, not to mention proportionally higher effort, you simply don't suffer these diminishing returns or bottlenecks. You can advance through even the highest levels of cultivation just as easily and quickly as you grew through the very first ones, while losing none of the benefits.]

Carl knew that he was piling up the cp debt, and that he would be paying for it with drawbacks and his banked cp, but at this point he didn't care. There were too many must have perks in this one world. Once he had all these perks, he could spend a few worlds banking up points again to spend later.

But if he missed out on all the ridiculous perks that enhanced his strength and survivability in this world, who knew when he might have another chance to get perks like these? He was willing to take the chance.

[**Wildly Willful 0 cp: **As things happen, you may end up undergoing a lot of things that would leave normal people with broken minds and crushed souls. Not you. You have boundless willpower, meaning you can keep yourself going through pain, terror, or horror out of sheer stubbornness.

It also helps you in quickly recovering from old trauma, letting you forget and/or move on unbelievably quickly. Also, you're good at insulting people.]

For the initial price of 100 cp that perk had, it was well worth the purchase. But with his discount, Carl picked it up for free. Being able to out-stubborn stubborn would make sure that he didn't falter before the end of the jump chain, whenever that would be.

[**Sex Fiend 100 cp: **You're one. Really, you are. When it comes to wooing others, you have the kind of skills that the very best Casanovas in the world would come together to declare you the One True Sex Fiend.

You know just how to talk the right way, how to behave in the short and long term, how to touch them just right, so as to inflame the passions of even the most frigid, hard-to-crack people in the world. You can make them fall in love with you or in bed with you, or both. And yes, you have the skills and endurance to thoroughly satisfy any number of people you may have brought to your bed.

Furthermore, once they do, you find that as a rule, they have no problem with you fucking, marrying, or entering into a relationship with any number of other partners, and indeed, your partners tend to grow close by themselves, even getting romantically involved if their personalities fit right. This works on any member of your preferred sex you set your mind at, be they people, spirits, gods, or anything in between.]

One of the concerns that had been in the back of Carl's mind, was how all of his girls would get on when they all gathered in one place. Even in his first world, the BtVS world, he had to struggle to keep the girls happy. Looking back on it now, Carl kind of suspected that the multi partner relations were a combination of three things.

The first of course being that they routinely engaged in life and death activities. So in order to feel more alive, or celebrate staying alive, they were willing to engage in more open behavior than they normally would have. And who could they trust more than the people in the trenches with them, keeping them alive?

The second being that they routinely studied magic, demonology, and other such topics that would induce a bit of insanity in them, as told him by Spere 037. With the amount of brain bruising from insanity inducing studies, it was no wonder that mundane things like social mores fell by the wayside.

The third thing was the brain healing effect of his Root Beer, which brought them back to sanity. Instead of going off the deep end due to brain bruising, the Root Beer assured that they were healthy. So they were more willing to engage in social activities, like sex, rather than insane activities, like trying to cause the world to get sucked into the Hellmouth. Just a minor difference, really.

So now that he had a perk available that would help Carl make sure that his various girls from different worlds would at least not fight and may get along even better, he was very happy and would not give up the opportunity to purchase the perk.

Now that he had all his perks chosen, Carl began looking over the items available. He got a free **Disguise Kit** for the **Smooth** background. He didn't really need it with his metamorphmagus ability, but since it was free he picked it up anyway.

[**Disguise Kit 0 cp: **You have a box full of disguise-useful materials of the highest quality. You have everything, from colors to fake hair, everything required for you to pretend to be another person is here. You are also good at using them, so much so that no mundane ways of detection can even tell your appearance is fake, let alone detect who you really are.]

Next he spent 100 cp to import his Goblin made blade, Blue Orchid, as a **Profound Weapon**.

**[Profound Weapon 100 cp**: A sword, a spear, or maybe something exotic like a…ribbon? Whatever. This is a Profound Weapon of your very own, and the important thing about it is, it's linked directly to your soul.

Meaning you can have it in your hand with just a thought no matter where it may have been an instant ago, and perhaps more importantly, it grows with you. Not only does it perfectly channel any and all energies you can use, it even enriches and enhances them just by being passed through it. It's also extraordinarily receptive to enhancements of any and all kinds, magical, technological, or otherwise.

For this world, it's always exactly one Realm ahead of you, and the growth is similar in the future.]

The final thing Carl chose to purchase was a Heavenly Profound Treasure, he chose the Heavenly Time Pearl. He also chose to merge it with himself, placing it on his left hip so it would look like a tattoo, where he was sure no one would look anytime in the near future.

[**Heavenly Profound Treasure 300 cp: **Oh, this is big. You are in possession of one of the Seven Heavenly Profound Treasures, the most valuable, precious and powerful items in the entirety of this world. You can, if you wish, choose to fuse them to your own self, instead of just using them as items. This can be undone and redone at will.

These items are all indestructible, but can be taken from you unless fused. If taken away, you get them back only once the jump is over, unless you actually get off your ass and take it back. While possessed by another, they work for them just as well as they do for you.]

**[Heavenly Time Pearl: **This pearl is one of the two greatest aids to Cultivation in the whole universe. The way it works is simple. It has a pocket dimension inside, which holds the power of limitless time itself. In this dimension, time moves much faster, meaning one day in the outside world is equal to one hundred years inside the pearl.

This pearl has fused with you completely, and has recognized you as its master. This means that you can go in and out of its inner dimension at will, and can also take anyone you want with you, in any numbers you want. The inside has breathable air and limitless space, but nothing to eat or drink except what you take in.]

With the Heavenly Time Pearl and his farms producing food, Carl figured he was pretty much given a win. He could hole up in the Pearl as long as he needed to train up for any threat coming his way. Even if he got rid of all his other perk purchases, as long as he had the Heavenly Time Pearl, he could safely cultivate up to max level.

"Well, now it is time to add drawbacks so I can afford my massive purchase." Carl shook his head in dismay at the massive cost. "Still worth it." He muttered.

**[I'm Surrounded By Assholes +100 cp: **…By sheer virtue of living and cultivating here you will inevitably keep running into petty, touchy, oversensitive, entitled, sociopathic, possibly psychopathic, and just plain insufferable jerks. It's not _everyone _you meet will be a dick, more that on a regular basis you will run into _someone_ who just has to be a dick. Even if you are trying your best not to give offense they will trump up an excuse to take offense anyway, or else simply decide that you or your friends have been chosen for the honor of being their next bullying victim.

Don't bother trying to reason with them; if they were willing to listen to reason, they wouldn't be stereotypical Xianxia assholes in the first place. You _could_ in theory placate them by simply giving them whatever they want, but that would just make them come back later with another round of even more obnoxious demands.

Fortunately for you, this Drawback does not scale; antagonists will be no more powerful than they would normally be. Furthermore, if you are obviously too powerful for them to confront then they would (usually) not be stupid enough to directly confront you. They will, however, go behind your back and try to intrigue against you, slander you to the general populace, inform on you to your enemies, steal your shinies when you're not looking, attack you when you're weak, sexually harass yoru waifus, or bully your less powerful friends.

If you have **Celestial Profound Basic Decency Inducement** that _does_ still work to encourage the assholes you encounter to learn the ways of the not-asshole, but it does nothing to slow down how often you encounter new assholes.]

From his time stuck playing Monopoly, Carl knew how aggravating it could be to deal with assholes. But unlike in Monopoly, in the ATG world he would be able to do something about any obnoxious jerk, and he could even vent some of his frustration while pounding some common sense in their heads. Carl wondered if it would actually turn into a bonus to have a string of jerks to vent on. He would certainly find out over the next ten years.

**[Profoundly Delicious +300 cp: **All kinds of Profound Beasts think you're very tasty, and want to kill and eat you. You can't go two steps into a forest or untamed area without getting swarmed, and even tamed beasts try to snap at you if their masters aren't firm enough. Which they rarely will be.]

Carl's time in Farmville showed him that having an irresistible lure could actually be a good thing if he was hoping to hunt. And in cultivation worlds, the beast cores were very valuable. So Carl planned to stay in the cities for the most part, unless he hired a troupe of hunters to take out the beasts that were sure to swarm in, or was strong enough to take care of himself.

**[Sacred Rage +400 cp: **One of the Four Sacred Grounds, the Mighty Heavenly Sword Region, the Sun Moon Divine Hall, the Supreme Ocean Palace, or the Absolute Monarch Sanctuary are after you. They will hunt you to the ends of the earth, and will never stop, unless you destroy them completely and utterly. While they won't commit to you so extremely that their existence could be threatened, don't expect one or two setbacks to even slow them down.

You may take this drawback multiple times, for another Sacred Ground, up to four times. If your location roll placed you out of the Profound Sky Continent, it is discarded and you must choose a place in that continent.]

Carl frowned in dismay. It would have been perfect if he could have picked the Sacred Grounds. It would have been safe points, since they were far, far away on a different continent. He angrily tapped on the Mighty Heavenly Sword Region in the list in frustration.

Carl froze in shock when the Mighty Heavenly Sword Region was added to the list and he was credited with the cp. He looked left and right, looking around to see if someone was there playing a joke on him or something. But nothing was there, and the points were still totaled up.

Cautiously, Carl reached out and selected the next Sacred Ground. They were also added to the list. Huh. Throwing away all caution, Carl selected all four Sacred Grounds, and smiled at the +1200 cp. Shrugging at his good luck, which probably only happened because his Jump Chan wasn't around, he moved on.

**[Crippled Profound Veins +600 cp: **Your profound veins are completely crippled, making you entirely unable to channel Profound Energy. While it's possible for them to be fixed or replaced if you have the means, as they are you can never cultivate beyond the first level of the Elementary Profound Realm.]

Carl chose to start with crippled veins because he was confident he could survive until he could heal his veins, because he had a fully functional Medical Bay that could heal up anything that still had a pulse. Cheating? Sure, but then again, wasn't the whole grab bag of powers he was getting from the Jumpchain cheating in the first place?

And if, for whatever reason, his Medbay couldn't heal his profound veins, he had his Grand Master level body and skill and the Way of the Buddha to keep him alive until he could gather whatever he needed to heal his veins. Since the Great Way of the Buddha didn't rely on profound veins, he could practice that until he fixed his cultivation ability.

Carl stepped back from the terminal and stretched for a bit while he thought over his choices. After some thought, Carl removed the drawback **I'm Surrounded By Assholes.** It only gave him 100 cp. That paltry amount really wasn't worth the hassle of a full 10 years of running into one asshole after another, no matter how fun it would be to beat them up. And when he inevitably got stronger, they would just get sneakier in the ways they used trying to get at him. Just not worth it at all, having assholes undercutting him in the background.

After some more thought he added two more items. While he was generally against spending cp on items instead of perks, these two were very useful.

[**Sky Overlord's Ancient Profound Ark 200 cp: **An airship by any other name. This is a Profound Ark of the highest quality and finest make, something crafted not by mortals but by Divine Wat practitioners in a bygone age. It has a vast inner space, easily in multiple square miles, give or take, and moves extremely fast, covering thousands of miles an hour.

While it doesn't exactly require any fuel, it goes faster the more energy you pour in, and will accept any form of power or power generation you can provide. Being a creation of the Ancient times, it can even go into space, the inside magically taking care of any atmospheric requirements.]

Carl felt that having reliable transport that wasn't a Profound Beast in this world would be helpful, especially if he needed to make his escape from any dangerous situation. And he could bring it along with him to other worlds, maybe even modify it with technology and power generators to make it really get up and go.

[**High Quality Armor 200 cp: **This is Profound Armor, of the very highest quality. To be exact, its level is always one level higher than your own. This armor looks however you want it to look, but it can block all types of mundane attacks, and also provides significant resistance to magical/supernatural ones.

Bound to your soul, you can summon it at will, and dismiss it back to wherever with a thought too.]

With the addition of a full suit of armor that would grow with him and could shift into different forms, Carl felt better about being in a Cultivation world. Who knows when he'd get backstabbed or railroaded for looking at someone funny?

He chose the option to merge it with his "Sword" forearm guards that he got from the HSDK world. While the forearm guards were pretty damn good, and would continue to get stronger with him, they only protected a small part of his arms. Adding the two together, and having a full suit of armor that grew with him and was always one realm stronger than him was very appealing.

After seeing that he still had 650 cp from his banked points, Carl shrugged and gave in. "What the hell, right? If I'm going to be spending so much, I might as well go all out." Carl decided and made one more scan over the perks available to see if there was anything he wanted or would be very useful. "I mean, what is the use of a bunch of banked cp if I don't ever bloody _use _it?"

So from the **Young Master **perks he picked one perk.

[**Ludicrous Loyalty Enforcement 200 cp: **There's something to be said about fanatics. Not that those who follow you are always fanatics, but they do share one trait. No matter what you do, how immoral or monstrous your actions may be, how obviously repugnant your nature and actions may be, it won't affect anyone who follows you at all. Even the more moral people will harden their hearts and obey you, and dismiss all thought of it once they're done.]

Carl wasn't planning on turning into some murderous monster, but the perk basically assured him that any followers he had wouldn't backstab him due to a disagreement. In some of these worlds, like ones with murder hobos, knowing that his followers would follow him was very comforting.

And from the **Elder **perks he chose one.

[**Patient Plans 400 cp: **At the uppermost levels of this world, among the great Clans and Sects and Empires, there is quite a lot more to things than just Cultivation. The games played here are lethal, long, complicated, and more often than not extraordinarily filthy in their immorality.

You now have the same ability at such plans as the best there are in this world. You can account for hundreds of factors, gather information, and extrapolate more, and set up extraordinarily intricate and robust plans, to bring about whatever events you desire.

You have an extraordinary grasp of the human psyche, of how people act and react to things. You know just what to say, what to do, what strings to pull to achieve the exact thing you desire.]

Carl knew he'd been pretty lucky so far that he hadn't had to deal with a great deal of dirty dealing and corrupt politics so far in the worlds he'd been in. There was some of that corruption in the BtVS world with the mayor of Sunnydale being a century old warlock who had a stranglehold on the town, but he'd resolved it pretty easily with foreknowledge and a bullet.

And he had avoided the Wizarding World of Harry Potter's government like it had the plague.

But going into this world he had no knowledge of, that was full of murder hobos, on a continent with one Empire where intrigue was around every corner, Carl just felt it was a very needed perk to be able to figure out plans to survive.

And while he had spent all but 50 cp of his banked points, Carl was sure that the big spending spree would prove its worth. Not only in this world, but in worlds to come.

Once more checking everything over, Carl was satisfied. "So, ready for another world?" Carl asked his familiar before finalizing his choices. Rover chirped in agreement. "Okay then, here goes nothing."

Right as he hit accept button to enter the world, the ground opened up beneath him, and Carl fell screaming into the portal that materialized from nowhere. Once Carl was through, the portal closed back up, leaving Rover chirping in question as to just what his Wizard was up to.

* * *

[AN: Okay, so I tried something a little different in the entry into another world chapter here, namely that I wrote out the descriptions of the perks, items, and drawbacks, instead of just summarizing it a bit. Let me know, readers, if you like it like that or if you think it is useless filler that you just scanned past.

And now for a disclaimer of sorts. At some points in the ATG world I'll be introducing people with names randomly picked by me for story purposes. I chose to randomly pick Chinese names based off a list of names on the internet. Keep in mind that if you know Chinese and the names I randomly picked sound incredibly retarded to you, Sorry/not sorry. /shrug. There's only so much I can do.

But thanks for reading!]


	36. ATG 2

Carl landed face down in the dirt. He dragged himself to his feet, disgustedly brushing off the dirt and dust. Damned portal spit him out so he didn't have a chance to land normally.

Looking around, he saw he was in a town square near a marketplace in the middle of the day. Nobody who was passing by seemed to be bothered by a person appearing out of nowhere, so he figured there was some magic making people ignore his entrance into the world, or people appearing out of portals was a normal occurrence around here. Maybe some combination of the two?

He looked down at himself to take inventory of what he had with him, and noticed he wasn't wearing the same clothes he had on when he finished accepting his choices on the jump doc.

'Now that I think about it, every time I get inserted into a world with a background I'm wearing what my background character would. What happens to all my cloths that I'm wearing when I'm transported into the world?' Carl thought. 'Does the jump chain have a laundry service? I'll have to check to see if the clothes I was wearing are in the warehouse.'

Once Carl finished being distracted by nonsense, he finally actually noticed what he was wearing. He appeared to be wearing a school uniform. He wearily chuckled at his circumstances.

"I've been Isekai'd into the world. Complete with Japanese school uniform. Wonder if I've got classmates running around too." Carl muttered to himself in a wry tone of voice. "I suppose having been Isekai'd into the world counts as a protagonist's background."

He was half amused at his situation, and half annoyed. He had been hoping for some background memories to help him figure things out, and gain a basic understanding of the world, but it turns out he would have to do the information gathering on his own.

First things first, he needed to get a room at an inn so he could process all the memories and knowledge bouncing around his head that he gained from perks. Several of his perks came with the associated knowledge, so he would have to spend some time using his occlumency skills to sort the unorganized mess it left in his mind.

Seeing that no one was paying attention to him, and that he was mostly out of the way of everyone's walking path, Carl opened up the portal to his Warehouse just enough to reach in and grab his briefcase that he got from Uncle Pennybags in the Monopoly challenge.

Making sure once more that no one was watching him, he whispered an amount to his briefcase, "The local equivalent of 100 pounds." Opening the briefcase, he saw a single cyan colored coin. Plucking the coin out, and holding it in his hand while tucking the briefcase under his arm, he set out. He started with approaching a man that was walking by to ask about nearby inns he could rent a room at.

"Excuse me, could you.." Carl started asking the first person he came across.

"Piss off, I'm busy."

The man glared so aggressively, Carl just shrugged and moved on. Like the jump document said, the world was full of assholes. He decided to change his target.

Carl approached one of the stalls in the market place. He saw the man there was selling footwear and trying to entice customers. While Carl was looking at the vendor, he suddenly got a sense that the man was a decent sort that tried to make an honest living.

Huh, good to know his Heart of Snow Glazed Glass was working. Guess he needed to focus on an individual for a few seconds to get a reading, then, since he didn't get a sense of the first man he approached. He had been looking around more than focusing on the man, so that was probably why he was surprised by his reaction.

"Hello. Where do you think is a nice inn around here?" After getting the vendor's attention Carl asked while fingering the cyan colored coin. The man's eyes zeroed in on the coin. Just because he was a decent sort didn't mean he would turn down a tip for providing good information. He had a family to feed, after all.

"The Plum Gourd Inn is three streets down the left hand path." The man gave him some simple directions. Carl neutrally smiled and flipped him the coin before departing to follow the man's directions.

While walking along, Carl kept an eye out for anyone that might be targeting him, and observed the town as he walked. The town, or at least the area he was in, didn't seem particularly affluent, but it wasn't the slums either.

After several minutes, he arrived at the Plum Gourd. The courtyard style inn at least looked like it had decent upkeep, so Carl felt like it would make a decent place to start. The large building at the entrance to the courtyard property was a restaurant, and there were smaller individual buildings that had rooms for rent inside the courtyard.

Carl made his way to the manager and after a short conversation learned how much it would cost for a week stay at the inn. Carl bent over his briefcase and near silently muttered the amount he needed. Opening the briefcase, he pulled out 30 of the cyan coins and handed them over to the manager.

After which the manager called up a helper that showed Carl to his room. Pocketing the key the helper gave him, Carl entered the room and locked the door behind him. As he looked over the room he'd rented, he couldn't help but snort in amusement as a thought occurred to him.

"It's probably a good thing I didn't get that **I'm Surrounded By Assholes** drawback. I probably would have had someone trying to steal the room I had just paid for because he was so much more important than me. That seems to be a common trope for protagonists, some rich arrogant young master just has to throw his weight and self importance around, and is just _shocked_ when the protagonist doesn't bow down to him."

Carl let his magical senses flow out to inspect the room. He wasn't sure if he would recognize anything suspicious because the cultivation and magical worlds had absolutely no connection. Would his magic recognize a cultivation based listening array? But it was better than nothing.

Seeing that there was nothing immediately suspicious, Carl opened up a portal to his Warehouse. Inside he saw Rover relaxing in the living room.

"Heya, Rover. Anything unusual happen?" Carl greeted his familiar.

Rover gave the equivalent of a bird shrug and a negative chirp. Carl petted the adorable Phoenix for a while. Supposedly he could turn back into his dog form if he wanted, but Carl guessed that having wings and the ability to flash anywhere was too good to give up.

"Rover, I want you to be really careful. The world we are in is very dangerous. There are innumerable strong people who would love to capture you, and either enslave you or make you into potions ingredients." At Rover's indignant squawk, Carl faintly smiled and petted Rover in comfort. "Yeah, I know, they are horrible people. So you need to be very careful when wandering around the world. Not just the people, I'm sure other very strong animals would love to eat you. So be super cautious. It might be a good idea to stay close to home here in the Warehouse until we can test to see if your flaming ability would get you out of any methods they might have to capture you."

Upon seeing that Rover took his warning seriously, Carl was reassured. Later on when he'd integrated his craftsman knowledge, they could test some arrays and other things to be sure that Rover could escape when he needed to.

Carl then retrieved a set of ward stones and exited the Warehouse. He had soon set up defensive and alert wards around his room. He would be busy for several hours to several days. It was important that he have some defenses up to feel at ease in such an alien place.

Making his way to the bed in his rented room, Carl sat down. Settling his mind properly, he began meditating and soon dove into his mindscape. Looking around, he sighed at how messy it was with all the extra information just thrown in.

Carl decided to start with the medical knowledge. He started sorting the knowledge and memories that came with them into a medical knowledge section. Until now his medical knowledge hadn't been used very much. It consisted of what he'd learned in the HSDK world, making use of his martial arts skills to heal, and a scattering of spells from the HP world. He just hadn't been in situations where he needed the healing.

But now with the knowledge equal to the Medical Saint Yun Gu, Carl had to expand the medical wing storage to accommodate the huge influx of knowledge. As Carl was filing everything away, he was briefly reviewing it. His basic knowledge of biology increased by a large amount, especially with everything associated with Profound cultivation, veins, and entrances.

Carl learned that the number of Profound Entrances that everyone had was 54, but each person had a different amount of them open. An ordinary person would have only 10 entrances open. Someone with 20 entrances open would be considered an exceptionally gifted person.

So with his roll of 15 earlier on the jump document, with 25 entrances open he would have been considered a genius even though he had less than half of his entrances open. Carl was pretty happy he'd gotten the perks needed to have all of his entrances open.

Carl continued to sort the medical knowledge, occasionally pausing to go eat at the inn's restaurant so he could listen to the talk in the common room and start getting used to the world by eavesdropping on the various topics of conversation.

After some time sitting in the busy restaurant, Carl decided to attempt some more in depth information gathering. He cautiously extended his mixed telepathy and Legilimency skills towards one of the workers that was bustling around. He assumed that since the man was a lowly worker, then he would have low cultivation and low defenses.

Soon enough, Carl found himself inside the man's mind and searched it for information on the Empire and general goings on.

Carl learned a bit about the continent he'd been dropped on. The whole continent was ruled by the Illusory Demon Royal Family from the Demon Imperial City. The Royal Family, with the surname Huan, was the main branch. The first Demon Emperor was a Neon Sparrow Demon that had obtained the legacy of the Golden Crow, obtained the allegiance of Twelve very strong generals and their families, and with them had conquered the entire continent.

'Well, what a coincidence that I chose the Golden Crow legacy, and the royal family here has the Golden Crow bloodline. Did the world get modified when I picked the beast bloodline? If I had picked the Ice Phoenix, would the Royal Family's bloodline be that instead?' Carl idly wondered. Carl shrugged away the thought, since he had no Jump-chan to question, there was no point in thinking about it too much.

Every thousand years there was another Demon Emperor that would ascend the throne. The tenth generation Demon Emperor had gone missing over a hundred years ago and was presumed dead.

His son, the Little Demon Emperor, ascended the throne after his father's death, which was about 95 years ago. In addition to assuming the throne, the Little Demon Emperor had just married his older sister (which was something the Demon Royal Family did in order to keep the purity of the Golden Crow Bloodline high) when he disappeared on his wedding night. Nobody knew what had happened, but there were rumors that he had gone looking for the Demon Emperor's Seal that had disappeared at the same time his father disappeared.

The Demon Emperor's Seal was apparently the symbol of authority of the Royal family. It allowed the upcoming Demon Emperor to enter the Golden Crow's Holy Land that was in the center of the Golden Crow Lightning Flame Valley to receive the blessing of the Golden Crow Spirit that resided there.

The Golden Crow Lightning Flame Valley was a proving and training ground that opened every five years. The members of the Illusory Demon Royal Family, which included the Duke Palaces, and the 12 Guardian Families were allowed to participate. The valley was filled with strong flames and thunderclouds that led to the constant growth of fire spirits, lightning spirits, and other fire and lighting type demons, as well as many rare materials and treasures. So entering the valley was a good proving ground for the Empire's youth, as well as testing their luck and skill in obtaining rare cultivation resources.

So after her brother and newly wed husband had disappeared on their wedding night without consummating the marriage, the Little Demon Empress had ascended the throne. But her authority was shaky because of the missing Demon Emperor's Seal and her inability to enter the Golden Crow's Holy Land and receive the blessing of the Golden Crow.

When Carl thought about the situation, he was quite suspicious of the circumstances. The Little Demon Emperor was reportedly quite dedicated to his role and responsibility as the future Demon Emperor, so for him to go on some quest on his wedding night without insuring the next generation of his royal family could be born was out of character. Carl smelled a rat in the Empire.

In the hierarchy of the powers in the Empire, first was the Demon Royal Family, of which only the Little Demon Empress was left.

Next down was the 12 Guardian Families. They were the family/clans of the 12 generals that united under the original Demon Emperor, and so they had a large amount of power and authority in the empire.

Below the power and authority of the Guardian Families, there were a total of 103 Duke's Palaces, who were branch members of the Demon Royal Family.

Carl also learned that the former number one of the 12 Guardian Families was coincidently the Yun clan. Carl wondered if the family was related to Yun Che, the supposed protagonist of this world. It would be one of those things that made up a protagonists background, being a member of prestigious clan that was on the decline, so Carl wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

The number one family, the Yun Family, had been implicated in the death of the Demon Emperor and the disappearance of the Demon Emperor's Seal, so they had been suppressed for the past 100 years, hence why they were the former number 1 family.

With the information dump about the gossip in the Empire that Carl received from the people in the restaurant, he had a lot to think about. There were certainly deep currents in the Empire, and he would have to tread cautiously or he would be drowned.

Carl returned to his room and continued sorting his mind. He had moved on from the biology of cultivators and started going over the various herbs and animal parts used in to create medicine. Carl was pretty happy that he already had the knowledge of what plants and animals he would need to add to his farms. He was also thinking of how he would have to test his potions from the HP world to determine how they interacted with the bodies of cultivators and if it had the same effect as it did on wizards.

Carl finished up sorting his medical knowledge by the sixth day of his stay at the inn. Instead of continuing on to the other information, Carl checked out of the inn. He had had enough time to sort out some of the info dump in his head, got a bit of background on the world he was in, and had time to look through his papers that came with the briefcase from Uncle Pennybags, which included the locations of his various properties that followed him from world to world.

So with that information, it was time to change location to a more secure place that he owned in the town.

One of the things he'd discovered while looking over the financial information that automatically updated was that his restaurants in this world weren't doing as good as they should be, which was negatively affecting how many people stayed at his inns, and his income was lowered.

Carl made his way to the closest inn he owned in the town, which was on the outskirts of the Demon Imperial City.

Upon arrival, the workers immediately recognized him as the owner. In the HP world, Carl had investigated his properties, and found that the workers there were constructs like his farmers were. They were basically like VIs, Virtual Intelligences, that weren't self aware like an advanced AI would be. They did a fine job doing menial tasks, but they evidently didn't have a lot of initiative.

After meeting with the manager VI in his office and exchanging the pleasantries, Carl immediately got to the point and asked why their sales were hurting.

"I'm afraid I don't know, sir. Everything is running like it was in the Harry Potter world, where we were doing so well."

"Hmm. Show me to the kitchens. The main complaint is about the food, so let's start there."

"Yes, sir."

Carl followed the manager to the kitchen. Seeing the bustle, he didn't stop them from doing their job, but did have them bring him a dish that was already cooked so he could taste it, having them restart cooking the dish for the customer.

Once Carl tasted it, he could tell that something was missing from the food. After a week of eating the food at the Plum Gourd, he could tell that something vital was missing from the food being cooked at his properties, even if he couldn't pinpoint what it was at first.

"The only real difference in these dishes compared to the inn I was in before is the food source. Could it be that these dishes are missing the saturation of profound energies, so the cultivator obsessed people can taste the lack of profound energy? Well, I certainly can tell the difference after only a week in this world, so of course they can. I guess all the food I added from a magic world will not suffice for a cultivation world. So I've got to change my farms production over to a local product, or my revenue stream will disappear."

Carl and the manager returned to the office to discuss a plan of action.

"Okay, first off I want you to send workers out to the market place. They will get me saplings, seedlings, and seeds of all the local foods. We'll start growing the local stuff on the farms, and within a day the food should improve. While you're getting started on that, let all the other managers know the news so they can inform their customers in their cities that we've had a food sourcing problem, but that it will be fixed soon. Make sure they all know that once we've replaced our food stocks with local food, they are to do anything they can to attract the customers back. Have a weekend of free food, or a party, or banquet or whatever they think will be the best idea in their particular region to attract the customers back."

"Yes, sir, I'll get right on that."

"Good. Give me a room to stay in, and when your workers get back with the goods, send it on to me so I can introduce it into the farms as soon as possible. Oh, don't forget to get local meat animals too, can't have our meat dishes being inferior."

"Yes, sir." The manager then called several workers and got started on carrying out his orders while one showed him to his room.

Once there, Carl started meditating again, working on his new knowledge about crafting. Occasionally pausing as the workers came in with the seedlings, saplings, and animals. After the first afternoon, they had gotten all the local products they needed.

Carl reached out to the Heaven's Time Pearl and pulled himself inside. Looking around at the endless grassland and cloud covered sky, Carl whistled, impressed. The land was endless. There wasn't any visible source of the light, but everything was still lit up.

Carl opened up his Warehouse and joined his farmer VIs in tearing out the old profound energy-less food goods, and planting the new stuff from the ATG world after adding it to his Farmville market system so he could continue to replicate and grow the good stuff. Once everything was planted, Carl left the farmer VIs to their job.

It was something he would have to keep in mind on each new world. Making sure that whatever he grew would meet the market's expectations. His properties already had nearly a week of poor sales and worsening reputation because he'd been too focused on his own personal meditation that he hadn't noticed how poorly things were selling, so in the future he'd have to be more proactive.

That was the difference between hiring actual people and relying on the provided VIs. An actual person would have noticed the trend and sought to fix it, or at least let Carl know something was wrong, while the VIs just continued on their way, following their previous instructions with no deviation.

Carl then continued his meditation and memory sorting, starting on the crafting knowledge. There was just so much information; it took him quite a while to go through it, making sure he was familiar with each memory before filing them away.

He was fascinated by the methods and materials that craftsmen used. He couldn't wait until he got samples of the ores, crystals, stones, and profound beast parts and the beasts themselves so he could start producing the materials needed to actually build some of the arrays and devices he now had knowledge of.

After a week of sorting his crafting memories while under time dilation, Carl finished up with his crafting memories.

When Carl checked, he saw that his farms were now fully stocked and harvesting the new goods on a continual basis. He left the Heavenly Time Pearl's time dilated inner world and appeared back in his room in his inn. Less than a minute had passed by in real time for the week he'd spent in the Time Pearl.

Carl smiled happily at the Time Shenanigans he could pull.

He entered his Warehouse and, using the screen provided, had all his properties restocked with the new goods. He sent out the notice to his managing VIs to start their public relations campaign to try to attract their customers back.

Later that day, outside the inn, he watched the banners and posters being put up, advertising that they had solved their food sourcing problem and that the food was back to the quality they expected. Carl had of course tasted the dishes his VIs made with the local product and found it to have that profound energy taste that was missing from his other foods.

Over the next couple of days as Carl watched over his financial records, he was pleased to see the sales going back up to where they should be. Satisfied that things were proceeding properly, Carl felt it was time to return to his own efforts.

* * *

Inside his room, Carl finally opened his eyes and let out a long drawn out sigh.

"Well, that's finally done then." Carl muttered to himself. He had finally completed the sorting of his memories. It had taken a little over three weeks, not including the break to organize his new food source, to organize all the memories. But with the time dilation it had only been two weeks real time.

He now had ready access to all the information on healing, crafting, and cultivation in general in the ATG world, the cultivation method of the Great Way of the Buddha, and the information from his other perks that included retaining secrets, patiently planning, and being a sex fiend. That last one still made him snort in laughter, despite how useful it was.

Carl stood up from the bed he'd been sitting on cross legged while meditating and employing his Occlumency. After stretching out, he entered his Warehouse and poured himself a mug of Root Beer. Sitting down, he pulled out the Jade Tablet that had the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World inscribed on it. It was the item that came with the Golden Crow's bloodline. Now that he had all the rest of the information sorted, he was willing to add the information in the Jade Tablet into his mind.

Carl sank his mind into the Jade Tablet and started reading the information therein. The cultivation world was interesting in that they didn't generally have books to read. They had jade tablets that were accessed with the mind and profound energy. Despite his crippled veins at the moment, Carl's cultivation was at Elementary 1. Although he was still stuck at the very beginning for the time being, he had enough profound energy to be able to read the jade tablet.

There was so much information involved in the cultivation techniques that the only way to pass on the information in a timely and accurate manner was through the mind and profound senses. Once it was imprinted in the mind, the user could spend their time ruminating on the information and slowly digesting it while figuring out how to apply the information.

Carl spent several hours imprinting the seven stages on his mind. He knew he wouldn't be able to utilize it until he'd healed up his profound veins, but he wanted all the information available to him first before he went and healed himself. He wanted to be sure he maximized the capacity and utility of his profound veins on the first go around.

Once Carl finally finished imprinting and organizing the information in his mind, he took a break for food once more. It wasn't until the True Profound stage that he could go for a week without eating food, and he was hungry.

After filling his belly, Carl made his way to the Medical Bay. The few times he'd used the Medical Bay previously, Carl had just set it to automatic, since he didn't really know how to determine what to heal, and just relied on the programming to take care of things.

But now that Carl had the memories equivalent to a Medical Saint in his mind, he wanted to take an active part in his own healing process. He set the medical unit to scan only, and laid down while the scan took place. A few minutes later, it was done, and Carl brought up the information on a computer terminal in the bay.

It took some time for him to get used to the format the information was presented in, but Carl eventually got used to it. Once he'd gone over the information, he then looked at what the medical unit suggested for healing. And he was glad that he'd decided to go over the healing plan manually. Because while the suggested healing course would heal his profound veins, they didn't optimize the veins in the process. There were several tweaks and additions that Carl could see needed to be done, now that he had all the knowledge of a Medical Saint, that would make his Profound Veins much more robust and capable.

After fiddling with the machine for several hours, Carl succeeded in setting up the healing and conditioning treatment that would save him quite a bit of time in training his profound veins' endurance.

Once he had locked in the treatment, Carl laid down in the unit and let the program progress. The sensation of the profound veins healing and growing like they should have was uncomfortable. It wasn't painful, so much as itchy and a strange wiggling feeling. It felt a bit like he had dozens of small snakes in his body crawling around under his skin and muscles.

He was quite happy when the process was finally finished, and he could get up from the med unit. He stretched and jumped around, to test his body and how it felt now. Everything was where it should be and felt fine.

Carl made his way to his room, and sat down. He cautiously started his cultivation, inwardly chanting the mnemonics and sending the energy flooding into his body along the paths that the cultivation technique from the Golden Crow's legacy described.

The amount of energy flooding in was almost too much at first for Carl's amateur cultivation. Even though he had all the knowledge, he still needed to figure out how to replicate the knowledge for real. The Heavenly God's Spiritual Veins, with all the profound entrances open, were no joke.

But after fumbling around for a bit, he was able to steady his efforts and smoothly rotate the energy through his veins. It was feeling pretty damn good, feeling the energy collecting inside the veins in his body. The energy slowly started becoming denser and denser. And then suddenly it felt like something in his body _changed_, or upgraded or something. It kind of felt like the equivalent of shifting gears while driving a standard, he suddenly had more energy. He had just crossed a threshold, and now he had more power pooled up and it was denser.

Carl paused his cultivation and looked at the clock. He'd been in meditation for about 8 hours. Only 8 hours and he already advanced to Elementary 2. He got up from his meditation position, smiling at the success he'd had. According to the cultivation knowledge he had, that was pretty damned fast for a newbie.

Downstairs, Carl found Rover waiting for him, singing merrily. There was something about Rover that caught Carl's eyes. He was a bit different now.

"Hey, boy. How are you?" Carl asked. Rover chirped and almost danced happily in place. "Mind if I check you over?" At Rover's nod of agreement, Carl extended his senses towards the bird. Magically he seemed pretty much the same. But to his Profound senses Carl felt that the Phoenix in front of him was at the Elementary 2 stage. "Holy cow, so my familiar shares in my cultivation and advances with me? That's awesome. Put it there, Rover!" Carl held out his hand, and Rover gave him a low five in agreement that it was great news.

Carl decided to celebrate their success and poured out a large bowl of Root Beer for Rover and an even larger bowl for himself. He then changed into his animagus form, and started lapping up his delectable drink. Rover would take a few drinks, then sing for a bit, then drink some more.

Once Carl finished his bowl, he paused to inspect his form. He could still feel his Profound Veins even in his animagus form. Feeling the profound energy circulating through his body as a panther was an enjoyable experience. It made him feel a tiny bit more energetic and powerful. Compared to his already high physical abilities, the small level up was practically nothing, but something about the energy just felt so great.

Shrugging off the sensation, Carl changed back to his human form. Sitting down at his kitchen table, he pulled two boxes closer to him and looked at them contemplatively. Inside each of the boxes were one of the Evil God Seeds. The instructions that came with them were that he had to eat them one at a time.

The reason he even hesitated to eat them for now was because Carl was thinking about how in some of the stories, if someone ate something that had more energy than they could handle, they would explode. The instructions hadn't given any warnings about things like that, but he was still wary, even with his Nine Profound Exquisite Body perk that should prevent such things. Carl decided that he would take it a bit slow and careful with his cultivation until he got more practice.

He would hold off on eating the seeds until he'd trained up at least the first level of the Great Way of the Buddha, and gotten to Nascent 1. Better to be safe than sorry. He secured the boxes once more in his room, and started his practice again.

Carl sank into his mind, and started looking over the cultivation formula for the Great Way of the Buddha. According to the information within, it was also known as the Forbidden Heavenly Tome. It once belonged to a True God from the Primordial Era, who was known as the Rage God.

'The Great Way of the Buddha affects the cultivator's blood, meridians, muscles, skin, and hair. It doesn't even have the slightest relationship with my Profound Veins or Profound Strength. It depends on the strength of the soul and nature instead. Practicing the art depended on a person's comprehension.' Carl thought, reciting the basic information the technique had given him.

As Carl began contemplating the formula, his perk Heart of Snow Glazed Glass began showing its worth, helping Carl understand certain basic truths and relationships about the formula. As Carl sunk into contemplation, he found that his senses were cut off from his consciousness. He struggled against what seemed like a large white expanse of fog.

An aged voice rung out in his consciousness. "Fifteen year old youngster. Do you really have the ability to comprehend the 'Great Way of the Buddha'?"

"That's of course." Carl replied.

"Oh? Then what is your understanding?" The elderly voice asked.

"Why? Are you stuck then? Need some pointers from me?" Carl asked.

The old man's voice gave a harrumph. "This old man was going to help you, but now you are on your own. Can't even tell good from bad." He grumbled.

Carl chuckled a bit. "Old man, you're too easy to rile up. But you didn't even introduce yourself and were already asking for my innermost thoughts. That's kind of rude, you know. And you say I can't tell bad from good." Carl continued joking, implying it was the old man who was the bad one.

Another harrumph carried to Carl's mind, before the old man fell silent. Apparently the old man was pouting and wasn't willing to give up information in order to get information from Carl.

Carl then ignored the old man. He had been surprised that some old geezer had started talking in his head, and he was understandably wary of just what was going on. He didn't know if the old geezer was simply a remnant of consciousness of the Rage God who was the progenitor of the technique, or if he was some cultivator that was alive and somehow trying to get information from Carl to determine who was practicing the technique, or some such. Either way, Carl didn't feel like entertaining him unless the old man extended a bit of trust first by giving Carl some answers. It was his head and the old man was a guest. And as a guest, the old man should act like a guest, not the host.

Carl then thought about what the old man had said. Despite his wariness, he took the question seriously, even if he wasn't going to share with the old man. What was his understanding of The Great Way of the Buddha?

Frankly speaking, calling it the Great Way of the Buddha was a bit of a misnomer in Carl's opinion. The last owner of the technique was known as the "Rage God", so thinking that it only pertained to benevolence and kindness of a Buddha was a red herring. How else would he get the nickname of Rage God if he didn't have a bit of a violent streak?

It was also called the Forbidden Heavenly tome. The technique required strength of soul, comprehension, and absorbing energy from nature to advance.

It seriously sounded like the Sage Arts from Naruto.

The "Great Way" of the title also had Carl thinking of the Dao. And if there was one thing that was expounded in many cultivation tales, it was that everyone had their own version of, and understanding of, the Dao. An understanding that pertained specifically to them, and how they interacted and understood the laws of Heaven and Earth.

Carl began thinking about what was important to him, what drove him, and what inspired him. What was his Nindo, his Ninja Dao?

He remembered the scene he saw in the Mirror of Erised, and how the relationships, power, authority, and freedom that Carl saw his mirror form had made him feel.

To be the master of his fate. To have the power to build his own world, and protect those he loved. To destroy his enemies so they never had a chance to threaten them. To be as righteous as he wanted, or as sly as he felt like. He was the one to choose his actions. Not anyone else, and certainly not the Jumpchain. One day, he would be free of the aptly named chains.

And in that moment, when everything crystallized in Carl's mind, he felt the change. Energy began pouring into him. The energy filled every part of him, his muscles, his bones, his blood, his organs, even his hair. He could feel the change happening, the strengthening of his physical body.

Unknown to Carl, a phenomena appeared around his body where he sat. A six foot tall insubstantial silver pagoda appeared around Carl. The only one who might have seen this happen, Rover, was otherwise occupied. A six foot tall silver pagoda had also appeared around the Phoenix at the same time as the one appeared around Carl.

The two silver pagodas rotated 360 degrees before shrinking down and imprinting themselves into their respective foreheads. They were too small and faint to see properly, but the mark was there nonetheless to show their success.

Inside Carl's mind, he heard the old man exclaim in shock. "How is that possible!?" Before Carl regained control of his senses.

Carl chuckled in mockery at the old man's reaction. "Damned geezer showing up in my mind uninvited, thought I'd just bow down to your superior wisdom? Ptui!" Carl mock spat. "If you're in my mind you damn well better show me respect or you get none in turn. It's not like I took you on as my master or anything. And your shock at my accomplishment just shows how much you wouldn't have helped me, hehe."

Carl totally ignored how the old man's question had indeed set him on the right path. Give an inch, and they'll take a mile.

Getting up, Carl began testing his body after attaining the first step. He was very aware of his own strength, and could tell that he'd had a small boost in strength. "Well, I succeeded Rover!" Carl crowed in triumph as he got close to his familiar. "Whoa, what's that?" Carl looked closely at Rover's head. He could faintly see a silver speck that looked like a pagoda. Evidently, those who had their own mark could see the mark on other's foreheads.

Carl began laughing aloud, clutching his stomach. "Oh, damn! That is awesome Rover! You even get to share the Great Way of the Buddha! You're going to be the biggest, baddest Phoenix around!"

Rover began dancing, catching on to Carl's excitement. The two celebrated for a time, before Carl sobered up. Looking at the clock, he saw that he had been focusing on the Great Way of the Buddha for over a day.

"Well, damn. Time to eat again. You hungry?" Rover chirped a yes, so Carl began cooking up a feast for the two of them. "I tell you, Rover. It feels like all I've done lately is eat, cultivate, eat, cultivate. But hey, that's just the life of a murder hobo, right? The only thing that could possibly break the monotony is to go out and insult my betters, murder someone for drugs, and fight off all their relatives."

Carl chuckled. He joked, but those kinds of things had a way of starting a runaway reaction. Once you did one action, unless the person caught in the middle of it had a sudden decision to give up their life to their enemies, they had to stick it out to the bitter end. Ride the whirlwind, with no way to get off.

Once the feast was prepared, there was no more thoughts about what if scenarios in Carl's head, just the need to feed the beast in his belly. Looking over at Rover, Carl could see that the same need had gripped his familiar.

After cleaning up, Carl spent some time going over the financial reports for his properties. He then found all the additional items his VI employees delivered to his room to add to his Farms. There were some examples of different ores, crystals, and herbs. He was happy that he would be able to add those to his production line. He was still missing quite a lot of items because the cultivation world had a huge diversity of items. But they would show up eventually, one way or another.

Once all the business was taken care of, Carl settled down once more to start cultivating. Whatever else happened, personal strength was still a hugely important aspect of life in the ATG world. And a journey of a thousand miles and all that.

* * *

Less than a week later Carl was sitting in bed, grinning hugely. He had just broken through to the Nascent 1 level. All his perks and the legacy of the Golden Crow really sped up his cultivation speed. He'd learned from some of the customers that the geniuses of the cultivation world would be lucky to break through to Nascent 1 after 3 months. And that would label them a veritable genius.

And here Carl was, breaking through in just under a week.

One of the interesting side effects was that he could see Rover actually growing bigger with each breakthrough. Carl guessed it was a side effect of cultivation, because the profound beasts were usually much larger than their normal counterparts. Seeing a wolf the size of an elephant or larger wasn't that unusual.

Now that Carl had broken through, it was time to eat the first Evil God Seed. He retrieved the two boxes. Opening the first box, he saw inside was a marble sized glass looking ball. It was colored a brilliant scarlet.

"Well, looks like the flame seed is first, Rover." Carl said as he looked over at his familiar. "Bottoms up!"

And before he could second guess himself, he swallowed the seed. He could feel the small seed dissolve into a fiery liquid that sank to his stomach, before spreading throughout his body. He felt a raging surge of power bursting through his Profound Veins. A scarlet light was shining out of his body.

And just as suddenly, the heat disappeared from his body. The scarlet light pulled back inside his body. But the huge amount of energy was still inside his veins. Carl swiftly started employing his cultivation technique he had learned from the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World to make use of the profound energy to advance his cultivation level.

He spent an indeterminate amount of time pushing the excess energy through his veins. He felt a huge chunk of the energy being siphoned into his inner world that he gained from the Nine Profound Exquisite Body. The rest of the energy was being used to advance his cultivation level.

Nascent 2. Shortly after he reached Nascent 3. The breakneck speed he was leveling up was exhilarating. If it wasn't for the **Advanced Leveling **perk that made sure his foundation wouldn't suffer for the fast upgrades, he would be worried. Nascent 6. Nascent 7.

The amazing amount of energy finally began to slow down, and he sighed in relief and amazement. He had reached Nascent 10 in such a short time due to the energy inherent in the seed. And judging by just how much energy had gone into his inner world, he could have advanced much, much further if it had been applied to his cultivation level. If it didn't blow him up, that was.

"Right, there is that. Don't blow yourself up in your quest to get strong." Carl sarcastically warned himself. "Well, now. What should I do next?" He was eyeing the box the seed for water was in, pondering if he dared take it now. "Right, take things in stages, and don't blow yourself up." He reminded himself, packing away the box for later.

Carl looked over at Rover, who was looking very fine. His feathers were a deeper scarlet color, and he was even larger than before. "Well, celebration time with Root Beer?" At Rover's enthusiastic response, Carl laughed and went to get their drink of choice.

Holding up his mug, while setting down Rover's bowl, Carl announced out loud. "Here's to us! The dynamic duo!" Rover chirped happily. "Now, drink up Robin!" At Rover's indignant squawk at being called Robin when he was so clearly Batman, Carl laughed aloud. "Just because you can disappear whenever you want doesn't make you the Dark Knight. Robin's a bird, and you're a bird. Ipso facto, you're Robin." Carl declared while running from Robin-er…Rover's winged attack, laughing uproariously.

Eventually Carl was cornered, while an enraged avian hissed at him. He didn't even know birds could hiss! "Fine! Fine! You're not Robin." Carl finally gave. Carl paused while Rover looked at him expectantly. "Because you're Batman." He stated in a growly voice.

Rover chirped happily and flew back to his bowl of Root Beer, having won the argument.

"The happiest damned Batman I ever saw." Carl muttered to himself as he collected his own mug, chuckling at Rover's antics.


	37. ATG 3

[AN: Just a heads up so this note won't be in the middle of the story, and so I don't get people poking at me for making a mistake that I deliberately chose to interpret to Carl's benefit.

For Carl's **High Quality Armor** item, it describes it as "This armor looks however you want it to look…" Now, some might decide that it means you get once chance to have it look a certain way, and that's it. But Carl has decided in his mind that the armor will shift to look like whatever he wants, and will change to accommodate him whenever he wants. Kind of like a not alive version of the Symbiote that Peter Parker got. So the Jumpchain took Carl's belief that that's how it should work, and made it work that way for him.]

* * *

Carl observed the changes in his body and strength now that he was at Nascent 10. The profound energy did cause a small upgrade to his physical body as he gained cultivation levels. But compared to his Ki and the Great Way of the Buddha, the changes were negligible at the moment.

The higher he cultivated, though, the more changes it would bring to his physique, the more profound energy he would have access to, and the more powerful his abilities and attacks would be.

So while his profound energy did incrementally upgrade his physique as he leveled, the way that his profound energy would truly shine is through the use of profound skills and techniques, powered by profound energy. And so for the next segment of training Carl decided he would focus on mastering the use of his profound energy, and practice the techniques he obtained.

Even though his perks would keep his cultivation foundation from being unstable due to the rapid advancement of his profound levels, he still had to spend some time getting used to the upgrade in energy and practice his profound skills to make sure he was in total control of his profound energy. Otherwise he would be a pushover when it came to actual battle, wasting his energy left and right while he kept missing the target.

Standing up, Carl looked once more at the other Evil God Seed. "Yeah, I'll get to you later. You'll likely bump up my profound level a ridiculous amount again, and it will be even more difficult to start getting fine control of my profound energy. Best to start learning control when it's still pretty small. For now, it's time to practice." He put the box away for later and thought about using the Heavenly Time Pearl for his training ground, since he was sure his dojo wouldn't be up to snuff for his profound technique practices.

'It did say that it was one of the two best Heavenly Treasures for cultivation. So I should totally be using it.' Carl didn't even want to talk about his Heavenly Treasure out loud, not even when he was positive he was alone and no one would overhear him. If anyone got any idea he had one of the Heavenly Treasures, they would chase him down to the ends of the earth. He didn't want to be forced to live the next ten years inside his Warehouse or in time dilation inside the pearl to escape the death hunt that would ensue.

Did he even need to mention that murder hobos were greedy and had no problems hunting people down who found great treasures if they didn't have enough power or a large enough force to protect themselves?

Carl called for Rover, who appeared in a flash from where he had been hanging out. Carl whistled while checking out Rover's new look. "Looking good, Rover!" Rover preened in pride in his appearance.

His phoenix familiar was even larger and fiercer looking, now that he too was Nascent 10. Carl could no longer have Rover sit on one shoulder, since he'd grown too big. And Carl wasn't going to let his familiar awkwardly perch with one leg on each of his shoulders while his head was all scrunched up under Rover's body. Too undignified.

Carl laid a hand on Rover's head, and reached out with his profound senses to the Heavenly Time Pearl that was merged with him. He pulled them both into the time dilated space inside the pearl.

Carl once more eyed the sight of the inside of the Time Pearl. It was a simple, flat grassland, that extended as far as the eye could see. Looking up Carl saw no sign of blue sky, since the entire sky was covered by grey clouds. There was no specific light source, but everything was lit up for him to see. It wasn't particularly impressive, but it went on _forever_. Even with his enhanced vision, it just dwindled into nothing before he saw anything different.

"We'll be here for a while, Rover. I'll open up the Warehouse where we can get food while we train. But we both need to get used to this new profound energy. It's not exactly overwhelming me yet, since I've already gotten so strong with Ki, but it's best to learn control when we have so little power, so when we get stronger it won't overwhelm us." Carl advised Rover.

Ever since Rover had been upgrading his profound level in lockstep with Carl, he'd been getting more intelligent. One of the ways these cultivation worlds usually worked was that when the Profound Beasts, or Demons as they were sometimes called, cultivated, they got progressively more intelligent. And eventually they gained the ability to transform into a human form. For whatever reason, the human form seemed to be ideal for cultivation. It gave a perfect balance between comprehension ability and profound energy absorption ability.

The first generation Demon Emperor was one such being that cultivated until they could transform into a human form, and many of the founders of the families in the Demon Illusory Realm were originally Profound Beasts, or Demons, that attained a human body, After that, any offspring they had started off with a human body, even though they retained their beast origin bloodline and abilities.

Carl wasn't sure just what the future would bring concerning Rover's cultivation and possible change into a human form. When Rover got high enough in cultivation and gained full intelligence and self awareness, and especially when he gained a human form, would he then count as a companion to the Jumpchain? Would he be left behind in this world until Carl came back for him? Or would his status as a familiar allow him to piggyback along with him as he had been already?

There wasn't anything Carl could do about it, so he threw the concern into the back of his mind for the time being. The only way he could think of to make sure that Rover wasn't left behind was to not cultivate so he wouldn't make that change. But in a world where cultivation was might, and might made right, it made no sense to pause his cultivation for nebulous worries about possible futures. His concern would be answered in the future one way or the other.

While Carl started focusing on his upcoming practice, Rover flew off to practice his abilities on his own, so they wouldn't get in each other's way.

In the meantime, Carl sank his awareness into his inner world. He was impressed with the energies that pooled there. There was his Magic, his Ki, his Profound energy, and there was also the different elemental energies that Carl had affinity with. The strongest and most abundant elemental energy was Fire. Ever since he ate the Fire Seed, that was the biggest element there. Aside from that, there was wind and also shadow elemental energy.

Carl was a bit surprised the first time he saw the shadow energy, but soon determined that his animagus form of a Shadow Panther had given him a talent with the element. The quality and quantity was about the same as the wind element affinity that the **Cultivation** perk had given him.

Inside his inner world, among the energies there, were floating three items. His profound sword / goblin blade, his profound armor, and his Ark. Carl hadn't paid attention to the three items until now because he'd been so focused and excited to work on his cultivation. But now he thought it was past time to get a feel for them.

He first pulled out his blade and armor. They had been bathing in his energies and getting stronger while inside his inner world. If only for that reason alone, Carl decided that anytime he wasn't training or using them, he would store them inside his inner world. They needed to soak up every bit of the various powers he had access to in order to really get strong.

Since he was at the peak of Nascent Profound, the sword and armor were at the peak of True Profound. With a thought he wore the armor, and his blade was on his hip. He played with the ability of the armor to look like what he wanted. It shifted to a set of Halo armor. Then he shifted it into Iron Man's armor.

Carl chuckled amusedly at his cool armor. "Rule of cool. You can't be a recognized badass unless you look the part."

He then had the robes shift to look like an expensive set of robes that hinted that he had money but didn't flaunt it. His long disused perk **Fashion Chaser **from the BtVS universe had informed him what would make him look like a member of a well off local family. He needed to get used to wearing the local garb so he didn't stick out too much.

When he finally started interacting with the people in the ATG world, he needed to look the part. He wouldn't really need to shift his facial features too much to pass unnoticed, because while walking around earlier he'd seen a wide range of facial features and even hair colors. So his normal brown didn't seem too out of place when there was natural blue and orange hair colors out there.

And first impressions were important. If he went around dressed as a homeless bum, then people would treat him like that. If he dressed the part of a rich son of a well off clan, then people were likely to treat him like that.

Carl next pulled out the Ark, and watched as it appeared floating in front of him. It looked like a 40 foot long wooden boat. Jumping on the boat, Carl willed it to go forward. It started moving at a sedate walking pace. Carl tried urging it to go faster, even pouring all his profound energy in to push it faster. It started moving at a nice, slow jogging pace. Carl sighed. Apparently he didn't have enough energy to power it properly.

With a thought, he reached out to the Ark and willed himself inside it. Carl was sucked inside the dimensional space of the Ark. Looking around, he saw that it appeared like a regular world. He was on the outskirts of a forest, with a large castle in front of him. Since he was the owner, he had a vague mental impression of what was inside the Ark's space. Running over what was available inside, Carl wasn't too impressed. Besides a lot of land, there wasn't much there.

Carl figured that if he didn't have his Warehouse, Farms, and other abilities and perks then he would be super happy about the dimensional world that came with the Ark. But as it was, he didn't really have a use for it for the time being.

Since there was nothing of particular note, Carl exited the Ark once more. He sent the Ark back into his inner world. He was a little disappointed that the Ark wasn't a bit easier to use. It didn't have a power source or even a method to store power for later use. So until he found some kind of battery that could be used, and hopefully recharged, to power the Ark, it would have to remain in his inner world.

If he was to think of an immediate use for the Ark, he could maybe plant local herbs in the Ark space that could be used as medical treatment or refined into cultivation resources. He would get to that later, after he trained up some, if he needed more farm space.

Deciding that he had delayed enough, Carl focused on his training. He unsheathed his sword and began running through the katas and exercises he had learned from the HSDK world. After he had practiced the moves, and warmed up, he started channeling his magic, casting a large variety of curses and jinxes as he practiced his combat forms.

Now that he was warmed up and in the right mindset, Carl mentally reviewed the three profound skills he'd gotten from the **Cultivation** perk. An attack, defense, and movement skill, all geared towards the element he'd picked to have an affinity with through the **Cultivation** perk, Wind.

Each of the skills relied on profound energy to power them. They were only low level skills, which was perfect for his current profound level. The attack skill was a wind cutting skill.

He concentrated his profound energy in the method described, and a blade of wind started forming in front of him. Carl observed how his profound energy gathered up the wind element and constantly added it in, while some of the wind element escaped the technique.

The technique made use of the way wind was always flowing, always moving. But it used that aspect to assemble a dense blade of wind. Carl sent the blade of wind flying forward and down, landing on the ground a dozen feet away.

The explosion of earth from the wind blade wasn't very impressive. Carl moved over and observed the shallow gouge in the ground that was a result of the wind blade slicing the ground. It wasn't particularly impressive, but it was only Carl's first time utilizing the skill. Even though he had all the knowledge about how the skill should work, taking that knowledge and applying it in the real world was a different matter.

Everyone's mind worked differently, so Carl would have to continue to practice using the technique to figure out how best to maximize the technique activation speed, cutting edge, and speed of the technique.

The technique was useless if it was too slow to hit the target, or if Carl couldn't use it instinctively and without a thought in the midst of combat.

Carl then moved on and thought over the details of the defensive technique he was given. It was a method to harden the wind around him into a basic shield that could stop or slow down attacks below a certain power threshold. It was better at stopping physical attacks than attacks based off of elemental energy, so the defensive technique had its pros and cons, but was still useful.

Carl spent several seconds forming up a dense shield of air in front of him. Poking the shield, Carl wasn't particularly impressed. It didn't even feel very strong. Maybe if he played up the aspect of wind that he'd already seen, that it was constantly moving?

He spent several more minutes figuring out how to make the wind the shield was made of rotate faster. Once he thought he had it, Carl lightly punched the wind shield. His fist seemed to slide away from his target.

"Huh, that could be useful. Instead of attempting to stop a blow, I should practice deflecting enemy attacks with the wind shield. Just a little bit of misdirection of attacks will make dodging that much easier."

Now that Carl had a basic idea of the defense method he would develop with the technique, he moved on to the movement technique. The technique was a method of forming the wind in several ways to speed up his ability to move in combat.

He could solidify the air into objects that he could use to push off against. With the air steps he could change directions when the enemy was least expecting it, or use it as kind of starting blocks that sprinters used to push against and get maximum acceleration on a charge. If he was coordinated and skilled enough, he could even use it to "airwalk".

The warnings in the technique advised against using airwalk except in the most dire situations, since it took a huge amount of profound energy to support the user's own body, for some reason. There were even examples of cultivators that thought they had mastered the technique and used it over a large canyon, who subsequently fell to their deaths.

Carl gulped nervously when he reviewed the warning in his mind. He had already started planning to use the technique exactly like that. Perhaps he would be a bit more circumspect and keep safety in mind.

Now that Carl had a basic understanding of the three techniques, he spent the next several hours practicing the three techniques. His activation speed was still sluggish. Trying to get a feel for how he could utilize the techniques into a coherent battle strategy was taking quite a bit of work. Just as he was starting to feel like he was getting a bit better, Rover flamed in to where Carl was training, singing a certain song that Carl had gotten familiar with over the years.

"Hey, Rover. Food time?"

Rover indicated enthusiastic agreement, causing Carl to chuckle in agreement. Opening the portal, Carl entered his Warehouse and started preparing another feast for the two of them. His farms would keep producing food while in the Time Pearl, so they would have quite the stockpile once they came out, so he was more than willing to create large amounts of food for them to devour. And training was energy intensive, so they needed the calories.

While they were eating, Carl had a thought that he hadn't considered before. "Hey, Rover, come here a second." At Rover inquisitive chirp, Carl answered. "Ever since I got all that medical knowledge, I haven't checked you over. I don't even know how many Profound Entrances you have open, or anything really about your physical condition. So I wanted to check that out."

Rover chirped agreement, and waddled close to Carl at the table. Carl spun a probe of profound energy, sending it into Rover's body as he scanned his familiar. He was somewhat shocked to see that Rover also had 54 profound entrances opened, and his body was quite sturdy, due to the Way of the Great Buddha. Carl related all that information to Rover, who preened proudly, causing Carl to chuckle. He was also proud his familiar was awesome.

After he had scanned Rover, Carl thought he should keep better track of his own condition and progress as well, so he decided to do a full scan of his own situation. After cleaning up the meal, Carl sat down on the couch while Rover watched an episode of a T.V. show they had.

Mentally filtering out the sounds of the show so he could concentrate, Carl sank his profound energy probe into his body. As he scanned his body, he saw many of the things he already knew would be there. Centered in his head was his magical core. In his heart was his Ki core. And behind his navel was his dantian where-

His dantian wasn't there.

What did he do wrong in his cultivation that he hadn't formed a dantian?!

According to all the books he'd read, when he started cultivating he should have created a dantian core where his profound energy would pool and store his profound energy. It would be connected to all his meridians and send energy throughout his body. As he progressed in cultivation, his dantian should progress too, and the flow of energy through his body should upgrade it.

So what exactly was happening, what did he do wrong?

Carl brought up his knowledge he'd gotten from the **Cultivation **and **Genius Doctor **perks. He reviewed the information, and soon realized something. The cultivation in the ATG world was different from all the other stories he'd read. Carl face palmed for letting his previous knowledge and assumptions blind him to what was actually in front of him and what was actually happening so that he had panicked at a false alarm.

In the ATG world, everything was about Profound Veins. Profound energy was stored and circulated by the veins, while the profound entrances determined how much profound energy he could hoover up.

Now that he wasn't panicking over some imagined error, Carl relaxed once more and continued his scan. He observed his inheritance body types, and how they affected him. Only as he was observing his Nine Profound Exquisite Body, did he realize that the entry for all the various energies that would pool in the inner world was behind his navel, where his dantian would have been.

'Interesting. I don't have a dantian, but the channel for my various energies to enter the inner world is where the dantian would be. Coincidence? I think not!' Carl figured there was some kind of significance to that little fact. It would be interesting to see how it would interact with a different cultivation world's system if he found himself in another one in the future.

Carl continued inspecting his body, and saw that every bit of his body, from blood to bone to muscle, had a scarlet tinge to them that felt of fire. 'That must be the effect of the Evil God Seed of Fire. Every bit of me is attuned to fire. So that's why I become immune to it.' Carl concluded.

Thinking of the Evil God's Seeds, he turned his attention to his profound veins that were the Evil God's Profound Veins. He soon saw the seven gates that came from the Evil God's bloodline. It looked like he only had access to the first gate: Heretic Soul. When opened, it would amplify his profound energy by 2-3 times.

'That would be a big boost to fighting against people of a higher cultivation from me. But I'll have to practice opening the gate sometime soon to get a feel for using it before I need it in a desperate battle.' Carl thought. 'Using an unproven technique in combat is only for desperate times. And since I've got time to get used to it, there's no need for me to not be practiced in its use.'

As he continued to trace all the changes in his body, he saw certain drops of blood that were different from the rest of his blood. They were more…robust. 'They must be the blood essence from the Dragon God and Golden Crow legacies that change and enhance my physical being.' Carl concluded.

And with a bit more focus, he could tell the drops apart based on the feel of them. There were the six drops of Dragon God blood that had an indomitable feel to them. Like a Dragon God should, looking down on all.

There were the six drops of the Golden Crow blood that burned with fire and disdain for everything around it, knowing that nothing was safe from its flames' destructiveness.

Then Carl saw something he didn't expect. There were two more drops of blood that were out of place. It wasn't from him, the Golden Crow, or the Dragon God. Scanning the drops of blood, he soon determined it to be Phoenix blood, based on the feel. After he'd scanned Rover, he had a pretty good idea of what a Phoenix felt like.

'Huh, looks like the sharing goes both ways with Rover. It was not just me sharing my cultivation and opening of profound entrances, looks like I'm getting something from him too. That's actually pretty good. Phoenix's have amazing regenerative abilities, so it can only benefit me. I wonder if I'll get more drops as we level up our profound cultivation? Only time will tell.'

'But wait a sec.' Carl paused as a thought came to him. 'If he's sharing his blood essence with me, why isn't he getting any of the blood essence from me? Is it because I've only got a few drops of blood from the legacy, but I'm not really a Dragon or Golden Crow, so I can't really generate it and share it, while he is 100% phoenix, so he can share some with me? That makes sense, I guess.'

Once Carl finished his self health scan, he meditated for a bit to digest his new knowledge, and really integrate it into himself. He then filed everything in the appropriate section of his mind. It wouldn't do to leave his mental room messy.

After Carl was finished with his meditation, he returned back to the Heavenly Time Pearl's fields and pulled forward in his mind the information he gained from the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World to practice the first stage.

The Jade Tablet he had received as part of the legacy had seven stages. The first two stages were foundational skills, meant to give him a cultivation method and build his affinity with and control over fire. Only when each stage was mastered should he move on to the next stage. It included benchmarks in his skill and ability to control flames so that he knew when he had mastered each stage.

Carl started the exercises in the first stage as he summoned fire and started manipulating it. It actually felt incredibly easy. The fire resonated in Carl's very blood, causing him to have a really positive feel about the beautiful, mesmerizing flames. There was nothing better than to play with fire. Carl grinned hugely at the effect his Golden Crow blood was having on him. Fire now felt comfortingly like home.

Over the next few days Carl continued his routine of cultivation and training. He could feel his mastery of the techniques rise incredibly swiftly. He had already mastered the first stage of the Golden Crow's legacy. He had integrated his three wind techniques into his fighting style. He used the wind blades either to enhance his sword's cutting edge, or used them as a second and third blade to make multiple attacks at the same time to fluster and overwhelm his future opponents.

'It must be the effects of the Heart of Snow Glazed Glass.' Carl speculated. 'When the perk said incredible comprehensive abilities, they weren't joking. The grading curve for "incredible" was probably wrecked because the jumpchain has access to the entire universe. Comparing the label "incredible" would mean different things, depending on the perspective. Compared to a dinky, hole in the wall country, someone with 20 profound entrances open would be incredible, but compared to the entire world, they wouldn't even be considered mediocre. So for the jumpchain to label it as "incredible", when it has the entire universe to compare to, really means something.'

Carl also enjoyed his movement technique, being able to, in an instant, deploy his windsteps to make himself incredibly mobile. Even just the little things, like being able to shift his weight or momentum while airborne, would confuse his opponents.

Another thing Carl noticed over the past few days was that at different times, even when he wasn't actively cultivating, he would feel profound energy entering his veins. After a short investigation, he found one more aspect of his familiar bond with Rover that went both ways. When he or Rover actively cultivated, a portion of the profound energy would be shared with the other. So the two of them were benefitting from each other's cultivation, which could either speed it up or slow it down, depending on how dedicated or lazy the other side of the familiar bond was. Thankfully Rover wasn't lazy and was more than willing to pull his own weight.

After several days of his cultivating and training, Carl broke through into the True Profound level. Rover of course was right there with him in the break through. Rover increased in size once more by a few inches. While Carl didn't have any outward changes to his body like Rover, the amount and density of profound energy available in his profound veins had a huge jump.

That huge jump in amount and density of profound energy available was the reason it was generally accepted knowledge that someone from a lower cultivation realm couldn't possibly win in a fight against someone who was a realm higher. At the very least, someone from the True Profound realm should easily be able to defend against and wear out someone from the Nascent Profound realm, simply on the fact that he had more profound energy that was denser and stronger.

But when someone had all kinds of bloodlines, er..Inheritor legacies, profound energy multipliers, and body upgrades like Carl did, that kind of reasoning could be thrown out the window, to a certain degree. Even though he could punch above his weight class by a bit didn't mean that as a new True 1 level cultivator that he could take on an Emperor 1 Throne cultivator. They would still kick his butt.

But that didn't mean that Carl and Rover couldn't enjoy their current success. So they had another celebration to commemorate their advancement by watching some movies while enjoying some popcorn and Root Beer. It was something mindless and relaxing to do after they had been training hard for a few days. Halfway through the movie, Carl shifted to his panther form and lounged on the rug in front of the couch. There was nothing more lazy and relaxing than being a cat being lazy. It felt so good.

After another few days, when Carl had judged that his cultivation was as good and stable as it could be, and he had a good handle on controlling his profound energy, he pulled out the Evil God Water Seed. Looking at it for a moment, and then looking over at Rover, to see he too was ready, Carl popped the marble size blue seed into his mouth.

The experience was pretty much the same as when he ate the fire seed, except that instead of a burning sensation, he felt a deep cold spreading through his body, changing it on a fundamental level, and the light shining from him was a deep blue instead of scarlet.

He was already prepared for the rush of chaotic energy in his profound veins, having experienced it once before. He actively worked to channel the chaotic flow through his veins, struggling hard to upgrade his profound level as much as he could, to maximize the opportunity while he had it. That was his last Evil God Seed, after all, there were no more after that.

His profound level kept jumping up crazily fast. It finally came to a stop when he reached True Profound 10, while the rest of the profound energy was funneled into his inner world, where the water elemental energy joined the rest of the energy types.

Carl was proud that he managed to use so much of the energy for his profound level advancement. Because for each level he grew, he needed a larger and larger amount of energy to advance to the next level.

It was basically like a video game character leveling up. The higher the level, the more experience needed for the next level. So while his perks ensured he would never have a bottleneck and that he could advance just as fast at Sovereign Profound as he did at Elementary Profound, the need for a much larger pool of energy still took a certain amount of time to gather.

Carl once more ran scans on his and Rover's bodies. Rover was still mostly scarlet colored, but now he had tints of blue color underpinning the scarlet on his feathers. Inside both their bodies, in every cell, the red-fire color was joined by the blue-water color, indicating their affinity for, and immunity to, water based elemental damage.

Over the past few days as Carl became proficient with the fire element due to the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning world, he had come to greatly enjoy his time playing with fire.

So now that he had an unparalleled affinity to water, Carl decided he would test his new affinity out. He dug out a hole in the ground, and poured water in to create a pool. He could feel a deep connection with the water when he concentrated on it. And when he tried to shape it, he could control what it did. He played for some time, making different shapes and pretending he was a water bender like in the Avatar cartoon. Good thing only Rover was there to see him.

He tried to use the exercises in the first stage of the Golden Crow's legacy but switch it up with water, and it didn't go very well. The water wouldn't respond to the exercises properly. Carl very quickly realized this was due to the fundamental differences between water and fire. At his level of comprehension of the water and fire laws, he couldn't really come up with the proper exercises out of the blue, so to speak, to learn to control water. It would require a lot of time sunk into it to feel out his control and connection to water before he could get anywhere.

Because of not having a guide and how much time he would have to sink into his study of water to get anywhere, Carl eventually decided to focus on fire and the Golden Crow's legacy for the time being. Trying to figure out the secrets of water, and how to turn it into a combat ready weapon, would take too long at the moment. Since he already had a legacy and guide in the use of Fire, he would focus on that for the time being.

In the future he would keep his eye out and try to collect cultivation or battle techniques related to water so he could advance his understanding and control over water. But until then, or until he reached a bottleneck in his studies of fire, he would focus on what he had now.

Carl then continued his training and cultivation schedule over the next couple of weeks. He was also making good progress on cultivating the Great Way of the Buddha. His incredible comprehension made the early levels a snap to understand, and after only a few weeks he was close to breaking through to the next level. He could feel it was only a smidge away.

But his next breakthrough wasn't with his body enhancing technique, but with his profound level. He finally broke through into Spirit Profound level 1. Carl thought 'finally', but if anyone else had heard him complain about how "long" it took to only spend a few weeks to go from Nascent 10 to Spirit 1, they would definitely want to beat him up.

Carl was very happy with the perk that insured he would have no bottlenecks. When he broke through, it felt like a new tier up. His veins and profound energy density shot up a good amount, and felt so much more powerful and responsive.

After scanning his body, he found that he had 4 drops of Phoenix blood. Evidently, each time he and Rover attained a new realm, it would allow Rover to share one drop of blood with him.

Naturally Carl and Rover celebrated another realm upgrade. They were only halfway through their movie when they suddenly popped out of the Heavenly Time Pearl inner world, and found themselves sprawled on the floor of Carl's room in the inn.

"Mreow?!" Carl blurted out.

Oh yeah, he was still in his panther form. Carl shifted back to his human form. "What the hell?!" Carl repeated himself.

Sending his profound senses to the Time Pearl, Carl saw that it seemed to be empty of energy. Apparently like the Ark, it needed energy to be used. At least he got a bit more than a month out of it before it kicked him out. Carl guessed that it was from whatever energy had already been in the pearl when he got it. He certainly hadn't added any energy to the pearl on his own. He watched the pearl for a bit, and saw that it didn't seem to be getting any more of an energy charge than before.

Apparently he had to actively feed it energy? He started sending his profound energy to the Time Pearl. After half an hour of charging it, he again investigated how much it had filled up. Carl sighed in despair at the miniscule amount. He hadn't even gotten .01% filled up. Obviously, these Heavenly Treasures were Heavenly Energy Hogs.

'Well, looks like my plan to not leave the pearl until I was Sovereign 10 level is scuppered.' Carl sighed. It would have been so much easier to wait out the 10 years in the cultivation world if he had been a high enough level that most people would leave him alone. 'At least I'm not still a tiny Elementary level ant though.'

Carl decided to send the Heavenly Time Pearl into his inner world where his energy battery was. It could sit in there with the Ark and his profound blade and armor while it charged from the energy he sent there.

Eventually he would gain enough of a charge to jump back in and continue to blatantly cheat the system. With his comprehension and no bottleneck perks, he didn't have to worry about shaky foundations or anything from cultivating straight to the top. And while he may not have gained high level techniques while solely cultivating, he would have more than mastered what he did have.

And considering he had the Golden Crows legacy that had the most powerful flames, Carl figured just those techniques alone would have seen him be at the top of the food chain.

After finishing his investigation with the Time Pearl, Carl looked over at Rover who was giving him inquisitive looks. "Well, looks like our training field is on cool down for the time being, Rover. Want to finish the movie?"

At Rover's affirmative trill, Carl opened up the Warehouse, and the duo returned to their previously scheduled movie party.

* * *

The next morning dawned bright and cheery. Carl stepped out of his room at his inn and looked around at the surroundings. He had been away for over a month, even though it was only one night real time.

Rover was chilling in the Warehouse, while Carl kept the small portal stuck to the inside of his sleeve while it was open. With Rover's Phoenix abilities, he could flash out anytime he wanted, but Carl's warnings about the dangers of the world kept him close to home until they both had gained more strength to defend themselves with.

Carl was leaving the small town that was on the outskirts of the Capital behind, so he could stay at his headquarters that was located in the capital. He planned to hire some workers to act as intermediaries for him, to start gathering different rare resources so he could start adding them to his farms. And being in the capital would get him closer to the center of trade, where so many more goods and services were available.

While he had been in the small town, Carl had learned that the Illusory Demon realm had only a few small sects. Most of the large organizations of cultivators were families and clans. So while he was in the capital, he planned to do more research (no, not Jiraiya style research) and learn more about the sects and families, to see if he wanted to join any of them so he could have mob style protection for the next ten years.

Carl had just taken his first step on his journey, not even leaving the inn's courtyard, when he felt something grab his ankle, surprising him. Looking down, he saw a small white bundle of fur latched onto and gnawing on his ankle. Thankfully, the small dog was only at the Nascent Profound level, and was unable to get past his Earth level armor.

Carl lifted up his leg and watched as the small dog dangled in the air, refusing to let go. Carl could feel the corner of his mouth twitching as he watched the tenacious little cute beast.

A thirteen year old girl with pointed ears and semi-transparent butterfly wings on her back came running up just then. "Xiao Bai! You can't go running off and attacking people like that!" The girl cried as she grabbed the dog and pried its jaws off Carl's ankle.

Carl almost face palmed at the amusing scene. He had forgotten about his **Profoundly Delicious **drawback. It looks like he'd have to start being more alert to beasts around him, even just pets.

After snatching up her dog, the young girl looked up at Carl, a little shyly. "Sorry, mister. Xiao Bai is still pretty young. I'll teach him better!"

"That's alright. Just keep a good hold of Xiao Bai so you don't lose him again before you can teach him better." Carl smiled wryly at the little girl as the dog stared at Carl and drooled.

"Number Seven Under Heaven, get back here this instant!" Yelled a voice from around the corner.

"It was nice to meet you, Mister. I gotta go now!" The little girl ran off. "I told you not to call me that! Call me Seventh Sister!" the 13 year old yelled back as she rounded the corner.

"Your name is Number Seven, and I'll call you by your name. And I told you that if you can't control your dog, then you can't bring it with us…" The adult female voice that called for the little girl trailed off as they left the area.

Carl started chuckling at the scene. 'And I thought being named Carl after that Walking Dead meme was bad. At least my parents didn't name me Number Two. The number of bathroom jokes that I would have gotten growing up…'

Carl continued chuckling on that thought as he made his way out of the town.


	38. ATG 4

Carl entered the gates of the Demon Imperial City with a sigh of relief. His ordeal was finally over.

Once he had left the small town he had appeared in to travel to the capital, he had initially been enjoying the scenery. There was a decent road that passed through the town on the way to the Capital, so Carl had no worries of getting lost.

But once the road had passed through a forest is when his ordeal started. No less than 13 small bunnies flew out of the brush immediately next to the road, determined to eat him like a carrot.

A small group of traveling merchants traveling away from the Capital had seen the assault, and the guards had busted a gut laughing at him trying to subdue the rabbits without killing them, when their horses that pulled the wagons tried to get in on the action. The whole convoy had turned into a giant mess after that.

Naturally the guards thought he was doing something to disrupt their convoy for an attack, so they tried to apprehend or kill Carl. He had gotten sick of the commotion, and knocked the guards back when they came for him. He then pulled his sword and decapitated the bunnies that were still swarming him. The cute demon bunnies had gotten on his last nerve.

He didn't want to tangle with the convoy, since he didn't know who backed them and so he didn't want to make unnecessary enemies, so he ditched them by traveling a short distance into the forest so he could parallel the road and avoid the convoy.

And while he was doing that he had a constant stream of birds, squirrels, more rabbits, and raccoons attacking him from above and below as he made his way through the forest.

Carl changed his mind about joining a troop of mercenaries to go out on a hunt. There was no way he was going out to use himself as bait. Any creature that was at least Elementary Profound was attacking him as if he was the most delicious thing ever the moment they got a whiff of him. It would be so aggravating to have to deal with the swarms of small creatures while trying to catch larger prey.

He still planned to send out hunters to capture profound beasts for him, but there was no way he was going to subject himself to the constant bombardment of critters whenever he went out.

When he finally got within a few miles of the capital, he'd run across several farms, where he was attacked by goats, chickens, and ducks. The farmers had been enraged, thinking he was trying to poach their livestock. It took some work and a lot of running before he finally got away from them.

Carl sighed as he thought about the whole thing. He looked down at his clothes. While his armor robes weren't torn or ripped, it was smeared with all kinds of dirt, grass, and muck. He stepped into an alleyway and cast some cleaning charms on himself, as well as some quick grooming charms to clean and arrange his face and hair.

He soon regained his composure, and exited the alleyway. Using a small bribe, he soon had directions to the area where his headquarters was located. As Carl walked through the city, he kept an eye out for any horses or other mounts people might be riding around. He didn't need any more hassle.

As he was walking, Carl's mind was still thinking about the morning fiasco. It seemed that the animals didn't attack when they saw him, just when they smelled him. Carl face palmed. He'd been so flustered and reacting instead of thinking and acting, he hadn't realized what specifically was setting them off. Naturally he had a spell that could solve his problem, if he had only realized it before. He quickly cast a spell to block his scent from spreading.

Later on he'd have to create a small runic device that would make a permanent personal scent blocking ward. Once the animals couldn't smell him, they would have no reason to think he was tasty. And he certainly wasn't going to let any animals lick him to find out. Thank goodness his familiar wasn't affected by the drawback, since he was linked with Carl.

Carl arrived at his headquarters building, feeling relieved that he had a place to crash. Looking at the building, Carl wasn't positive at first if it was his, since the look of the building had changed, until he'd double checked the address a few times. Carl remembered that the headquarters was designed to change its design based on the world he was in, so it made sense that he didn't recognize it. In the previous worlds it had appeared as a modern building, so he'd gotten used to how it looked then.

But now his headquarters looked like a traditional Chinese shop building. Carl spent a moment enjoying how different the architecture looked now. He entered the building and started a tour of the facilities. It still had the same amount of space, but the style of the building and furniture had changed. It was still hooked up to his Warehouse power and water though, which was a relief.

Carl started cooking a meal while he thought over his plans. When Carl had looked over the details of his properties, he had found that most of them were located in the Illusory Demon Realm, probably since he rolled that continent as his location. His properties were located in important cities around the Empire.

But he also had several properties located in the capital cities of the Profound Sky Continent and the Azure Cloud Continent. So if he ever had a need to travel to the other two continents, he had places available.

One of the first things he needed to do was to gather information. Since Carl already had several properties around the world, he had sent out a series of instructions to the managing VIs on how to go about gathering rumors and information in their areas. He kept it simple for them, since they wouldn't be capable of building him a large network of spies. Mostly they and the workers listened to what people were talking about while on his properties and reported it back to Carl.

Once that was organized, Carl settled into a daily routine. He spent a couple hours a day working on his runic scent blocker. He also spent a large chunk of his time training and absorbing profound energy to level up his profound level. Working on increasing his understanding and level of The Great Way of the Buddha, The Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World, and his fire control were an ongoing part of his training.

After only a few days he had a bracelet that combined runes and profound inscriptions to make sure that both his scent was blocked and his profound energy signature was shifted a bit. After a bit of thinking, Carl had also considered that sensing his profound energy would attract beasts as well, so he was going to test if his little signal scrambler for his profound energy signature worked.

A little over a week after he'd settled in the capital, Carl managed to attain the second stage of the Great Way of the Buddha. Carl tested out the regenerative healing factor he attained from the Great Way of the Buddha, and he was somewhat impressed at the increased speed he healed the cut he inflicted on himself.

And throughout the time he trained and read the intelligence reports his VIs were sending him, he continued to practice his combat forms, ensuring he was completely in control of all his strength and power.

* * *

Carl was strolling through the market place one morning a few days after he'd finished his bracelet. He had strolled past several pets that didn't even look at him, so he was pretty happy with his work on his bracelet.

Now that Carl was sure he wouldn't be mobbed by random animals, he decided that he would check out the city. He could gather more information himself than his VIs could, and he wanted to gather different cultivation resources while going out and about to see this cultivation world for himself.

He was just looking over several herbs at one marketplace stall, and getting ready to barter for them, when he heard a commotion behind him.

Looking back, while keeping a wary eye on his surroundings in case someone took the opportunity to attack or pick pocket him, Carl saw a group of 15 year olds surrounding and bullying one young man who also looked 15.

"What do you think you're doing out here, giving us Yun Family members a bad name!" One brat shouted at the kid they were bullying.

Carl snorted in his mind. 'The one giving the Yun Family a bad name is you, for making a stink in public, idiot.'

The kid they were bullying just gave a small polite smile at the group, gave them a small salute, and moved away. His polite demeanor didn't give the bullies anything to grab onto and use as an excuse to criticize him. But of course that didn't stop them.

"You're pretty much a bad omen for the Yun Family!" One of the bullies shoved his shoulder, trying to get a rise out of him.

"You leave Brother Yun alone, bunch of meanies!" A feminine voice yelled out just as a 13 year old girl showed up, grabbed Brother Yun's hand, and dragged him away. "Come on, Brother Yun, escort me back home."

Carl recognized the girl who "saved" Brother Yun as the one whose dog previously latched onto his ankle back at the no name town. The girl was Number Seven Under Heaven. Carl smiled a bit to see that the bullies had no choice but to let them go. Apparently she was from a clan they didn't dare offend. As they left the area, Carl thought about what he'd learned from the encounter and added to what he already knew of the situation in the capital.

The Yun Family, which had previously been the number 1 most prestigious and powerful family among the 12 Guardian Families, had been on the decline for the past 100 years. Ever since the last patriarch, Yun Canghai, had disappeared after going to the Profound Sky Continent in search of the Demon King. It was after Yun Canghai disappeared that he had been accused of being the reason that the Demon Emperor's Seal had gone missing, and his family had borne the brunt of the repercussions of the crime of losing a treasure of the Demon Royal Family.

And now, a hundred years later, the Yun Family was considered the last place among the Guardian Families. The Yun Family was apparently not pulling together as single entity in the face of opposition. They were instead fracturing. Carl figured that was likely because they didn't have a strong leader to set the tone and keep the family in check. So there were likely several factions struggling for control at the moment.

The current Yun Family Patriarch, Yun Quinghong, and his wife had secretly traveled to the Profound Sky Continent some 20 years ago in search of Yun Canghai or any news of the Little Demon Emperor. While there they had been severely injured and had lost a lot of their profound power, only barely escaping back to the Illusory Demon Continent with their lives.

So because Yun Quinghong was in a weakened state, he couldn't control his family and keep them strong enough to weather the storm that was arrayed against them. And the public infighting was doing their family no favors, because any opponents the family had must be positively gleeful that they were falling apart. They were probably sitting in the shadows and sharpening their blades for an opportunity to throw them down from their position and steal resources from them.

Now that the ruckus died down, Carl turned back to the merchant. "How much did you say for six stalks? 24 cyan profound coins?"

"Ahh, valued customer, I think you must have misheard. It was 40 cyan profound coins. These are the best quality in the whole market, I'm already giving you a discount as it is, because its you."

"Hmm, well, if you can drop the price to 28 coins, I might see my way to buying the stalks and also purchasing this batch of ember seeds from you for 20 coins a packet." Carl replied. He was sad that his perk to be able to sell as much as he wanted for the best price only worked when he was selling, not buying.

"Yes, if you buy these ember seeds for 30 coins a packet I can let the seeker stalks go for 36."

Carl internally chuckled, and continued haggling with the middle aged man. He eventually brought the price right to the middle of where they both started, which Carl decided meant he had probably correctly figured out what the man was willing to sell them for.

"Thank you for coming, valued customer. Please come again for the best goods in the market!"

Carl just smiled at the man, amused at his boasts, as he left with his seeds and stalks. As he continued through the market, he was pondering the merits of the idea he'd had while watching the altercation earlier among the youth of the Yun Family.

With the Yun Family weak at the moment due to their Patriarch's injuries, Carl had an opportunity to benefit. If he approached the clan, healed the Patriarch's injuries, and offered his services to them, he would get their backing and it would help the Yun Family solidify their position. They could then present a strong front against any enemies and reassure their allies that standing with them was and is the right choice.

This was a prime opportunity because usually the Guardian Families were very strong and wouldn't need help from some individual like him, no matter how skilled in medicine he was. At most he would be an honored guest, at worst a tool to be used only to benefit them.

But helping them now, when they were at their weakest, would give him a lot of trust points with them. And if the clan was related to the protagonist, Yun Che, like Carl thought it might be, he might be able to avoid conflict with a rival protagonist.

While Carl wasn't afraid of Yun Che, per se, he was wary of him. Especially if it ever devolved into a life or death fight. Protagonists always had trump cards and more trump cards. So how would his trump cards stack up against Yun Che's trump cards if it came to a fight? If Yun Che would at least stay neutral toward Carl, then he wouldn't have to worry about it at all, and he could safely depart the world in ten years.

Since he didn't have any knowledge of this world, he didn't have any opinions of Yun Che at the moment. It wasn't like the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter world. Carl had planned to take them down eventually even if the ritual he used to kill Voldemort hadn't done that for him. But here in this world, his only real concerns for the time being was surviving for 10 years, gathering as many resources as he could, and getting strong.

Carl started thinking over the pros of helping the Yun Family in their time of need. After becoming trusted by the Yun Family, he could count on their help and networking in the Empire. The allies of the Yun Family would be available to be his allies. There were the possible bonus points of Yun Che owing him one if the Yun Family did turn out to be his family. He would then be integrated into the Empire, with a backing to keep any enemies off his case. And the Yun family already had a large amount of manpower, if he ever needed them to gather resources for him.

The cons would include putting himself on the radar of the Yun Family's enemies. Possible exploitation of his skills until he got strong enough to defend himself or was forced to hide. Being shanghaied to be part of the Empire's politics, and being used as a tool. Being targeted for assassination.

'Eh, but now that I think about it, even if I get dragooned into the Yun Family and get used for 10 years, I'll still be alive to leave the world.' Carl thought. 'Well, as long as I don't precipitate the Yun Family's enemies to go all out and kill me along with them.' Carl wryly thought. 'If that happens I'd just have to hide out for 10 years.' Carl shrugged off worrying about any enemies he might make by taking action.

Carl then thought through the possibility of weighing in on the side of the Yun Family's enemies. 'The risk-reward possibilities don't appeal as much with the Yun Family's enemies. With a bit of research I'd be able to discover who is opposing the Yun Family, but by joining them I would just end up being a useful tool. They are in a position of power, so they wouldn't likely give me as much trust or respect if I just showed up and asked to join them. And it isn't like they _need_ my help, so I'd just be a resource. They may even just try to silence me by killing me without even giving me a chance.'

After some thought, Carl decided that he would help out the Yun Family, and try to help them turn their situation around. But he wouldn't be jumping into the deep end without preparations. He would take the time to learn as much as he could, get stronger, and come up with plans.

While the idea of having some backing was nice, putting himself at their mercy and just trusting they had his best interests in mind was naïve and just asking to be exploited. If he didn't even have any pride or sense of worth, they wouldn't care about him either.

So Carl continued shopping in the market while thinking of what he needed to do in preparation.

* * *

Before entering the ATG world, one of the things that made Carl curious about was the herbs that were used to make medicines and pills. The stories always had recipes that called for ingredients like 1000 year Ginseng, or Lingzhi Mushrooms, or whatever. So Carl wondered just how common or rare 1000 year old herbs were, if they were parts of recipes commonly used. Because 1000 years wasn't exactly a short amount of time to be growing herbs, even for cultivators that lived for thousands of years.

Carl found some answers among his medical knowledge. The first part of the answer was that only certain rare recipes needed such specific long lived herbs, hence why they were rare. Most of the medicinal recipes used normal herbs, while the more rare herbs were usually kept for rare cultivation resources for the purpose of strengthening each organizations cultivators that added to their strength. Only the rich and powerful families could afford it, really.

Next was that the families that produced the herbs to be sold to alchemists that produce the cultivation resources have been in business for thousands of years, so they have fields of herbs that are constantly being harvested and replanted regularly. So there was a hard cap on just how many herbs per year/decade/century they can produce and sell. Which means the cultivation resources are limited. If one person buys one herb, another person can't. There just isn't a big enough supply.

And the limited amount of resources is exactly why there was so much competition in cultivation worlds for resources. If one family doesn't secure the resources, then not only does the family miss out on the resource and gaining strength, but if their enemies get the resources then they would get weaker at the same time that their enemy gets stronger. It lends itself to a very cutthroat competition.

The last thing Carl found out as he experimented with the herbs on his Farm is that the 1000 year old label is only an estimate for how long it normally takes an herb to gain a certain amount of profound power as it passively absorbs it over the years. If the profound energy atmosphere around the farm was much denser than normal, then the herbs could store the same amount of energy needed in less time.

And if there was one thing the Farmville farm was useful for, it was being exactly what Carl needed to grow different crops fast. Crops that would usually take several months to grow, on his farms only took a few days. So when he started growing the local product that required profound energy, his farms changed to create the best atmosphere needed. The air was absolutely saturated with profound energy.

Carl found that the herbs saturated in profound energy he needed for use in the different recipes grew in a fraction of the time usually needed. And his crops already grew a great deal faster on his Farmville farms than was usual. So he estimated that he would have a crop of 1000 year old herbs in only about 5 years real time, while he would constantly be getting fresh batches of ordinary herbs. So once Carl had charged up his Heavenly Time Pearl once more, he could produce masses of the most expensive herbs on the market.

Meanwhile, with bunches of ordinary herbs constantly being harvested, Carl had the materials needed to add to his daily routine, namely the practice of his alchemy and pill concocting skills he learned from the **Genius Doctor** perk. As was usual, simply having the medical and alchemy knowledge wasn't enough. He needed to practice it to fully master it. So he needed a cauldron to concoct his medicines and pills in.

Carl made a trip to the market to pick up a cauldron so he could get started. And that's when he ran into another little hiccup. When he inspected the cauldrons, he was aghast. Such shoddy craftsmanship! That metal was crap! The construction of those cauldrons was half-assed! There was no way he could work with what the market sold!

Carl sighed in resignation. Good thing he's got a bunch of metal to work with and the crafting knowledge to fix the problem.

So he shifted his focus from pills, and started practicing his crafting skills daily from then on. He spent a week in crafting before he finally crafted an acceptable cauldron for his purposes. If he had even better materials, he could make something far superior, but what he had was good enough for the time being.

For the next several weeks, Carl spent time daily practicing the various aspects of his crafts. He started off at the bottom and made various medicines and cultivation pills. He crafted various tools and devices. He practiced his inscriptions and building arrays.

As he practiced his skills, he gained mastery at a heaven defying pace in no small thanks due to his **Heart of Snow Glazed Glass** Inheritor perk.

Once Carl started feeling confident in his medicine concocting skills, such that he wouldn't make any mistakes and ruin a batch of medicine, he started the next phase of his plan.

First, he used his metamorphmagus abilities to appear in his early 20s, instead of 15. It was hard to play the part of a doctor looking like a 15 year old. Most people would rightfully be skeptical of his actual knowledge and skill level. But in a society where cultivators can live for thousands of years and stay looking in their 20s for all that time, it was at least more believable than appearing as a gawky 15 year old.

He then spent some time remodeling his headquarters building. The ground floor would be a shop where he would sell medicines and cultivation pills. Mostly low level stuff for the time being. He didn't want to have anything too valuable that might tempt people before he was strong enough.

Carl kept the meeting rooms on the first floor the same, he saw no reason not to keep them as training and meeting rooms for his future staff. Some of the office spaces on the second through sixth floors he converted to rooms where some of his single future workers could room at, others he kept as office space for his workers to do paperwork, finances, and other such things.

Carl then hired a group of workers to staff his shop/clinic.

Sure there were stories of itinerant medical masters that wandered around alone while practicing their craft, but Carl couldn't be bothered with that. He would rather have a staff on call to deal with certain aspects of a business, like making sure the customers weren't rowdy and crowding him. So Carl spent a few intensive weeks teaching his staff how to handle his business and sell the basic medicines and cultivation pills he made for his new clinic to sell.

Once the little clinic was open, he had scheduled clinic hours three times a week for a few hours where he would see patients and heal them. And while he would be practicing and training his medical skills, he couldn't spend too much time on it. He wasn't a maniac obsessed with medicine after all.

Besides, Carl set up the clinic mainly for the purpose of establishing his reputation. It would be very awkward if he showed up on the Yun Family's doorstep proudly proclaiming his medical genius and how he could help them and they rejected his assistance simply because they didn't know him.

And any money he made was just a bonus. A very welcome bonus that was actually quite profitable since he owned the source of his herb production, rather than buying them, so it was nearly 100% profit, aside from his employee's salary.

By the time Carl had been in the ATG world for a year and five months, he had a good reputation as a competent doctor around the lower level cultivators and mortals of the Demon Imperial City. He was almost ready to approach the Yun Family.

He had also reached Earth 10 Profound level. Just a little bit more and he would break through into the Sky Profound Realm, where he could fly with his profound energy. He was pretty excited about that.

He had reached the third level of the Great Way of the Buddha, and was steadily working his way to the fourth level. In the third level he was finally starting to gain substantial boosts to his physical strength, so he was happy he'd spent the cp to get the technique.

Carl had also mastered the third stage of the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World. After the first two stages that were focused on his affinity with and control over fire, Carl was happy that the third stage included attack, defense, and movement techniques.

The defensive technique could be simplified to "burn any enemy's attack with fire". Very simple, yet useful. Don't want to get hurt? Don't get hit by the enemy attack. Burn the attack first.

The movement skill of the third stage didn't directly utilize fire, but it directed Carl in how to use his profound energy to enhance his movement ability. Combining the air movement technique with his Golden Crow abilities made for an impressive ability to be mobile. Carl was quite confident in his ability to dominate a battlefield with his skills.

And the attack technique was called Burning Sun Rupture. Carl had been amused by the name, because it wasn't descriptive at all of what the attack was like. He didn't make an artificial sun or rupture it. It was a very fast single target attack where he accelerated a stream of fire like a whip lash. Carl had had a lot of fun practicing the fire whip attack, as he called it.

And now he was working on the fourth stage, where the attack technique was called Raging Fire Rupture. It used multiple fire whips to attack more than one target. Carl could see a theme here, and looked ahead to the fifth stage. And just like he thought, the fifth stage attack technique, Golden Annihilation, would target dozens of people at a time. At least it was consistent in its escalation.

The fourth stage defensive technique could easily be summed up as "burn even more enemy's attacks with fire". Carl was starting to see that the Golden Crow had pretty much one answer to any problems he had: Fire. Which was _exactly_ why Carl had picked that legacy! Fire is the solution to all problems!

And the fourth stage movement technique actually had Carl making wings of fire to accelerate his speed and movement. Rover had actually drooled when he saw the wings of fire that Carl made. So Carl let himself be convinced to share the Jade Tablet with Rover so he too could start practicing and learn to create great big honking wings of fire. Carl just chuckled at Rover's antics. Even though he already had wings, who wouldn't want big fire wings?

* * *

Carl was striding through the shopping district around lunch time. He had a particular destination in mind, and someone to meet with, so he wasn't out for idle pleasure or resource gathering. He arrived at the restaurant at the same time as his target, Yun Xiao who was there with Number Seven.

Since the first time the girl had seen him was when he was in his normal for his 15 year old face, Carl changed the look he had from the mid twenties that he wore for his clinic, to about 18-19. That way Number Seven would be able to recognize him, and he would still not look too young for his doctor status.

"Hello there again, girl. How is Xiao Bai anyway? Biting any more passerby?" Carl greeted Number Seven in good humor, teasing the girl.

"Ah? Ah! It's you! No! Xiao Bai is a good doggy, he doesn't bite anyone. It must have been you that did something!" Number Seven jumped and pointed accusingly at Carl when she recognized him.

Carl laughed. 'She's not wrong, the issue was with me.' He thought about his drawback.

"Well, your dog still bit me. I think in compensation you should treat me to a meal. How bout it?" Carl smiled.

"Seventh Sister, who is this?" Yun Xiao interrupted in a somewhat suspicious tone of voice.

"Ah, how rude of me. My name is Carl, a minor doctor here in the city. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Carl then saluted them.

The two clan heirs' training in manners kicked in and they introduced themselves.

"Yun Xiao, of the Yun Family."

"Number Seven Under Heaven, of the Elf Clan, but call don't call me that. Call me Seventh Sister."

Carl smiled at the two. "Yun Xiao, Seventh Sister. Would it be alright if I joined you for lunch then?" Carl invited himself.

The two young teens hemmed for a bit, but ultimately agreed. Carl chuckled at how it worked out. From what he'd gathered, Yun Xiao had been bullied a lot, but in order to not make problems for his crippled father and mother, he endured it. By this point his politeness was ingrained in his bones, so he had a hard time saying no to Carl.

And Seventh Sister was already sweet on Yun Xiao and would have preferred to have lunch with him alone, but with Yun Xiao not outright denying Carl, she didn't want to contradict him and make him dislike her, or make him think she wasn't magnanimous.

While Carl felt slightly bad about taking advantage of their good manners and becoming a third wheel to their lunch date, he figured it was his best chance to get introduced and get to know them. His prior meeting with Seventh Sister was just the ice breaker he needed to be able to introduce himself.

So while they were enjoying lunch, Carl engaged the two in conversation. He told them a bit about himself and his clinic. He listened to some of their stories about growing up in the capital, while sharing his stories of some of his friends' adventures, slightly altered to fit the world.

With his ability to judge a person's character, he could tell the two teens were good hearted people, so it was a pleasure to simply spend lunch chatting with them.

After the lunch was over, and Carl passed along his thanks for the meal, and invited the two to come to his clinic where he would gift them something as a thank you for the lunch. With their promises to come by and see his clinic, Carl departed.

He was pretty satisfied with their first meeting. It had been a decent introduction and chance to make a good impression on them. He couldn't go too fast or push too far, or they would retreat from his overtures, worried that he had ulterior motives.

Smiling at his success, Carl made his leisurely way back to his clinic, and continued his daily practice.

* * *

At just about the year and a half mark of his time in the ATG world, Carl finally broke through to the Sky Profound realm. Once he broke through, he could feel a huge difference in his profound energy. The density and quantity of profound energy in his profound veins once more jumped higher.

Once Carl had finished consolidating his level, he immediately started playing with the new abilities he had. He was able to control his body's movement through the air, unimpeded by gravity.

He went into his Warehouse and brought out his Ark. He called for Rover and they both entered the inner world of his Ark that had dozens of square miles of space. More than a year ago, while trying to figure out where he would practice his more devastating attacks, since he didn't have much training grounds and the Heavenly Time Pearl was still recharging, he suddenly remembered the space in his Ark. Ever since then, he and Rover would enter the Ark daily and practice.

Now, with both Carl and Rover at the Sky Profound level, they started flying around the place, testing out their new speed. Carl was laughing his head off at seeing Rover just tuck his wings into his side and fly around like that. The look on Rover's face was so excited yet awkward at forcing himself not to use his wings. Carl busted up laughing at the hilarious sight.

After several hours of flying around, testing his speed and maneuverability, Carl was satisfied. He could even use the movement techniques from the third and fourth stages of the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World to accelerate even faster.

From then on, in Carl and Rover's training, they added in a bit of aerial combat against each other as they sparred. Carl and Rover had no one else to fight against and test their skills, so they had been fighting each other.

Since they were both immune to fire due to the familiar bond and the Evil God Seeds, they could go all out with their fire attacks and not worry about burning each other to death. There was still the impact or cutting damage that the attacks had, but that was negligible for Rover due to the enhanced strength and regeneration from The Great Way of the Buddha. And for Carl by the same technique as well as having the Dragon God's Bloodline.

A week after Carl broke through, he was in his Warehouse crafting some Spatial Rings. Spatial rings were storage devices that had a little pocket dimension used for storing goods. Items could be put in and retrieved by the use of profound energy. Right as Carl was about to start on another ring, his "doorbell" ward was pinged by his employees. He had left instructions that he was only to be disturbed in certain circumstances. So he put away his project and exited the room.

When he arrived at the ground floor, he saw that one set of circumstances had indeed arrived on his doorstep. Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister were sitting down on chairs provided by his employees.

Looking closer, Carl saw that Yun Xiao appeared to have been roughed up quite a bit, with cuts and a couple of broken bones. Seventh Sister looked furious at whatever had happened to Yun Xiao.

"Hi, Carl. Yun Xiao didn't, er we didn't really have anywhere else to go on short notice." Seventh Sister stuttered out. Carl could tell that Yun Xiao had refused going elsewhere for treatment so that news of his beating wouldn't travel back to his parents and cause them to worry.

"Greetins Yun Xiao, Seventh Sister. I see the social niceties can wait, let's get you seen to first." Carl ushered the two teens back into a treatment room. It wasn't the time to talk about anything until he'd taken care of the teen boy.

Once Carl had Yun Xiao sitting down, he put on the whole Doctor persona. He'd already diagnosed him with a look due to his skills gifted from a perk, but Carl had found it put people at ease when he put more effort and thought into diagnosing them. It made it seem like he wasn't just talking out of his ass. And when the people felt that he was taking their health seriously, it made them feel better and more trusting about the treatment he prescribed.

So Carl went through the whole diagnoses, checking Yun Xiao's pulse, feeling the broken bones, examining his cuts. Once he'd finished, he set about fixing the issues. First he had Yun Xaio take off his outer robe, which caused Seventh Sister to deeply blush and let out an "eep!" that hugely amused Carl. Once Yun Xiao was reminded that Seventh Sister was seeing him in a nearly shirtless state, he too blushed.

Carl chuckled at the byplay. The lucky boy had the lovely Seventh Sister locked in as a future wife, as long as he wasn't a complete bonehead. Carl briefly thought of ways to help them overcome their shyness, until he remembered they were only 16 and 14 years old. They could wait 5 or so years until they were both older.

"Well, let's start with the cuts to stop the bleeding." Carl fished out some cleaning supplies to clean out the wounds, making sure there wouldn't be any abscesses forming from leaving behind sources of infection.

He used simple bandage wraps in most cases to keep the wounds closed while they healed, but resorted to stitches in one instance.

Carl then focused on the broken bones in Yun Xiao's forearm. Sending in a probe of profound energy to keep track of it, Carl quickly set the bone and put a small splint on it to keep it in position. He then pulled a bone-knitting potion out of a cabinet.

He had found over the past year that while cultivators didn't have magic in their bodies, they responded to potions just like magicals did, even if they weren't able to sense magic. Even when passing through very strong wards, no cultivators that he'd observed had sensed magic, unless it had a direct effect on them, like a jinx or curse.

And Carl had discovered that the 16 year old Yun Xiao and the 14 year old Seventh Sister were both in the early Emperor Profound realm. With Yun Xiao's neglectful treatment and lacking of resources at the hands of his Yun Family, he was an impressively skilled and determined individual to have clawed his way to the Emperor realm basically on his own.

Seventh Sister, being the princess of her Under Heaven family, was treated well and given plenty of resources, which she had been sharing with Yun Xiao. So it made sense that the two were about the same profound level, even though Seventh Sister was a couple years younger than Yun Xiao.

Which, now that Carl thought about it, made him wonder just who was being so brutal in bullying Yun Xiao, to break his arm. Well, Carl would probably hear about it later, from the two teens, or from gossip in the capital. So Carl put aside the thought for the time being, and focused again on the two.

"Okay, now, this potion is going to taste absolutely horrible. But it will help your bones heal just as strong as if you hadn't broken it. It will still be tender for a few days, so go easy on it in training until it is 100%. I don't want to see you in here for treatment from a relapse, got it?"

"Got it." Yun Xiao nodded agreeably.

Carl handed him the potion and smiled faintly at the disgusted expression that appeared on Yun Xiao's face after he downed it. He sat back and enjoyed the scene of Seventh Sister fussing over Yun Xiao. It was enjoyable to see good people getting together and caring for each other. It was almost like watching a television drama.

Once they remembered he was there, Carl did one final check over Yun Xiao's health. "Okay, you should be all patched up now. Come back in two days, you should be healed up enough for me to take out the stitches then. And I'm entrusting him to you, Seventh Sister. Make sure he doesn't stress those wounds by training until he comes back here."

Seventh Sister perked up at hearing that Yun Xiao was in her care. "Yes! I'll take good care of him!"

Carl then tossed a couple of rings to the two teens. "Here you go, greeting gifts, or some such. Just some things I had laying around."

Carl had just given them two Purple Spatial Rings that he'd built, along with some cultivation pills that would help them in their practice. The Purple Spatial Rings that Carl had made had a pocket dimension of (100 m)3.

"I can't accept this, it's too expensive!" Yun Xiao exclaimed.

Carl waved him off. "Don't worry about it. I'm very well off myself, it's nothing big." And to Carl who had Farmville farms that could constantly supply him ores, gems, animals, and herbs so that he could easily make more Spatial Rings and pills, it really wasn't much of anything.

Seventh Sister was quite used to Yun Xiao's stubborn personality that didn't want to take advantage of anybody, and she had quite a bit of practice wearing him down, so he eventually accepted the gift. Carl just sat back and sipped a drink while watching the show.

Before entering the room, Carl had told some of his employees to set out some snacks for them in a break room. So after cleaning everything up after the treatment, the three retired there for a while to chat and eat.

Carl enjoyed the time spent with the good natured couple, and had fun teasing them a bit, hearing about their opinions of the different people in the capital, and just hanging around. After a couple hours, when it was time for them to depart, he once more confirmed their appointment in a couple days, and saw them out.

If Carl had any reservations about helping the Yun Family, then meeting the Patriarch's son and getting to know him made him want to help them. He genuinely liked the guy. Yun Xiao kind of reminded him of Neville when they first met. Neville too had reacted to being judged and pushed around all his life by sinking into himself and becoming shy.

Yun Xiao wasn't that bad off because he had Seventh Sister in his life. But other than that, the kindness and reluctance to overstep his boundaries was pretty much the same. 'Well, we'll just have to see if we can't toughen him up over the next eight and a half years. I'm assuming that like Neville he'll have a deeply hidden backbone that will become apparent in certain situation.'

Carl then returned to his Warehouse and continued crafting rings as practice. He would soon test to see what happens when he combined spatial rings with expansion charms.


	39. ATG 5

Two and a half years had passed since Carl had arrived in the world. His daily efforts had been paying off for him. He had just recently broken through into the Emperor Profound realm. When cultivators enter the Sky Profound realm, they are able to freely fly in the sky with their profound energy. When they enter the Emperor Profound realm, they gain control over a domain type ability.

The domain ability was a huge reason why there was no one below the Emperor Profound realm that could realistically fight any Throne. Each cultivator's domain ability was different, but the domain would take control of the element they were most adept in over an area the Throne was fighting in, and turn it to their advantage. If the Throne's opponent didn't also have a domain, they would almost always lose, having to fight against their very surroundings as well as their opponent.

Carl's domain was currently over the element of fire, since that was what he primarily practiced. Having his domain active would increase the power of his fire skills, while decreasing any other elements others would use. Of course when two domains clashed, whoever's skill, affinity, and profound energy proved superior would win out in the end.

Now that he and Rover were Thrones, Carl had received another drop of Phoenix Blood. He was now up to 7 drops. He would occasionally keep an eye on what the various bloodlines were doing to his physical body. Carl was impressed by how much they were improving his base physique. It was sometimes hard to determine which drops of blood were doing what, though, since he had three different bloodlines in addition to the Great Way of the Buddha.

He had mastered the fourth stage of the Great Way of the Buddha, which increased his bodily strength by over 50,000 kilograms. Added on to the strength his Ki and Dragon God's Blood gave him, and he was capable of lifting well over 200,000 kilograms with just his physique alone. Added onto what he could do while channeling his profound energy, and he was able to fight way above his profound level.

Over the last year Carl had mastered the fourth stage of the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning world, and was well on his way to mastering the fifth stage: Golden Annihilation. His mastery of the fire element continued to grow stronger as he grew more adept in the use of his profound energy and elemental manipulation. And Rover was now working on his fire wings. Seeing Rover's two sets of majestic wings flapping separately from each other always brought a smile of amusement to Carl's face. But Rover was proving to be a very fast adversary!

One of the things that Carl had tested with Rover was a number of trap arrays that were powered by profound energy, and he and Rover found out that it didn't impede Rover's use of his Phoenix Flashing ability, which appeared to be magical in nature. So the bird had taken to wandering the world once more, looking for interesting things. He would occasionally bring back rare herbs, fruits, and gems he found in his travels for Carl to add to his farms production. And especially since they attained Emperor Profound realm, the bird had been eager to travel around and see what he could see.

Carl had built his reputation as a good doctor over the past year. He occasionally had to deal with some city official coming around to "inspect" his premises. Which was code for sniffing around for a bribe. So Carl had taken them out to have a meal, and handed over some token amount of herbs, or gold, or whatever.

If there was something he'd learned about the cultivation world, it was that a large majority of people were looking out for their own interests. And having a decent relationship with the officials (smoothed along by bribes) was more important than being in the right where the law was concerned. Problems could be easily solved or "talked" away with the appropriate lubrication. Alternatively, if someone had a poor relation with the officials, it wouldn't matter if they were 100% innocent, they would receive punishment in some way.

It was very different from how Carl had grown up in the states. But it was the way the local people did business, so when in Rome, Carl would skip on the roads leading to it. Or something along those lines.

And Carl only had to deal with three cases where someone was trying to bring a fake sick person that he had supposedly caused with his "poor medical skills" in order to extort money. They expected that Carl would simply pay them to get them to shut up and not ruin his reputation. Fools.

Carl was briefly amused at their audacity, then faintly annoyed. A quick mind scan showed the first one to attempt the ruse was just a scam for money. The subsequent two frauds were schemes from his supposed competition, other doctors who weren't getting as many patients now that Carl's business was booming.

Carl just rolled his eyes at the ridiculousness of the schemers. If they had come to him with their concerns, maybe looking to ally with him to build a larger medical business where they all benefitted, Carl would have been quite happy. It would mean he could unload more work to those doctors and focus on his training more. He was only setting up shop in the Capital as a doctor to build a reputation, after all. He didn't really need the work.

But no, the idiots immediately resorted to schemes to try to run him out of business. At that point, he couldn't let it go so easily. To deal with the problem immediately in front of him, Carl had simply slapped the fakers a few times while injecting his profound energy to make them look healthy, and using his magic to cast some jinxes, and suddenly they were the very picture of health as they jumped around and danced like they had never even _thought _about getting sick, let alone faking it.

So in a way, those scammers and doctors trying to ruin his reputation actually helped him build it when the crowd saw him "heal" them with just a few slaps. They were so generous to give him those opportunities.

Carl was still considering just what he would do in retaliation. If he just left them alone, they would likely continue coming up with more schemes. Carl eventually decided that he would actually go and meet with the two doctors who set up the schemes in the next couple of days. Depending on their character, he might be able to use his Basic Decency Inducing perk to convince them to change their ways. It wouldn't hurt to give it a try, anyway.

He might even go ahead and rope those two doctors into an association anyway. Revenge and retaliation were all nice and fine and would make him laugh, but it wouldn't get him any closer to his goals. At most it would be an instance of losing sight of his goals and getting distracted by trash on the wayside.

'There, if calling others trash doesn't make me a murder hobo, er.. I mean protagonist, then who knows what will!' Carl joked to himself.

Who knows if there wasn't also someone behind the good doctors, goading them on to act the way that they were for some obscure reason? No, getting actual intel on the situation was still the most appropriate first step, Carl decided.

Going off in a rage to kill whoever besmirched his honor wasn't the appropriate first step. Carl kept reminding himself that just because he's living in a cultivation world, doesn't mean he needs to keep running around yelling "You Dare!?" anytime someone doesn't agree with him, all while plotting to kill of their family in retaliation.

With those thoughts and ideas firmly in mind, Carl exited his clinic and started making his way on foot through the city to a local restaurant where he would be meeting Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister. He had spent the past year solidifying his friendship with the two young lovebirds. He met the two several times a month to have a meal or spar, and they seemed to enjoy his company as much as he enjoyed theirs.

Even though the two were ahead of him in cultivation level for the time being, Carl was stronger than them with his various legacies and techniques, and he had many more years of practice in martial skills, so he was able to help the two refine their combat skills greatly. He was sure the two could beat anyone in their own profound realm at this point, aside from him. At the rate they were improving, only another year and they would break through to the Tyrant Profound realm.

He was already studying what information he had about pills to help people break through realms, to insure the two had a smooth transition. The issue was that the recipes required quite a few rare ingredients that were basically controlled substances. So he wouldn't be able to get his hands on the ingredients anytime soon. And it would actually take quite a bit of time to concoct the pills. Like, the actual time to concoct the pills, if it was fast was 6 years, and if it was slow would be 24 plus years.

It almost made him wish he had also purchased the Heavenly Poison Pearl with cp. With the Heavenly Poison Pearl, which was named pretty ridiculously in his opinion, he could instantly concoct any drug, medicine, or pills, as long as he had the ingredients, instead of spending years doing it manually. It would certainly be a time saver.

His own Heavenly Time Pearl was finally starting to charge up decently now that he was getting higher in profound level. It was still only about 11% filled, but it should start going faster in the next couple of years. While Carl had thought about using it to see how much dilated time 1% would get him, he decided to hold off for a while. He was advancing quite well in cultivation at the moment, so he would hold off until he had more alchemy materials so he could really take advantage of the time dilation to pump out some important, rare, and expensive pills.

And it wasn't like he was currently in a crisis where he needed to be frantic in his cultivation. Since Carl wasn't running around being offended at everyone around him and starting fights with anyone he saw, he actually had peaceful days to cultivate in.

Carl arrived outside the restaurant, named the Happy Dumpling. The signboard above the restaurant had a picture of a fat happy little kid running around. Carl still smiled every time he saw that picture. He would have to make a copy of the signboard sometime for his own amusement.

Upon entering the ground floor, he looked around at the full and bustling ground floor. Every table was packed with diners. Good thing he had reserved a private room for his group. The server on door duty recognized him, and led him up to his reserved room. He sat down, waiting for Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister to show up.

The room had a window that overlooked the street, so Carl spent his time idly watching the passerby while waiting. After several minutes Carl saw Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister together walking towards the restaurant. Just as they entered the Happy Dumpling, Carl saw a group of six scions of different families gathered just outside the building, laughing and pointing at Yun Xiao.

Carl smirked slightly while shaking his head. Apparently the group was planning to do a little bit of bullying of Yun Xiao since he was usually such a push over. Such a stereotypical set up for these people. Carl began considering just how he would handle the situation.

Only moments later, Carl's two friends arrived in the room. "Yun Xiao! Seventh Sister! It's been too long! I have missed you two. You're such a balm for my poor soul." Carl greeted them, laying it on thick.

Seventh sister lightly slapped his shoulder. "Oh, you. You saw us two days ago. Why do you act like you haven't seen us in forever?" Yun Xiao just nodded solemnly in question. He too was curious.

"So you wouldn't believe it. Yesterday we had another two fraud cases show up, trying to hold my reputation hostage for money…" Carl went on to narrate in great detail how he had taken care of and embarrassed the two, causing the two teens to get a good laugh at the situation.

Over the past year that Carl had been meeting with the two, he had been working on Yun Xiao, tryng to get him to be more assertive and not such an easy mark for bullying. While he was still gentle and polite, Carl had actually seen him stick up for himself several times. So there was hope to turn him into a more assertive person.

It had only taken a few weeks for Carl to realize that Yun Xiao's problem wasn't that he was weak willed or cowardly. Absolutely no cultivator that can claw their way up to the Emperor Profound realm with practically no assistance from his family can possibly be weak willed. No, his problem was that he thought too much. He was concerned that while his parents and family were in their precarious situation, then if was to fight back, it would be leading trouble back home. And he didn't want to add to his parent's burden. So he had been silently taking it.

Carl had been trying to subtly get across to him that his parents would prefer him to stick up for himself and fight back, even if it brought trouble back home. They were parents, they would want to handle that kind of thing for their kid. But Carl's friend was too stubborn. Carl was resigned to the fact that Yun Xiao would probably have to hear it from his parents in order to belief it. So this afternoon he would finally be getting Yun Xiao to invite him back to the clan to meet his parents.

Just as Carl was getting to the funny part of the story, the three of them heard a commotion outside their door.

"Sirs, please, all our private booths are being used. You'll have to wait until one clears up." The weak and ineffectual voice of a server of the restaurant was heard by all three of them in the room.

"You can just clear out this booth. Nobody important is there, and we're hungry!"

Carl looked over at Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister and raised an eyebrow in question. Yun Xiao just looked resigned, while Seventh Sister was clenching her fists, an angry look on her face. They obviously recognized the voice and it looks like this had happened to them before.

Carl smirked at the two confidently.

The door flew open.

In the doorway stood a member of the Helian Family, one of the 12 Guardian Families. Now that the Yun Family was being suppressed and had fallen in the rankings, the HelianFamily was now the number one family.

"Loser Xiao! What a coincidence seeing you here!" The scion of the Helian family boisterously declared. "It's good that you kept our booth reserved for us, but you can leave now. But the nice looking girl can stay, to keep us company!" He lecherously looked at the 14 year old.

Carl sighed at the amazing amount of arrogance and ignorance. Apparently the Helian family member didn't recognize who Seventh Sister was. If he did, he certainly wouldn't be talking about her in such a cavalier manner, since it was widely known how protective her six older brothers were. All six were in the Tyrant and Sovereign Profound levels. This boastful youth, who was only at the Emperor 10 level would be flattened by any of her brothers with barely any effort for the insult to their sister.

Carl intervened before they could get dig themselves any deeper. Coughing to get their attention, he stood up in front of them.

"Well, now. I'm sure your mothers made sure that you were taught some manners, even if you sometimes let them fall by the wayside. Let's get introductions out of the way first. I'll start, shall I? My name is Carl, a humble doctor here in the city. This is Yun Xiao, the young Patriarch of the Yun Family."

Carl could see two members of the Yun family who were among the group of bullies flush in shame when he pointed out that they were part of a group that was trying to humiliate their young patriarch.

"And this is the princess of the Under Heaven family, Number Seven." Carl could feel the scowl he got from Seventh Sister on his back, she really didn't like her name. It was worth it though to see the faces of all six of the group go pale as they realize just who they had been insulting. "Now, I believe it's your turn to introduce yourselves?"

"Helian Ping."

"Hui chu."

"Yun Tu."

"Yun Peng."

"Nangong Cheng."

"Chiyang Yan."

Carl was amused to see the group shuffling their feet like they had been caught out doing something naughty while introducing themselves. Sometimes he really enjoyed the non-combat perks. It could lead to so much entertainment.

"Okay. Obviously we have a little conflict here, so I have a proposal." Carl continued bulldozing the group of rich kids while he had the momentum. "Yun Xiao and Helian Ping here will have a little match outside to determine the winner." Carl revealed his plan.

Helian Ping was at Emperor 10, while Yun Xiao was at Emperor 9, so Helian Ping obviously felt like he was going to win the match if the growing look of glee crossed his face. He seemed to think he could still pull off his original plan to get Yun Xiao kicked out of his private booth.

Carl chuckled inside as his plan was progressing well. As they were making their way outside, Carl gave instructions to the server to keep their room ready, and that they would soon be back. So they should have their food ready for them when they returned.

They soon arrived at the street and opened up a space among the crowd for the match. Carl stood next to Seventh Sister. Seeing that she was a bit concerned over Yun Xiao, Carl bumped her shoulder and gave her a reassuring grin. "He'll be fine, you'll see."

Yun Xiao started on the defensive, easily dodging and blocking the blows that Helian Ping was throwing at him. After a short while, Helian Ping was frustrated at not being able to land a blow, so he moved on to using his elemental attacks, but Yun Xiao pulled out his Purple Cloud Arts techniques, which was the Yun Family's arts, and deftly blocked every blow.

Carl grinned at the moment when Yun Xiao had the realization that he was vastly superior to his opponent skill wise. Despite all the practice and matches they'd had the past year, Carl had just kept the pressure on Yun Xiao high, continually rising. So while Yun Xiao improved greatly, to him it felt like he was still stuck at the same level compared to Carl. Only now was he realizing just how good he had actually gotten.

Yun Xiao suddenly got focused and went on the offensive, blasting Helian Ping off his feet and defeating him within a dozen moves. Several bruises and lumps started sprouting on Helian Ping's face. Seventh Sister cheered and clapped for him, happy that he won. The look of wonder on Yun Xiao's face as he looked at his own fist was hilarious for Carl, so he chuckled along.

"Fine, you won. The dining booth is yours." Helian Ping gritted out as he got up and made to depart.

"Where do you think you're going?" Carl sternly asked the young man, causing him to freeze in his tracks.

Helian Ping slowly turned back around, glaring at Carl. "I admitted my loss. But don't take things too far. You don't want to make a big deal out of this, just because you won a single match. You won, so as agreed the dining booth is yours."

"Oh, no no no. You totally misunderstood. That match wasn't to decide who got the booth." Carl laughed at the shocked look on the youth's face. "No, the match was to decide if Yun Xiao was enough to pay you back for the insult you said about Seventh Sister, or if we'd have to get her big brothers involved to teach you a lesson." Carl eyed the bruises starting to form on Helian Ping's face in satisfaction, and was amused at the dawning horror on his face at the realization that if he had won he would have to watch out for Seventh Sister's older brothers in the future. "But, you're lucky. Since Yun Xiao won, we'll consider the matter over. Just don't repeat the mistake, or we won't let it go so easily again."

Out of the corner of his eye Carl could see Seventh Sister beaming at Yun Xiao for having defended her honor, while Yun Xiao was beaming in pride. Carl smirked at how well things were going.

"Now come on, the food is likely getting cold while we are standing out here." Carl stated, motioning back to the restaurant.

"What?" Several of the group of six asked at once, completely confused about what was happening.

"Well, you young men must be on the verge of starving to death, since you were so damned hungry you burst into an occupied booth, hoping to beg some food from us. So out of the goodness of our hearts, we're inviting you to share a meal. Come on now, don't dawdle." Carl said as he starting pushing the young lads to the door of the Happy Dumpling.

Carl completely ignored their embarrassed splutters as they tried to explain that they weren't starving beggars under the disdainful looks of the crowd. Almost completely embarrassed now, they wanted to hide their faces from the looks they were getting from the crowd, which made it easier to get them up to the room and seated.

Their dazed looks, as if they were in a dream, amused Carl greatly as they automatically picked up chop sticks and started eating the feast that was already laid out, only realizing after a bit that they had completely fallen into Carl's tempo. They gave him some wary looks after that, thinking he must be strange but dangerous if he could do that to them.

Carl meanwhile returned to telling his story about the fraud cases from the other day from the beginning. His descriptions of the frauds dancing in the streets, demonstrating their fine health, soon got the six lads and Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister laughing. Carl didn't let them get a chance to think too much about their current situation or who they were sharing a human moment with and continued to engage them in conversation, even getting them and Yun Xiao to talk with each other, sharing stories, and occasionally talking about fights or adventures they'd had in the past.

By the end of the feast, the six lads and Yun Xiao had a better understanding and respect for each other. Carl would bet that the six lads, as long as they didn't fall under someone else's influence, wouldn't give Yun Xiao anymore problems in the future. And they may actually turn into friends if they continued to hang out in the future. Too early to tell for sure, but it was a start.

**Celestial Profound Basic Decency Inducement** perk for the win!

The six lads went their way, while Carl, Yun Xaio, and Seventh Sister remained behind.

"I'm not dreaming, right? That really happened?" Yun Xiao asked abruptly.

Carl exchanged glances with Seventh Sister, before both started laughing. Carl clapped Yun Xiao on the shoulder in consolation.

"I'm so proud of you Brother Yun!" Seventh Sister gushed. Yun Xiao felt a smile slowly creep onto his face.

Carl smirked as he saw Yun Xiao enjoying the feeling of accomplishment and winning. As long as he could keep that up, he would be less likely to want to return to passively accepting the hate and bullying. And Seventh Sister would continue to give him plenty of reasons to make her proud of him.

"Yun Xiao, before you go, I've got something I want to ask you." Carl seriously stated.

"Sure, whatever you need." Yun Xiao immediately offered. He felt he owed Carl a lot for all he'd done for him.

Carl smiled and shook his head. "I'm touched you trust me that much, but you shouldn't offer such open ended support." Carl wryly shook his head. "This has to do with your parents. I've heard that they have been injured and haven't been able to recover in the past 16 years. I'm a doctor, and I'd appreciate an opportunity to check them out, at least to further my craft. I'm not promising that I can do anything to heal them without even knowing what they are afflicted with. But if I can, I promise to do what I can to help them recover."

Yun Xiao looked conflicted for a moment. His parents had already had hundreds of doctors check them out, and no one could ever help them. At this point, the family of three had pretty much given up hope that they could ever recover. But this was Carl. Yun Xiao trusted that he wouldn't have any bad intentions. And even if he couldn't do anything, at least they wouldn't have lost anything, really.

"I'll talk to them. I can't promise anything, but I'll let you know." Yun Xiao promised.

"Sounds good. I'll be off first, then. See you two later!" Carl then stepped out first, letting the two teens that cared for each other have a bit of alone time.

* * *

Carl raised a cup of tea to his mouth and took a sip. He certainly wasn't a connoisseur, but the tea that was served there was pretty tasty.

He was seated alone on the second floor of a café, enjoying a snack while watching the traffic in and out of the shop across the street. That particular café was chosen because it gave him a good view of the storefront across the street. He was able to watch the people coming and going, while he was pondering how to approach the situation in front of him.

He had been spending a few hours sitting at the table, because he was unsure on how to approach the doctors in the shop across the street. The doctors in the shop were related to the scammers that tried to ruin his reputation so a part of him wanted to tear them up and ruin their reputation.

But then he had discovered with a bit of detective work that they were funded by the Mu Family. And the Mu Family was the family of Yun Xiao's mother.

Going in all heavy handed and ruining the business and reputation of people that were backed by the Mu Family wouldn't win him any allies. And it could cause some issues when he tried to interact with Yun Xiao's parents if he had done something to damage the reputation and businesses of the Mu Family.

This was a perfect example of relationships being more important than the law. Sure, Carl could have the satisfaction of getting even, but then it would ruin his relations with important families that he was trying to interact with, and it would, in the long run, hurt his own best interests.

So the first thing Carl had to keep in mind was to ensure that however he handled the doctors, he needed to do it in private instead of public, so they could work something out without a loss of honor or benefits for the doctors or the Mu Family.

"Well, no time like the present." Carl muttered. He paid his tab and left the café. He soon entered the shop, the Silver Needle. Once inside, he saw that it wasn't as busy as his shop had become, so that was probably why they had gotten as desperate as they had. If they had an organization like the Mu Family to answer to, who probably didn't care about excuses so much as results, he too would probably have gotten a bit desperate in their shoes.

Carl spent some time looking over the medicines, cultivation pills, tools, and other goods they offered. He then came to the realization that he had been offering high quality goods for significantly less than they were worth.

'Huh, it just goes to show, just because I can sell stuff for the right price to any store, it doesn't mean I can't make mistakes when running my own shop. And I always acted so confident my employees must have thought I was purposefully undercutting other shops to drum up business and establish myself.' Carl thought.

The information that Carl just learned once more changed the approach he would take with the doctors. Asking around, he discovered the two doctors were unavailable due to being in an important meeting. Carl snagged the thought from the worker that they were meeting with the Mu Family member that managed their business.

'Huh, my luck must be high to catch them at just the right time.' Carl thought in amusement. He quickly penned a note that he had the employee take to the doctors. He may have used a weak confundo to insure that the worker would interrupt their meeting to hand over the note.

Several minutes later Carl was escorted into a room where the Mu Family member had been meeting with the doctors. Looking around, Carl saw that one of the doctors was tall and thin, the other was short and stout. The two were sitting off to the side, trying to look small as if they were a pair of school kids that had just been scolded by their teacher. Carl smirked on the inside.

Looking at the head of the seating arrangement, Carl saw an older scholarly looking gentleman, with a grey beard. Carl noticed the man seemed to be assessing Carl in turn. So he smiled and greeted the Mu Family member in a polite manner.

"Hello, I'm Carl. Pleased to meet you."

"Greetings. I am called Mu Gang. I understand that our people have done some unfortunate actions. I believe they have something to say about this matter." Mu Gang then glared at the two hapless doctors sitting to the side.

"We apologize for whatever inconvenience our actions have caused you, Master Carl." The tall one immediately apologized, bowing low.

"Yes, we were impulsive and made mistakes. We apologize." The shorter one followed up, also bowing.

Carl nodded magnanimously. "These things happen sometimes. I hope we can put it in the past and not worry about it anymore." The Mu family member had already extended an olive branch. Carl was pleased that the man was reasonable, it made working with them not as onerous. And with Carl showing that he wasn't going to pursue the offense, Carl was sending a message that he was willing to cooperate and do business with the Mu Family, instead of turning it into a big thing.

Mu Gang nodded in satisfaction at his underlings performance and that Carl was willing to let the issue go. "Your note intrigued me, Carl. I would be interested in hearing more about what ideas you have for a cooperation between us."

"Well, I'll be blunt here. I'm pretty new to the capital, having just been released from intense studies by my master to go out in the world and gain experience. I was looking to find a place to practice my crafts, and so chose to set up shop in the Capital, since it had the most people. Unfortunately, I've come to learn that I have done a poor job in researching just how much my products should sell for, or how popular they would get. It shows I still have much to learn."

"So I had the brilliant idea that if I could gain the help of the illustrious Mu Family to handle the disposition of the products I make, then I can rest easy that they are being handled in the correct manner, and I can gain more experience in the area of finances."

Carl figured that mixing flattery in with his portrayal of an inexperienced young man would have Mu Gang more willing to join him in a business arrangement, especially with the hint that the Mu family would profit off the arrangement.

"It is wise of you, Carl, to know where you need to grow. The Mu Family is interested in what you say. What is your proposal for our partnership?" Mu Gang showed a bit more eagerness to Carl than he probably wanted. It showed that he was eager to get a piece of the profits pie.

Carl smiled and went into his explanation of how he saw their partnership going with a proposal that would be slightly in Carl's favor. After listening to his proposal, Mu Gang countered with a proposal that would benefit the Mu Family more than Carl. They settled down into bargaining, and eventually settled on a happy compromise that both sides could live with.

Carl knew that he could have negotiated harder to maximize his benefits if he so desired, but had chosen not to for a number of reasons. The first being that now that he was established in the capital, he was hoping to cut down on the number of hours he was stuck healing people in the clinic. So many people were showing up, that he felt bad turning them away, and had been spending too many hours in the clinic.

So shutting down his clinic and redirecting them to the Mu Family stores and doctors was just perfect for Carl. He could use the hours he took back to cultivate or train instead.

He would then repurpose any employees that stayed on to work on managing a team of hunters to capture profound beasts for him. The hunter teams wouldn't even need to bring the animals they caught to him, he would provide portkeys so they could transport them directly to him.

Another reason that he didn't negotiate as hard as he could, was so that Mu Gang felt like he was giving the Mu Family face, or respect. When Mu Gang went to report to his superiors in the family, he would then give a nice review of Carl, thus making him seem like a better ally of the Mu Family, which would pave the way for a smooth business cooperation.

Once the negotiations were settled, Mu Gang invited Carl to a feast to celebrate. Carl couldn't very well refuse, so he spent some time eating and drinking with Mu Gang and the two doctors. They mostly talked about various light topics, staying away from anything too heavy.

In the end, Carl drank the three under the table. His Dragon God bloodline and physical regeneration from the Great Way of the Buddha insured that he would have to drink something a lot more potent than they had before he would be incapacitated.

After making sure that the workers would take care of their bosses, Carl made his way back to his own shop. Tomorrow he would have to make arrangements for his employees to shift focus, and arrange transport of the goods he was providing the Silver Needle shop/clinic.

Carl was quite pleased that his meeting with the doctors and Mu Gang had gone so well. He then settled down to brew some more potions that would be delivered the next day.


	40. ATG 6

Carl arrived in front of a grand pair of gates. Above the gates was a sign board written with fine Calligraphy skill, proclaiming that it was the Yun Family. Carl spent a moment to admire the skill inherent in the writing. While he had become technically proficient in writing due to it being a necessity of Ancient Runes, and now Profound Inscription, he did not have the artistic ability to convey feelings and moods through Calligraphy as was evidenced by the signboard above the gate.

Yun Family. The words carried a sense of domination, as if they looked down on nearly every other existence. Carl could see how, when the scions of the noble families were raised with those kinds of goods and high expectations always around them, they could easily grow up to be arrogant toe rags.

He made his way to the entrance. There were a pair of guards stationed there, so Carl approached them.

"Halt! Who goes there!" One of the guards barked at Carl, while resting a hand on his sword and glaring suspiciously.

Carl rolled his eyes. "Seriously? Are you pretty green to the guarding post, or are you just an idiot?" Carl asked. Giving him no time to respond, Carl continued his monologue. "You must be an idiot because I'm sure your superiors have tried to train you how to be polite and respectful to anyone approaching on the off chance they turn out to be an important person. Just because you feel all special for being a guard for one of the 12 Guardian Families wouldn't mean the Yun Family wouldn't punish you heavily if you offended the wrong person and caused problems for them."

"Take this example, right here." Carl gestured to indicate their little confrontation. "I approached the gates openly while dressed in decently prosperous robes. I'm obviously not a beggar or thief. And you act all suspicious like you want to chop me up before I've even managed to open my mouth, let alone show you the invitation I have to come visit a member of the Yun Family. Especially since it is an invitation from your Young Patriarch to visit the Yun Family Patriarch. So you tell me, now that you've offended someone who is here to meet with your Patriarch, how much of an idiot you are being?"

"And you are hardly any better." Carl then directed his gaze at the other guard. "Instead of rebuking your fellow guard you took a lazy attitude of waiting to see if he made a fool of himself. Do you think the Yun Family would let you off the hook with some excuse for why you didn't do anything to stop the idiot from bringing them problems? No, they would punish you for not teaching him any better. So, tell me, two idiots, have you learned a lesson in how to be better guards and serve the Yun Family with honor and distinction, or not?"

The two guards flushed from anger and shame at being rebuked by a stranger. The problem was that what he said made a great deal of sense, and they knew it. The first guard, however, was willing to argue back, opening his mouth angrily to yell at Carl, when the second guard smacked him, shutting him up.

The second guard saluted Carl, which he accepted with a nod of his head. "I'm sorry sir. He's new and not very well trained yet. You said you had an invitation to visit, may I see it?" The guard was assuming a polite tone of voice and posture, which at least meant that he could learn.

Carl nodded, allowing a small smile of approval to appear on his face. "Yes, it's good to see you're a quick learner. You do the Yun Family credit with your actions." Carl stated as he handed over the invitation. Evidently the second guard was smart enough to learn from a small lecture, while the first guard would have needed a beating to get the **Celestial Profound Basic Decency Inducement **perk to finally work on him.

After looking over Carl's invitation, the second guard called a servant to guide Carl to a waiting room where he was served tea while waiting for Yun Xiao to show up.

Carl sat back and relaxed with his cup of tea, occasionally sipping. It was a pretty decent flavor. In his original life he'd thought teas were way too weak flavored, and always opted for stronger drinks like sodas or coffee. But ever since he'd gotten his senses enhanced, his sense of taste was more than strong enough to make even a weak tea taste strong enough for him to enjoy.

After some time, Yun Xiao arrived. Carl rose to greet Yun Xiao.

"Carl, I'm glad you could visit so soon!" Yun Xiao exclaimed. "It took me some time to convince mother and father to allow you to diagnose them. I just hope you can help." Yun Xiao trailed off, feeling somewhat unconfident about the chances Carl had of helping them.

Carl patted Yun Xiao's shoulder sympathetically. "Don't worry too much. Everything will work out." Even if he couldn't heal Yun Xiao's parents himself, he was sure his medical bay could. It was just a matter of how he would go about it. While he liked Yun Xiao, he'd only known him for about a year. Showing him the Warehouse so soon wasn't something Carl wanted to do. Maybe he could arrange it so they could visit his building and set up the portal to the Warehouse in a doorway so they didn't realize that his Warehouse wasn't a part of the building?

Carl shrugged the concern away for the time being.

"So, shall we make our way so we don't leave your parents waiting?" Carl suggested, breaking Yun Xiao out of his thoughts.

"Sure, follow me." Yun Xiao said with a strained smile.

Yun Xiao then lead Carl out and started pointing out notable things about the Yun Family grounds as they made their way to his parent's residence.

In the center of the family grounds, there was a giant open spaced plaza with a stage called the Sacred Cloud Arena. It was a place where family martial competitions were held, and where family members could duel to solve issues between family members that couldn't be talked out. Behind the Sacred Cloud Arena was a tall monument that was constantly releasing purple light up into the sky.

"That's our Ancestral Monument." Yun Xiao pointed at the monument that was releasing purple light. "Every year on our birthdays, Yun Family members channel our purple profound energy from our cultivation art into the monument. It keeps the monument charged and continually emitting the light. The past hundred years, and especially the past 20 years when my parents have been injured, the brilliance of the monument has been dying down. It's a visible reminder of how our Yun Family is in disgrace and being punished by the Illusory Demon Royal Family."

"And you're the mascot of our disgrace, aren't you Yun Xiao!" An annoying voice shouted from the side.

Carl sighed at the sight of a dozen Yun Family members grouped up a few feet away with big grins on their faces. They were obviously coming to stir up trouble and bully the Young Patriarch while he had a guest, hoping to make him lose face.

'Damn am I glad I eventually chose not to pick that drawback **I'm Surrounded By Assholes**. I've run into plenty of them as is, since this world is chock full of them. Having a drawback to up my encounter rate for 10 long years would have been a nightmare.' Carl snorted in amusement.

The lead Yun family asshole bully glared at Carl for snorting. He thought, rightfully, that Carl wasn't taking him seriously.

Carl had trained his profound senses well over the past two and a half years. He could tell that the lead guy was at Tyrant 2, while the rest of the dozen Yun Family members were all Emperor 10 or Tyrant 1 level. Since Yun Xiao was Emperor 9 and Carl was only Emperor 3 level at the moment, they arrogantly thought that Carl should be cowering before their might.

"And just who do you think you are?" Sneered the lead moron.

"Me? I'm the Doctor." Carl blandly stated. He had always enjoyed the show, so now that he was an actual doctor…

"Doctor who?" The Yun Family bully had a questioning look on his face.

'Yes! I can see why Doctor Who always has fun with that gag.' Carl chuckled inside. He could see Yun Xiao next to him being amused and concerned at the same time.

"Yup. And you lot? Not a bit of manners among you. It is pretty rude to not introduce yourself first when asking someone else's name." Carl sniffed at the group, as if they were uncivilized barbarians.

"You can't talk to us like that in the Yun Family home! You're courting death!" The lead bully was evidently a hotheaded stubborn idiot.

"Oh, but somehow it's okay for you to verbally attack the young Patriarch in front of his guest? I guess you lot are the real despair of the Yun Family. It's no wonder you're declining if you can't understand such simple rules of etiquette. How about if you and I take this disagreement to the arena here and hash it out?" Carl offered with a sneer, just to be sure the brat knew how little Carl thought of him.

"Good! Don't cry to me when I break your bones though!"

Yun Xiao looked nervously at Carl. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Carl nodded seriously, smiling reassuringly at Yun Xiao. "Don't worry, I'll be fine." He then got on the stage, waiting for the idiot to join him. "By the way, the name is Carl. I never did catch your name."

"My name is Yun Kuo! You'll regret mouthing off to me, boy!"

Carl chuckled at Yun Kuo's attempts to rile him up by setting himself as the older. Carl then turned serious when Yun Kuo powered up in front of him.

Pulling up his own profound energy to be prepared for combat, Carl got in his ready stance. Since this wasn't a duel to the death, neither of them used a weapon.

Yun Kuo flew through the air at Carl, attempting to get the upper hand by striking first and striking hard. Carl didn't think too much of his speed, and used his profound energy to charge forward as well, but at the last second he used his wind movement skills to create a little wind stepping stone in front of Yun Kuo, who barreled into it face first.

Yun Kuo hadn't been damaged by the low end profound skill made of wind, but it was enough to cause Yun Kuo to flinch from having something unexpected smack him in the face. Carl was there in a flash, taking advantage of Yun Kuo's distraction to attack.

Since Carl didn't want to burn the brat to death, he restricted himself to physical attacks, making use of his medical knowledge to dislocate Yun Kuo's arms and block his usage of profound energy. After a couple seconds and a dozen strikes by Carl, Yun Kuo fell from the air onto the stage in a heap.

Carl landed nearby and summoned a fireball the size of a beach ball. The sheer heat of the fireball caused sweat to spring out on Yun Kuo's face as he stared at the technique, frightened at how close death felt to him.

"So, now that I have your attention, Yun Kuo, I'd like to address some of your issues and misunderstandings." Carl spoke loudly so the whole group of bullying lads could hear him. "You consider yourself a proud member of the Yun Family, do you not?" When it looked like Yun Kuo wasn't going to say anything, Carl motioned the fireball a little closer.

"Yes! Please don't burn me!" Yun Kuo yelled.

Carl nodded. "It helps when having a dialogue to actually answer the questions posed to you, Yun Kuo. I'm not going to burn you. But you will engage in this dialogue with vocal answers. Understood?"

"Yes." Yun Kuo gritted out.

"Good!" Carl cheerfully voiced. "We are having a good conversation already." He then turned sober. "So, since you consider yourself a proud member of the Yun Family, you should owe them your loyalty first and foremost?"

"Of course!" Yun Kuo shouted. "I'm loyal to the Yun Family!"

"That's good to hear. So why is it that you're acting like a traitor?" Carl dropped a bombshell on Yun Kuo.

"What!? No, I'd never be a traitor to the family! You lie!" Yun Kuo's anger was rising up at the accusation that he was despicable.

"Really? You truly believe that you're not acting like a traitor to the family?" Carl asked while looking out of the corner of his eye at the several elders that had been watching the fight and listening in on their conversation. Judging from their scowls, they too didn't like the question.

"Okay, let's go over some facts of life here for you ignorant brats." Carl said. "Up until a hundred years ago, the Yun Family was the undisputed number 1 family of the 12 Guardian Families. You ranked only behind the Illusory Demon Royal Family. What happens to such a family when they stay in the number one position for such a long time?" Carl asked.

"They're proven as the strongest?"

"They're renowned around the nation?"

Carl shook his head at the answers. It seems like his audience was stumped and not getting what Carl was pointing at. Carl decided to answer for them, since they didn't seem to be getting it on their own.

"When someone stays in the number one position for so long, there will inevitably be those that are jealous. They will stare enviously at the number one, wishing they had the resources, the money, the _prestige_ of being number one themselves. They would even do anything to drag down the number one, so they can have a share of the resources that the number one family enjoys. Which means, the Yun Family has their share of rivals and enemies that covet what you have. Or had, up until recently."

Carl let them stew on that for a few moments, to let the idea sink in. "Now, that doesn't mean you don't have allies. From everything I've heard, you have very true and staunch allies. But that doesn't mean there aren't groups out there that would be happy to start schemes designed to hurt your family, your benefits, and your good name."

"How old are you, Yun Xiao?" Carl asked his friend a question.

"I'm 18." Yun Xiao answered calmly, yet in a voice that carried. He too was waiting to see just where Carl was going with this.

"So here we have Yun Xiao, who is only 18 years old. While the Yun Family has been in decline for a hundred years. So obviously young Yun Xiao here isn't the cause of the Yun Family's decline. The decline started long before he was even conceived."

"I've also seen what Yun Xiao has been receiving from the Yun Family as the young Patriarch of the family for his cultivation resources, and I'm amazed. He has received practically nothing. The Yun Family uses him as a scapegoat for their decline, cutting his resources to nothing, attacking him, and blaming him for things that aren't his fault."

"And yet, what is Yun Xiao's cultivation level? Emperor 9. Somehow a cultivator, who receives nothing from the Yun Family despite holding a prestigious title, had clawed his way up to Emperor 9 through his own blood, sweat, and tears. So you think about that. Is someone who receives nothing but accomplishes such an amazing feat really the disgrace of the Yun family? It seems to me he has quite the talent!"

"But he wasn't able to awaken his Profound Handle! That's why he's a disgrace!" One of the lads in the group yelled out in anger.

"So the fuck what?!" Carl yelled back at him, shocking everyone there.

The Profound Handle that the youth referred to was a special innate profound ability of the Yun Family. It was passed on through the bloodline and gave a Yun Family member a few special abilities. The family rules were laid out so that only a male that had a strong manifestation of the Profound Handle could step up and become the Patriarch.

"The Yun Family is surrounded by fucking enemies that love to watch you tearing each other apart!" Carl continued yelling, trying to hammer certain truths home to them. "You're on the decline because your family failed the Empire. That's not something that can be made right without extraordinary effort. But instead of pulling together and putting on a united front to outsiders and striving to recover your honor, you idiots go around in the market place bullying the person who has the Young Patriarch position. You belittle him in front of an outsider, one of his guests. Is it any wonder the rest of the Empire views the current Yun Family as a joke? You can't even keep your own house in order?"

"How shameful it is that scions of the Yun Family go around sucking up to members of other Guardian Families and Duke Palaces, hoping to beg some little bits of scrap, hoping to win their approval by bullying and belittling their own Patriarch's son. Where is your honor as a member of the Yun Family? Where is your pride as the number one fucking Guardian Family?"

"So, do you get it now? Do you understand your mistakes and how you need to find your damned backbone? You, Yun Kuo!" Carl directed his question to the young lad while getting rid of his fireball. "What are you going to do? Are you going to continue to be a disgrace of the Yun Family and fight your own family for the amusement of outsiders? Or are you going to man up and be the backbone of your Family as you regain your glory?"

"I swear to be the backbone of the Family!" Yun Kuo yelled out hoarsely. "We will regain our glory!"

"Good! I'm glad to see spirit of the Yun Family I've heard stories about!" Carl said. He quickly fixed the dislocations and unblocked his profound energy. Carl then gave him a hand to stand up. "I'm quite pleased to meet a scion of the Yun Family." Carl smiled as he clapped a hand on Yun Kuo's shoulder. Yun Kuo visibly puffed up at the praise. And Carl saw many of the elders and other Yun Family members with deep thinking faces on.

"Now, if you'll excuse us, we have a meeting to get to. It was good to compare notes with you." Carl then gave him a salute, which Yun Kuo returned.

Yun Kuo and his group moved off with speed, probably to train now that their blood was pumping from Carl's rousing speech.

Carl turned to see Yun Xiao looking at him with almost stars in his eyes. "Did you mean what you said, Carl?"

Carl could see that Yun Xiao was talking about him calling Yun Xiao talented, since he hardly ever gets complimented. Carl nodded seriously. "I really mean it. You've got lots of talent. I've seen it as we've sparred this past year."

"But you always win." Yun Xiao complained sourly. Carl laughed at the expression on Yun Xiao's face, and clapped him on the shoulder in commiseration.

"Yeah, but I'm also a really talented freak. I've had to keep upping the ante while we fight in order to keep the same pressure on you so you'd grow more skilled faster. Now, let's go. I'm sure your parents are wondering what the delay is."

As they left the arena, Carl chuckled inside. His perk to induce decency was getting a workout today.

* * *

"It's a pleasure to meet you." Carl greeted Yun Xiao's parents.

Yun Qinghong, Yun Xiao's father, looked like a feeble man in his early 50s with half of his hair turned grey. Which considering that most cultivators looked to be in their 20s or 30s at most for centuries really said something about his injuries. So did the way he almost hobbled when greeting Carl.

Mu Yurou looked to be in her mid 40s. She too had difficulty moving around. Her initial injuries weren't as bad as Yun Qinghong's, but she was a few levels below him in cultivation and seemed to be having a harder time fighting off the poison that both husband and wife were afflicted with.

Carl made a quick inspection of the couple, and determined that they were basically good people, upright and strong willed. Medically speaking, they were a mess. Many of their internal organs were damaged and on the verge of shutting down. 90% of their tendons were scarred and damaged, so they had a hard time moving. And they were inflicted with a poison that had permeated every part of their bodies, preventing them from accessing their profound energy and keeping them from healing.

"It's good to meet you too, Doctor Carl." Yun Qinghong greeted him.

"I'm so glad to finally meet Little Xiao's friend. I've heard good things about you." Mu Yurou added with a gentle smile.

Carl chuckled in response. "I'm surprised you have heard anything about me. I'd imagine most of his attention is on Seventh Sister." Carl threw Yun Xiao under the bus to his mother for no other reason than it was funny.

Mu Yurou chuckled while Yun Xiao's strangled coughs brightened Carl's day. Carl cheerfully ignored Yun Xiao's muttered "never should have brought him here".

"Oh, he doesn't say much about her, but I've seen that look on young men before, and could fill in the blanks." Mu Yurou said with a small smile and a gleam in her eye, while eyeing her own husband meaningfully. Yun Qinghong coughed in embarrassment at the inference.

After chatting for a while longer, Carl felt pretty good about deciding to help Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou. He quite liked them, and they kept up a good attitude in front of him, despite no doubt being in pain from their injuries and poison.

Eventually, Carl broke the subject that brought him there that day. "So, Yun Xiao has told you that I'm willing to try my hand at diagnosing your problems, yes?" At their solemn nods, Carl nodded back. "Shall I start with Yun Qinghong?"

Carl could see the struggle in their eyes. For 20 years they had been suffering from their injuries and the poison. Many doctors had come and gone, and none could help them. At this point, even allowing doctors to diagnose them felt like they were getting their hopes up for nothing, so it was a struggle to give it a chance.

Eventually, Yun Qinghong nodded after seeing the look of hope in Yun Xiao's face. Sighing, he motioned Carl to do his thing.

Carl gave a small comforting smile, and moved around the table to take Yun Qinghong's pulse at his wrist, while at the same time sinking a profound energy probe into his body. He soon verified what he knew from his initial visual scan, and added the knowledge that the poison was a Cold type poison that was permeated in every part of Yun Qinghong's body. Sword Energy from a cultivator that specialized in fighting with swords was what had cut through most of his body's tendons. His organs were on the verge of failure. It was only due to his high cultivation level that he survived.

Once he finished his scan, Carl sat back down and gave the three a small smile of comfort. "Well, the good news is that I'm sure I can treat you, and get you back on your feet, as good as new." Carl said, and then had to pause at their exclamations of disbelief.

"Are you serious? How can you do it when no other doctors could help us?"

"I have had a most excellent master. He was the most skilled doctor, bar none." Carl chuckled. While not strictly true, the Jumpchain could be considered a teacher and master in a way, so he wasn't completely lying.

"Now, I have three methods available to heal you with. The first is the longest, most expensive, and most difficult to accomplish. I won't even go into details of the treatment, since I wouldn't recommend it. It would take at least seven years. Too long."

Carl smiled inside at their automatic nods. He could tell they were still struggling to whether to believe him or not about his words of being able to heal them.

"Now, the second method is something that I couldn't have done before a couple months ago when I finally made my own breakthrough in a cultivation technique given to me by my master. With it, I can cleanse your bodies of the poison, and help you heal in only a month." Carl had to pause and wait out their exclamations of disbelief once more.

"Carl, you're not lying, right? You can really heal my parents?" Yun Xiao exclaimed in question. Carl nodded in affirmation.

"I hope you are for real. We don't need any false hope or boasting since we are well aware of just how bad our condition is." Yun Qinghong seriously said, while Mu Yurou remained quiet.

"I could administer the first treatment right here and now so you can judge whether my words are true or not." Carl offered.

The family of three exchanged looks for several moments. Yun Xiao was so obviously urging them to take a chance that it almost broke his parent's hearts. Mu Yurou gave a firm nod to Yun Qinghong.

"Fine." Yun Qinghong sighed. "Let's give it a try. There's nothing to lose anyway by taking a chance." He muttered at the end.

Carl nodded seriously, and placed his hand on Yun Qinghong's shoulder. He pulled up his energy from the Great Way of the Buddha and began channeling it through Yun Qinghong's body.

The two things needed for the treatment were the regeneration abilities of the Great Way of the Buddha, and an extraordinary knowledge of the human body. If Carl didn't have the medical knowledge given to him from his perk, he wouldn't have dared to chance attempting this procedure. The energy from the Great Way of the Buddha technique without precise directions would have run wild in Yun Qinghong's body and caused more damage than it healed, likely killing him.

Carl used his nature and regenerative energy to push the cold poison before it, moving the poison to Yun Qinghong's left hand. With his other hand, he pulled out a flask from his spatial ring and handed it to Yun Xiao.

"When I tell you, cut a one centimeter cut on his middle finger, and catch the poison flow in the flask. Keep your hands steady, and don't spill it." Carl warned the suddenly nervous Yun Xiao.

After a few moments, Carl glanced at his friend. "Now, Yun Xiao."

Yun Xiao barely hesitated, only enough for his father to give him an encouraging nod, before he made the cut.

Black, ink like substance poured out of Yun Qinghong's finger to fall into the flask. Carl returned his full concentration on herding all the poison out of Yun Qinghong's body. The poison seemed to fight against being pushed out, but Carl was relentless. Several minutes passed, and when the poison was finally out of Yun Qinghong's body, his red blood started leaking out.

Carl quickly directed some energy to seal up the cut. He then directed his energy to work on healing some of Yun Qinghong's body, a bit at a time. Now that the poison was gone, his body started the healing process for the first time in 20 years.

Carl finished up, pulled his energy back, and released his hand from Yun Qinghong's shoulder. Despite how amazing the nature energy was from the Great Way of the Buddha technique, channeling it in that manner was bloody exhausting. Carl had sweat rolling off his face and felt like he'd run a marathon with his original out of shape body. The one he had before the Jumpchain.

He pulled out a pepper up potion and downed it. After the quick energy rush, Carl felt a lot better.

"Father, how is it?" Yun Xiao was anxiously asking.

Yun Qinghong responded by laughing out loud boisterously, which shocked Yun Xiao. As loving as his parents were, he'd never seen his father that happy and celebratory before.

"I can feel it! My profound energy! I thought I'd never feel it again!" Yun Qinghong crowed.

Yun Xiao jumped up in excitement. "That's wonderful, father!" After a moment of celebration, he turned to Carl. "Thank you so much Carl. Can you help my mother now?" He anxiously asked.

Carl smiled at his friend. "Sure thing."

Carl then repeated the same steps he had with Yun Qinghong on Mu Yurou, flushing out the poison and starting the healing process once more. Afterwards, Carl felt wiped out as he collapsed in his seat. He wouldn't be doing that again anytime soon. But now he had two samples of the cold poison to study.

While Carl sat back and watched the family celebrate, he relaxed and recovered his energy without the pepper up potion this time. He was pleased to see that Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou were already moving better as their profound energy was trickling back into their bodies.

"I'm glad to see you two feeling better." Carl said when the family had finished their emotional moment and turned their attention back to him. "With the poison now removed from your bodies, even if I did nothing else to help you, you would recover about 70% of your full capacity over about three years. It's unlikely if you didn't accept more treatment if you would ever get to 100% though."

Carl paused for a bit to let what he said sink in. Just when it looked like Yun Xiao would burst and demand he do something more, Carl continued with a small hint of a grin for having tweaked his friend.

"But if I continue coming around for another month of similar treatments that I just performed, then you will be 100% in just a month." Carl grinned at the rush of hope and ambition he could see in the couple, especially the Patriarch Yun Qinghong. Being crippled for 20 years and forced to watch helplessly as his clan continued to fall apart must have been especially maddening for him.

"We are already in your debt, Carl. If you would continue the treatment, we would owe you even more." Yun Qinghong gave Carl a salute, being very serious.

Carl casually waved it away. "I realize you feel strongly about this, and I'm not dismissing your feelings. But I did this for my friend's parents, not so that the Patriarch of the Yun Clan would feel he owed me one."

"Nevertheless, you must accept our thanks for giving us this opportunity to retake our lives." Mu Yurou spoke up in a soft tone, with many emotions underpinning her words.

Carl gave back a salute to the two. "As a proud cultivator myself, how would I dare be too full of myself. But I accept in the spirit in which it was given."

Carl then coughed to move on and deliberately break the touchy feely moment. "So, before the treatment I said that there was a third method of treatment. Understand that the only reason I dared mention it was that over the last year I've come to trust and admire Yun Xiao's character, which is a direct reflection of how his parents raised him. Otherwise, I would keep this secret and never reveal it to anyone."

Carl had decided that he would go ahead and offer the use of the Medical Bay to heal them up in a day for a number of reasons.

The first reason is that he didn't want to have to spend a month coming to treat the two until they were completely healed. The chances that the Yun Family's enemies were keeping a close eye on them was practically 100%. He didn't want a hint of what he was doing to help the Yun couple heal to leak to their enemies until the Yun couple had a chance to rebuild their control and powerbase and start to enact plans to deal with their enemies.

The second reason was that even though he had helped them quite a bit, as a Patriarch of such a large family, Yun Qinghong had to be feeling uncomfortable owing such a huge favor to an outsider. The worry that Carl might come back later to ask for repayment of the favor in a way that might be detrimental to the Yun Family would be a niggling worry at the back of his mind.

If Carl gave them a secret of his own that could hurt him if the Yun Patriarch let it out, then it would act as a sort of guarantee and reassurance that they would be considerate of each other. His secret would act as collateral of their cooperation.

The information that Carl possessed a miracle healing device that could heal the crippled Yun couple near instantly is something that would destroy Carl by instigating a world wide hunt of Carl as the strongest cultivators around the world would do anything to control him or his healing device.

At least, in the minds of the Yun couple it was a huge secret. For Carl, in reality, if they screwed him over and let the cat out of the bag, he could simply disappear for seven and a half years before leaving the world and no one would ever see him again in this world.

Added on that he knew through his Heart of Snow Glazed Glass ability that the Yun family in front of Carl was inherently good and wouldn't betray his trust unless he gave them reason to, and Carl didn't think he was really taking that big a risk by letting them in on the secret.

"I have a healing device that can heal you up in one afternoon. It is a lifesaving gift to me from my master, and I am willing to use it to unsure you two are on your feet as soon as possible." Carl shared the secret. "I didn't mention it before the treatment because now you have proof that I can back up my words, and they aren't just empty boasts."

Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou's body language told Carl that the Yun couple, at least, caught all the implications and unvoiced messages that Carl wanted to send them. Yun Xiao was still a little young and unused to dealing with politics so he missed some of the unspoken messages.

"We couldn't possibly use up your life saving treasure gifted by your master." Yun Qinghong replied.

"Yes, well I assume by now you know that I am quite a competent healer in my own right. The device is not a single use device. It is basically a device my master built to ensure that if I was ever injured too much that I couldn't heal myself, then I would still be able to use the device to receive treatment. Be assured that using it to speed up your own healing will not deprive me of its use."

Carl saw that Yun Qinghong still had some reservations about just why he was offering them the use, what he could possibly benefit from revealing the existence of the healing device, if it was so miraculous. Carl sighed inside. Just because Yun Qinghong was a good man, didn't mean he was not also shrewd. Especially after seeing the true faces of so many people that simply abandoned him and his wife when they came back from the Sky Profound Continent crippled. Carl knew he would have to elaborate more if he was to convince Yun Qinghong.

"I'm sure you know that I've only been in the capital for about two and a half years." At their nods, Carl continued. "One of the things I've been doing was learning everything about the city I've decided to spend my time in. Less chance of being blindsided by surprise politics if I stay in the know."

Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou exchanged significant glances. Even Carl's Sherlock like abilities didn't help him parse out the meanings behind their concerned looks. So, he simply continued on.

"After learning the recent history of the capital and the Illusory Demon Royal family, I have concerns. One of the things that I find incredibly suspicious is how the Demon Emperor disappeared. I've heard the stories about how he was ambushed by the Four Sacred Grounds from the Sky Profound Continent, but how did they know to ambush him?"

"And when your own father, Yun Canghai, took 10 late stage Monarchs to find him they were also ambushed before they could accomplish anything? Well, it made me wonder. Just what could stop 11 late stage Monarchs?"

"There is a saying from my home town. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. And so when the Little Demon Emperor suddenly left his bride on their wedding night before ensuring the continuance of the lineage of the Illusory Demon Royal Family, a family he was reportedly proud of, and he too disappeared. Well, it just solidified my opinion that there is an enemy of the Royal Family. They are also an enemy of the Yun Family. And they are somewhere in the dark, plotting."

Carl was glad that the furious and murderous looks on the Yun's faces wasn't directed at him. Apparently the Yun and Mu families took their responsibilities to guard the Illusory Demon Royal Family and the Empire very seriously.

"How could we not have seen it?" Yun Qinghong whispered angrily. "There must be a traitor in the Empire. But who? That must have been why it was so easy for them to find our trail and hunt us down when we too went to the Sky Profound Continent." Yun Qinghong looked apologetically to his wife for leading her into a trap.

Mu Yurou grasped Yun Qinghong's hand and smiled in reassurance that she didn't blame him.

"I have my suspicions as to who they are, but we'll get to that later. After the treatment." Carl flatly told them. "I told you all this now, so you understand why I'm offering the use of my master's healing device. The Yun Family enemies are without a doubt closely watching who comes and goes in your family. If I were to come regularly for a month, and your health continued to improve over that month, then they might act against me to prevent your recovery."

"If you conceal the fact that you are healed however, and continue to pretend to be crippled? Then you have time to solidify your position in your family, contact your allies, and set up a counter trap."

"As for the reason I'm helping you?" Carl asked when he saw there were still questions in Yun Qinghong's eyes. "I've made friends with your son, Yun Xiao, so I am on your side. And I hate traitors." Carl flatly declared.

Traitors that would betray everything they should stand for just because they have a lust for power, or wealth, or whatever deserve death. Yun Qinghong saw that sentiment in Carl's eyes, and finally seemed satisfied that he had Carl's measure.

"Okay, young man. We trust you." Yun Qinghong smiled at Carl. "So, let's get this treatment out of the way, and we can then talk more about what we'll do in the coming days."

Carl let a smile grow on his face too. He internally shrugged at showing them the warehouse. From his explanation of the healing device, they would be suspicious of he couldn't access it with him. And since cultivators were no strangers to pocket spaces, it's not like he needed to even explain the Warehouse. They would draw their own conclusions.

So he pulled a large door on a frame out of his spatial ring. It was just a simple free standing door on a base that he had crafted to cover his use of a portal into his warehouse just in case. Opening a portal into the Medical Bay, Carl preceded everyone as they followed him inside.

He soon had Yun Qinghong on the medical bed. After a quick scan, he configured the healing bed to do what he wanted it to. While he was at it, he decided to go ahead and open all of Yun Qinghong's profound entrances.

If they were going to be Carl's allies, he wanted them to get as strong as they could until it was time to take action against their enemies.

A short time later, Yun Qinghong was bouncing in place, laughing aloud at the glorious feel of being physically _whole_ for the first time in 20 years. He was soon eagerly ushering Mu Yurou onto the bed, anxious that his wife also be healed.

Carl complied and had Mu Yurou healed, also opening up all of her 54 profound entrances.

"Okay, your turn Yun Xiao." Carl said after Mu Yurou was done.

"But I'm not sick or injured or anything?" Yun Xiao said in confusion.

"Ahh, but that's not the only thing this device can do. Yun Qinghong, Mu Yurou, how many profound entrances of yours were open?"

"I had 36 open. My father was quite proud!" Yun Qinghong answered.

"I had 33." Mu Yurou answered.

"Check out how many you have open now." Carl said with a smirk.

"W-what?! All 54?! But this is the legendary Heavenly God's Spiritual Veins! How?!" Yun Qinghong gasped. Mu Yurou and Yun Xiao just gaped open mouthed.

"Like I said, my master was a medical saint. There was practically nothing he couldn't do. He taught me the skill to open Profound Entrances, so I could have done it myself. It was just easier to do so while you were being healed. This way, you can get much stronger for the day that we inevitably face our enemies."

And letting the Yun family members know just how valuable Carl is wouldn't hurt his standing with them at all.

"So, no more dawdling, Yun Xiao! Get on the bed." With even his parents urging him, Yun Xiao got on the medbay bed.

A short time later, Yun Xiao too had all his Profound Entrances open and had some minor issues, like old bone breaks, fixed. Carl had also made sure that all three of their Profound Veins were reinforced and upgraded as much as he could.

After which, Carl ushered the three outside his Warehouse and put away the door in his spatial ring once more.

"Carl? Do you think you can open Seventh Sister's Profound Entrances too? I really appreciate what you've done for me, don't get me wrong!" Yun Xiao hastily said when Carl just stared at him for a moment. "It's just, she's been so good to me, helping me get resources and all, that I don't want her to lag behind, and I want her to be her best too, and-"

Carl interrupted Yun Xiao's babbling with laughter. "Ahh, don't worry, Yun Xiao. I had planned on it already. I was just wondering how long it would take you to ask on her behalf. I would have been disappointed in you if you didn't ask for something nice for you sweetheart!"

Carl could see Mu Yurou go on point in the way only a mother could when she was interested in who her son dated, which caused Carl to grin inside.

"Giving you resources?" Yun Qinghong on the other had grasped onto something else. "Why would Number Seven need to give you resources?"

Yun Xiao got a wide eyed look as he realized what he had let slip. He had been so happy about his parents being healed, he hadn't been as cautious about not talking about how he was treated by the Yun Family.

Seeing Yun Xiao struggle to come up with an explanation, but not being stupid and could guess correctly, Yun Qinghong snorted. "Well, we'll talk about that later then." It was an internal Yun Family matter, so it was shelved for later.

Yun Qinhong then turned to Carl. "You said you had some suspicions about who is behind the attacks on the Illusory Demon Royal Family, as well as our Yun Family?"

Carl noticed how he placed the Illusory Demon Royal Family first, even before his Yun Family. This was a man that placed a huge amount of importance on his duty and responsibilities. Carl decided that he admired that trait in the man.

"Well, I don't have any hard evidence of who is a traitor. But I have noticed quite a few trends over the past two and a half years that is very suggestive and requires follow up. Let me show you what I've seen in the way some of the 12 Guardian Families and several Duke Palaces have been acting…"

* * *

Carl had just left the Yun Family after presenting his evidence and suspicions and passing a couple more gifts designed to help his allies. Yun Xiao had been sent off to allow his parents some alone time.

Yun Qinghong grabbed his wife from behind and sat down on a chair, placing her in his lap while he hugged her to him. It was almost like a dream, to be healthy once more.

Mu Yurou giggled at her husband's forceful actions. She too was just so happy to finally be free of the pain. And the cuddling was doing amazing things to her, feelings that she thought she would never be able to feel again in this life.

Yun Qinghong suddenly stilled though, and in a serious tone of voice, asked his wife. "Did you feel it in him too? His bloodline?"

Mu Yurou nodded. "Indeed. I almost didn't believe it at first, but he has the Golden Crow bloodline. It is very strong, too. How he got it is a mystery, since he obviously isn't related to the Royal Family."

"We'll keep his medical device secret, of course. But the Little Demon Empress needs to know about his bloodline. Without the Little Demon Emperor, Carl is now the hope of preserving and strengthening the bloodline of the Royal Family."

Mu Yurou nodded seriously. As a member of one of the 12 Guardian Families from birth, they were trained to take their duty to the Royal Family seriously. "Thankfully he gave us these communication devices. They are a wonder." She grabbed up one of the communication mirrors that Carl had gifted them. "How are we going to pass these to our allies and the Little Demon Empress without letting our enemies suspect anything?"

"Hmm." Yun Qinghong nodded while thinking. "Well, the Mu family will be easy. You can visit home one of these days in the next week."

Mu Yurou nodded, then got a brilliant smile on her face. "I think you need to visit the Under Heaven Family soon. A betrothal between the Elf Clan and the Yun Family would help our two families draw closer. And I like that girl, Number Seven, for Yun Xiao." A thought crossed her mind and her smile fell away.

Yun Qinghong, seeing her falling mood, hugged her closer. "He's fine. One of these days, after we settle all the issues here, we'll go look for him. My brother Xiao Ying will have watched out for him in our place, just as we are doing for Yun Xiao for him."

"I know." Mu Yurou said softly. "I just miss our baby boy. I love Yun Xiao like he is my own. But I just wish things hadn't happened like they did."

"Me too, my love, me too. Everything will work out, though. You'll see."

Mu Yurou settled back, letting herself be comforted as the two enjoyed the first night of being healthy after so very long.


	41. ATG 7

Now that Carl had finally made contact and allied with the Yun Family and set them in motion to gathering allies, he did not vary his normal daily routine. Making a big change to his schedule immediately after meeting with the Yun Family would look incredibly suspicious to any spies that were watching the Yun Family, thus negating their efforts to move discreetly as they rallied their allies.

He had already passed off and redirected his duties as a doctor to the Mu family shop, the Silver Needle, when he made his deal with them. So aside from continuing to make various medicines, pills, and potions to be sold there, he found he suddenly had a lot of free time. So with the restriction of not doing anything unusual or stand out, Carl spent some time in thought over what he would fill his time with study or training wise. With the upcoming counter offensive coming, Carl decided he would spend a large chunk of his time experimenting with combining various magic and profound crafting practices to help his allies in their endeavors.

Shortly after entering the world and gaining his knowledge of crafting from his perks, Carl found that there were many instances where spells and runes were able to do many of the same things that profound inscriptions and arrays could. Communication devices, dimensional storage space, medicine, etc. were all things that had direct duplicates in both systems.

But after that point there was a great divergence. The two societies, magical and profound, were vastly different. The magical society of Earth found themselves outnumbered and hunted by the non magical peoples, or taken advantage of by the muggle Lords. So they decided to hide from the muggles in order to protect themselves, rather than fight.

The magical society then developed their practical magic along the lines of hiding and protection. Instead of massively powerful direct combat magic, they researched defensive and hiding wards and spells. They created spells that would ensure they could be self sufficient in their daily lives, as well as being capable of hiding themselves from the vast population of muggles. And even their combat magic was kept relatively low key so they wouldn't gain attention from unwanted outsiders.

The profound cultivation society of Blue Pole Star had a vastly different environment. They lived in a hostile world where beasts could grow strong enough to destroy entire cities with barely any effort. Those who practiced Profound Cultivation weren't a fraction of the whole society, they were the main focus of their entire people. Everything about their society was focused on the goals of surviving and prospering through strength.

They needed to grow stronger to be able to carve out a place for their families to live. So most of their efforts went into learning how to get stronger, faster, and more powerful. They created attack techniques that could kill a beast as large as a small mountain. They learned movement techniques to keep up with creatures that could be faster than a jet plane. They learned defensive techniques to protect themselves from creatures that could be more destructive than an ICBM. Everything about their society was geared towards getting stronger.

Magic and Profound Energy were, however, two separate energy sources. Despite sometimes being able to do the same thing, they seemed to have two different "frequencies", so to speak, and rarely interfered with each other. And the two energy sources also had a different frequency from his Ki that he learned from the HSDK world.

Now that Carl had been to several different worlds, in addition to some of the perks he gained from this one, he was starting to come up with several ideas about how things worked.

The first idea had to do with magic. He had two worlds he gained magic from, the BtVS world and the HP world. Despite the different magic systems and how the practitioners gained magic, the two world's magic was on the same frequency. Magic was magic, no matter where he went.

In the BtVS world, when he had needed to cast magic, he had basically been a conduit for magic. He would suck it in from outside his body, and then utilize it immediately. But he had no storage capacity. When he gained the HP version of magic, he gained a magical core that resided in his head. It constantly drew magic into his body and stored it, ready for future use.

The placement of his magical core in his head followed the theme that Carl thought was the main focus of a magic user: their intelligence and mental abilities.

The perks that he had gained from the ATG world added some more ideas. The Great Way of the Buddha was a technique focused on enhancing the body, totally separate from the Profound Veins. After some investigation of his own body, he found that the energy from The Great Way of the Buddha was incredibly similar to his Ki. The technique was a way to "ingest" energy from outside the body and convert it to Ki to enhance his body.

It was different from the methods of the HSDK world, where they simply focused on exercise and more exercise to temper the body. With the Great Way of the Buddha, the technique used outside energy to temper and nourish the body.

And the center for his Ki core was where his heart was. Another symbolic location in his body. The heart pumps the blood that keeps the body alive. It is the metaphorical center of his physical body.

Which brought him to Profound Energy. In most of the stories, the cultivators would have a Dantian that they formed that would be the center of their cultivation energy. As they absorbed the energy of the Heavens, it would fortify their soul, which would have a trickle down effect of enhancing their body and minds after enhancing their souls.

And while the cultivation methods of ATG didn't have a Dantian and was instead replaced by the Profound Veins, he found it telling that the inner world that stored energy granted by the Nine Profound Exquisite Body was where his Dantian would be.

Carl then came to the conclusion that since the cultivation practices focused first on strengthening the soul, then it made sense to him that his soul center was at his Dantian, just slightly below and behind his navel.

Body, Mind, and Soul. Three different focuses and methods to enhance an individual aspect of the person, which then trickled down to make improvements to the rest of the person as a whole. Could the techniques from one method be adapted to another? Could he use the basics from the profound cultivation and body cultivation techniques in order to create magic cultivation techniques? Carl thought it was highly possible, although it would be time consuming to convert the techniques.

He already had profound cultivation techniques that were focused on enhancing his soul first, and then the improvements would trickle down and improve his mind and body.

And now that he had the Great Way of the Buddha technique, he had proof that there were methods to absorb nature energy and use it to improve his physical body, which would then trickle down to his mind and soul and enhance them too.

So he knew that it was highly likely that somewhere out there were techniques to cultivate and enhance his mind and magic, and then it would trickle down and strengthen his body and soul. He already had proof that magic enhanced the physical bodies of wizards, so the theory was sound, in Carl's mind.

So where were his techniques used to cultivate magical energy and strengthen his mind, and then trickle down and enhance his body and soul? The magic worlds he had been to previously didn't have such techniques. Getting stronger wasn't their main focus, so much as using what they had.

But the history of both the BtVS and HP worlds gave him hints. Merlin was a hugely powerful wizard, capable of great feats of magic that the average wizard couldn't do. How did he get so strong? Was it really just the accident of his genetics, or was there more to it?

In the BtVS world, the lore said that True Demons were in charge of the Earth in the beginning, and it was Hell for the humans. And then at some point the great human Mages banded together and kicked out the Demons. How did the human mages get strong enough to do that under the Demon's rule, considering how weak humans were when Carl lived there? They must have had a method to enhance themselves that was lost sometime in the past.

Due to all these thoughts, Carl was interested in attempting to come up with a method to create a magical cultivation technique that would strengthen his magic. Carl determined that it would be a long term goal, something that he would have to develop gradually while he focused on other things in this world. He still had to help the Yun Family overcome their secret enemies and once more bring order to the Empire.

So for the time being he would focus on getting stronger with the Great Way of the Buddha body cultivation technique, and the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World stages that would increase his skill and control over fire.

Which brought him back to his ideas for crafting useful tools. The focus of the HP world crafting was different from the profound cultivation techniques. But if he could use the ideas and techniques from both in one device, or a series of tools at least, then he would be able to give his side a decisive advantage in the upcoming conflict.

So aside from Carl's far reaching goal to create a magical cultivation system and his current cultivation practicing to get to the peak, he busied himself crafting various devices that would be helpful in the upcoming counter attack against the Yun Family's enemies. He would stockpile them for now and distribute them to his allies before they sprung the trap. Carl was determined to do all he could to get all of the conspirators in one go.

* * *

Over the month following Carl's meeting and healing of Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou, Carl kept in regular contact with Yun Qinghong using the mirrors as the Yun Family Patriarch started organizing his family and meeting with trusted allies to pass along the mirror communicators that Carl had passed him.

There were a lot of things that Yun Qinghong was doing and organizing that Carl was not privy to. Not only was he an outsider to the Yun Family, albeit a somewhat trusted ally, but he was considered pretty weak on the cultivation scale. He had only recently broke through into the Emperor Realm, which at the age of early 20s in the Illusory Demon Realm was considered very weak and untalented. Most of the youth of the important families were at least in the Tyrant realm, if not the Sovereign realm by the time they reached his apparent age.

While normally the Yun Family members would think him weak, untalented, and not worth allying with for only reaching the Emperor Realm by his apparent age, there were a number of factors that were in his favor and overrode that instinctive reaction.

The first was that he had easily defeated Yun Kuo who was a whole realm higher than him in cultivation. His ability to fight above his apparent cultivation level put him in the category of the strong. After all, the important thing wasn't cultivation level, but actual battle strength.

The next was his great skill as a doctor. They recognized that in order to get as skilled as he was in medicine, he would have had to put an inordinate amount of study time in, which would mean his cultivation level would suffer. That he was as skilled as he was in medicine and yet still strong enough to fight at the Tyrant cultivation level while only an Emperor attested to his amazing skills.

And while all that was what the Yun Family saw as the truth, it was all a big lie due to the Jump Chain shenanigans. They would be incomparably shocked if they knew that Carl had only been cultivating for two and a half years and was already in the Emperor realm.

Carl saw no need to shock them excessively by bragging about it. That would only accomplish two things, in his mind. Get him a reputation as an idiot braggart, and if he was believed then he would get a little too much attention by the stronger cultivators out there who would be convinced he had some treasure on him. Naturally they would consider the treasure to be a waste if it remained in Carl's hands. They would be a better owner of such a treasure and would be more than happy to relieve him of both the supposed treasure and his life.

Discretion was a huge key to staying alive when amongst murder hobos.

Carl had just arrived at the Yun Family grounds while thinking of the past month, and how much work still needed to be done before they could counter attack. He had recently made another breakthrough to Emperor 3, and was arriving at the Yun Family to join Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister in their regular spars.

The attitude of the guards had changed greatly since his last visit a month ago. They were polite while being strict and following the rules. He could tell that his words to the guards last month had made their rounds, and that the Yun Family guards were much more cautious and conscientious in their duties as the public face of the Yun Family.

The two guards on duty soon passed him inside. Over the past month his face had become a regular fixture at the Yun Family, as he spent plenty of time practicing with Yun Xiao. Where as previously he, Yun Xiao, and Seventh Sister had to find out of the way places to practice and go to eat where they wouldn't be harassed by Yun Family members or scolded by Under Heaven Family members, now they could openly join Yun Xiao at his training grounds with the blessings of both Families.

It was amazing the changes that were occurring now that their Patriarch was strong and the family was no longer pulling apart. Even though the secret of Yun Qinghong's recovery was tightly held, if one knew what they were looking for they could see some clues. They would just have to organize and act faster than their enemies did if the news leaked out.

They would likely be helped by the opposition taking time to assess the situation before they acted. They had done all they could to make sure that the Yun Family was weak when they made their move, so if they realized that the Yun Family was stronger than they thought it was, they would have to do some calculations to determine if they should act then, or wait longer while slowly chipping away at the Yun Family before acting.

Carl arrived at the practice field that he had been joining Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister at for the past month and was surprised to see a third figure there. Usually it was just the three of them, so to see another person showing up out of the blue made Carl wonder what was going on.

"Hi, Carl. Glad you could make it." Yun Xiao called out, then a moment later remembered that he needed to introduce their new member. "Oh, yeah. Carl I'd like to introduce Sister Caiyi to you. She's been a family friend for some time, and decided that she would like to join us. Sister Caiyi, this is Carl, a doctor and friend or ours."

"Sister Caiyi, a pleasure to meet you. I hope we get along well." Carl greeted her.

Carl felt a little smile appear on his face at the situation. He could tell that Yun Xiao was feeling awkward. Mostly because he hadn't met Sister Caiyi before that morning. The part where Yun Xiao said that she was a family friend was likely what his father told him verbatim that morning when they met for the first time.

"Brother Carl. Nice to meet you." Sister Caiyi was a stunningly beautiful woman who appeared to be around 22 years old. How old she really was was up for debate in the cultivation world. She had the air of one of those types of ladies that kept herself apart from others, feeling distant and closed off. Unapproachable.

The other thing that Carl was found of interest in this meeting was that he could feel a sort of resonance with Sister Caiyi from his body. When he did a quick inspection, he could tell that his Golden Crow blood was reacting to her. Which meant that she also had the Golden Crow lineage.

'So, she's of the Royal lineage?' Carl thought. 'If she has such a "pure" bloodline to react to my Golden Crow blood, then could she be the Little Demon Empress? Why would she be around here? Ah, silly me.' Carl snorted inside. 'The Guardian Family's first duty is to the Royal Family. Without the Little Demon Emperor their bloodline is all set to be diluted the next generation. But here comes someone with several drops of Golden Crow blood in him at the perfect time. At the very least he can be used to strengthen the bloodline, if for nothing else. Of course they would tell her about me.' Carl concluded.

After chatting for a bit to get to know each other, which Sister Caiyi barely answered questions but asked a great deal about Carl, he decided to try a different tact. If she was still reserved and unwilling to open up just like that, then action was needed.

"Usually we take this time to spar and improve our techniques. Would Sister Caiyi like to have a spar?" Carl asked.

Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister gave Carl concerned looks. They all three had sensed that Sister Caiyi was in the mid Sovereign Realm. So Carl asking to spar with Sister Caiyi was asking for trouble in their minds. Carl smiled at them to reassure them he would be fine.

Sister Caiyi looked at Carl for several moments before answering. She seemed to be trying to discern his thoughts, trying to figure out what his angle was and why he would spar with someone so obviously stronger than him.

"Fine." She stated coldly.

Carl gave her a small smile in return, before taking his place across from her on the field. He could tell that she didn't think too highly of a mere Emperor 3. But that was fine.

Carl opened up the gates in his veins which multiplied the profound energy he had available. When he saw she was ready, Carl opened up the match by dashing at her, utilizing his profound energy to speed his movements up. He started throwing punches and kicks at Caiyi, testing her defenses and reactions.

Due to Carl's bloodlines and enhancements, the gap between them was not huge, which Carl could see surprised her. With his immense physical strength and speed, added on to his profound energy multiplier from opening the first gate of the Evil God's Profound Veins, he was fighting at the level of a Tyrant 10.

Carl was still far from fighting on her level, but it was closer than Caiyi expected.

As they continued to trade blows, Carl could tell that she hadn't spent a lot of time actually sparring with others. Her speed, strength, and reaction times were all far above Carl's. As a mid level Sovereign she had the advantage.

But Carl had many skills gained from fighting martial artists for years. And he had only continued to practice what he knew despite lacking opponents. He had over two years in the world of cultivation to adapt his fighting style to the use of profound energy, so he had some tricks that continued to surprise her.

But Carl could tell that Caiyi was a top notch talent. As he continued to show her move after move, she adapted just as fast. He could never catch her unprepared when using an attack a second time.

Gradually as the spar lasted longer, Carl noticed that Caiyi had a small smile growing on her face. No one ever took sparring with her seriously, since they were too afraid of her status to risk hurting her. But she could tell that Carl was going all out, using all his tricks on her. To Caiyi it felt refreshing to be treated so openly and aboveboard, instead of the constant flattery and sucking up people usually did even while sparring.

Soon enough Caiyi started counter attacking with less and less restraint. She finally felt like she could cut loose and try out her moves.

Carl almost got swept away, but realized that he needed to up his game. He opened his second gate, the Burning Heart. It amplified his profound energy by 3-4 times, and let him start fighting on the level of a Sovereign.

Caiyi got more excited when she realized Carl had upped his game once more. She started adding in her profound energy attacks, throwing fire at Carl. She abruptly came back to her senses after throwing an attack that was likely to Burn an Emperor to death as the flames inside her rose up and burned her insides. Gritting her teeth, she watched her fire attack engulf Carl, realizing she had gone a bit overboard in her joy at the uninhibited spar.

She felt a sudden pang in her heart. She had only just found someone she could enjoy sparring with, and through her inattention had doomed him with her overly powerful fire attack. It was too late to stop it, she could only watch.

And then when the fire died down, Caiyi gaped at the sight. Carl stood there with a smile, not a burn on him. Though his clothes were near burnt to immodesty. With a blush, Caiyi averted her eyes from the sight.

Carl smirked at Caiyi's reaction to his near nudity. He quickly exchanged his burnt clothes for a fresh pair from his spatial ring.

"It's okay, I'm fine." Carl said to Caiyi.

The beautiful young lady turned around and looked over Carl, double checking that he was indeed uninjured. "How were you not burned? I've killed even Tyrant level beasts with that attack before." Caiyi asked after getting control of her emotions, though she was still struggling with the burning sensation of her bloodline.

While Carl was looking at Caiyi, he noticed what his medical senses were telling him. As a woman with strong Yin affinity, her Yang heavy bloodline actually fought her female Yin nature, causing her to suffer from very high temperatures and the torment of burning. It didn't help that when she exercised too much, her flames had a chance to get out of control.

He quickly pulled out a flame freezing potion from his spatial ring, and handed it to Caiyi. "This potion tastes horrible, but it will help you with the burning your bloodline gives you." Carl advised.

She paused, searching his eyes to see if he suspected who she was. Carl let her know through his expression that he did indeed know she was the Little Demon Empress. And that he didn't care, since she wanted to be known as Sister Caiyi while they practiced and hung out together.

Looking down at the potions bottle for a moment as she considered what she read in Carl's face, she opened it and drank it in one go.

A moment later, she felt blessed relief from the burning inside. She could tell that the flames from her bloodline were still just as hot, they just didn't hurt her anymore. She smiled a thanks at Carl. Carl simply nodded back in welcome.

"As for how I'm able to survive the flames, well." Carl paused for a second to consider what to say. "For a while now I've had a special relationship with fire. It doesn't burn me at all. The actual impact from fire attacks will still hurt, but I just don't burn from fire." Carl admitted.

A gasp of amazement to the side broke Carl and Caiyi's attention away from each other. For a while there, Carl had actually forgotten that Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister were still there. He blinked for a moment, before Seventh Sister rushed over.

"That's so amazing that you don't burn, Brother Carl." Seventh Sister gushed. "And that was amazing, Sister Caiyi, you are so strong! I hope to one day be as strong as you!"

Carl could see that Caiyi was unsure how to react to Seventh Sister. Apparently in her long life as a member of the Royal Family, she never just had a girl friend to chit chat with. Carl stepped away from the two girls to give them a chance to get to know each other and joined Yun Xiao as they started up a spar. He kept an eye on the two girls and was amused to see that Seventh Sister had drawn Caiyi into girly gossip, er…a conversation.

Watching the two girls, Carl had the feeling that they were going to end up being good friends. He turned his attention back to Yun Xiao and started working him through his paces, encouraging him to go all out, to not hold back like he had been for so long against his bullies. Only then would he maximize his abilities. And Yun Xiao was beginning to really come into his own, slowly molding his personality to be more active and confident.

After they all sparred and practiced their techniques for some time, they took a breather and had a servant provide some snacks while they continued to get to know each other.

Over the next several months as Carl frequently went to the Yun Family to practice, Caiyi would show up often. Occasionally she couldn't get away from her duties, but more often than not she was there.

On their third meeting, Carl wordlessly passed Caiyi a spatial ring with a year's supply of flame freezing potions and the first three stages of the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World. Each potion would last her several days, nearly a week. He felt the potions were the best gift he could give her at the time, giving her the gift of not burning from her bloodline.

From her smile of thanks for the potions, he knew his efforts to brew so many potions was not wasted. But it was her absolutely shocked face when she saw the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World that amused him greatly.

He had been able to tell that she didn't have the cultivation methods to go along with her Golden Crow bloodline. So he felt that gifting her the record was appropriate, and it would help her control the flames inside her.

Several times over the next months he could tell that she wanted to interrogate him as to where he got the record of cultivation technique, but she held back, despite being of two minds about it. The part of her that was the Little Demon Empress demanded to know where he got the records, where he came from, where he got his Golden Crow bloodline. But the part of her that was enjoying being just Sister Caiyi held back, afraid that she would destroy the most enjoyable part of her life.

Carl was content to leave the questions remain unanswered for now, and just enjoy getting to know Caiyi.

* * *

"You are positive it was Duke Huai who ordered this? And the Helian family carried out his order?" Yun Qinghong asked Duke Xu who he was talking to through the communication mirror.

"Yes, I'm positive. I saw the transaction myself. Duke Huai was definitely the one." Duke Xu responded.

Yun Qinghong sighed, and barely refrained from wearily rubbing his face. "Okay. That was the last piece we needed for this puzzle. I'll get back to you in a week with further orders on just what to do. For now, have your men continue what they were doing."

Duke Xu nodded seriously and ended the mirror call. Yun Qinghong turned to Carl who had been waiting in a seat across from him.

"It looks like your information was correct." Yun Qinghong grimaced at the final tally of all who were siding with Duke Huai against them. "How are we going to handle this?" He sighed.

Carl nodded. He sympathized with the man. Organizing such a big event while keeping it secret was difficult. His various magical based tools were proving invaluable for their allies to be able to suss out the information they needed to target the traitors while keeping everything secret.

"One thing we can do to hide the mobilization is schedule it during a time when there is a lot of movement around the Empire anyway." Carl pointed out.

"You're talking about the upcoming entry into the Golden Crow Lightning Flame Valley testing ground." Yun Qinghong said in surprise.

"Yes. There are so many people on the move that we can hide our troop movement among them. The younger generation will be out of the way while going through the proving grounds, so the next generation that is possibly ignorant about the treachery won't be getting underfoot and complicating things. And I doubt the enemy will suspect us of setting off the trap at that time."

Yun Qinghong thought about Carl's proposal for a time. "I think it just might work. I'll run it past the Little Demon Empress and see what she thinks."

Carl smirked a little. Aside from Caiyi, no one else realized he knew who she really was. Over the past several months he had enjoyed their time together. She had a very straightforward personality, having been used to getting what she wanted all her life, but at the same time, being raised with the awareness of her duty shaped her into not being a spoiled princess. It made it so she never had to employ sneaky means to attain what she wanted, so she was not used to the cloak and dagger they had been engaging in with their enemies.

But Caiyi was smart, so after Yun Qinghong would explain why they were doing things a certain way, she would instantly pick up the idea and extrapolate how to use it in many scenarios.

No one aside from Carl knew that he and Caiyi sometimes had conversations over their mirror late at night when no one was around. He gave her a perspective that she never had before, that of a non royal, an outsider. And he learned from her just what her heritage and the Empire meant to her, as well as what duties were expected of her. It was eye opening the amount of worries a ruler had to deal with.

"That's still 6 months away." Yun Qinghong continued thinking aloud. "We're going to need more copies of your maps to hand out to each commander so they don't miss anybody in the sweep."

Carl nodded. "I can make many more in just a few weeks. They will start out unkeyed so you will have to make sure they get keyed when you assign them. The last thing we need is for an enemy to get their hands on one that works for them."

Carl had placed down a series of wards around the capital and especially around each of the Guardian Families and Duke's Palaces. He had then made a version of the Marauder's Map so they could track each individual. On the day of the operation their troops would have a copy of the map to use to make sure they could go straight to their target and subdue them quickly. The idea was that it would lessen the chances of word of the operation getting around and making their work harder for them after they started their operation to capture all the traitors.

"I still find it hard to believe that it has come to this." Yun Qinghong sighed. "Seven of the 12 Guardian Families, taking orders from a traitor Duke Palace."

Carl nodded and patted Yun Qinghong's shoulder in commiseration. "I somehow doubt they knew that Duke Ming and his son Duke Huai were behind the deaths of the previous Demon Emperors. But…"

"But it doesn't matter, since they are following a traitor, they too must suffer the consequences. The best they can hope for now is the Slave Brand to ensure their families won't be destroyed or rebel." Yun Qinghong finished with a growl.

Carl sighed. He didn't like the idea of slavery one bit. But they were traitors. The only other possible punishment was death. And that would cause too much unrest and alienate the Guardian Families from the Little Demon Empress, which would cause more civil unrest and even more death and misery. So, political expediency and necessity would prevail in this case over morals.

Rather than a quick death, the traitors would be forced to work like dogs to try to erase the stain on their family's honor. It was a chance to redeem their families and keep them from being decimated, even if they had to suffer the rest of their days for the opportunity.

"Yes. As distasteful as it is." Carl trailed off. He had nothing more to say on the matter. They had already been over it enough. "Well, I'm off. I've got a new shipment of rare components coming in that I'd like to spend time playing with and seeing what I can make with them." Carl finally said as he made his way to the door.

Yun Qinghong nodded as he stayed put while Carl made his way out to rejoin Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister. Caiyi couldn't make it that day, and he had already had his spars with Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister before Yun Qinghong had called him to the study to listen to the reports with him and ask his opinion about certain aspects of the operation.

"Hey you two. I'm off. It was a good match today, keep up the hard work." Carl finished with a mocking grin.

Yun Xiao groaned. "Man, you're just too good, Carl. I'll never win!" Yun Xiao hadn't won one round against Carl. Carl purpose was to make sure Yun Xiao was good, not to falsely inflate his ego.

Carl laughed. "Just think though, by sparring with me you're getting better than anyone other than me. Soon you'll be unmatched in the Tyrant Realm!"

Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister had recently broken through to the Tyrant Realm, while Carl was just behind them at the Emperor 8 realm. Carl was sure he would reach the Tyrant realm two months short of his fourth year in the world. Just in time for the trip into the Golden Crow Lightning Flame Valley.

"Until Brother Carl breaks through, at least." Seventh Sister giggled at the mock look of betrayal that Yun Xiao shot her. "There, there." She consoled Yun Xiao. Despite feeling aggrieved, Yun Xiao still perked up under her attention. Seventh Sister had been filling out quite well lately, now that she was 17 and Yun Xiao was 19. And Yun Xiao was quite happy he had a betrothal with her already set. He had seen how many young men tried to flirt with her. It made him very protective and happy for Carl's training that he could use to chase away the scoundrels.

Carl just chuckled at the couple's antics. "Have fun you two, see you next time." Carl waved and departed, making his way back to his building to get into the new items he was promised would arrive that afternoon.

* * *

[AN: For any of those readers who are familiar with Chinese Xianxia novels, I'm sure a lot of what I just spouted in this chapter about where the soul is usually located and how cultivation works and whatnot will make you yell "Wrong!" Well, just keep in mind that Jumpchain fiat says otherwise, lol.

But seriously, I'm just making this up in a way that makes sense to me on how to combine the magic, ki, and cultivation systems into one coherent whole for Carl. I decided to have each one have a "center", where their core would be.

So many of the jump chain perks and abilities that they gain just seem to be a hodgepodge of different abilities that only work because the jumpchain says so. One common example is if a jumper went to the Mass Effect world and didn't spend cp on getting biotics, then the biotics wouldn't work outside of the universe. If they had biotics implanted when they were in the world, then once they jumped to a world that didn't have element Zero, they couldn't use their biotics anymore. However if they spent cp to get biotics, then their biotics would continue to work fine everywhere except jump gauntlets.

So in my reasoning, along with Spere's cheats, Carl's magic, ki, and profound energy will basically be powering any abilities he gets. Biotic abilities from ME? Element Zero could basically be considered magic, and the biotic implants convert the magical energy for use.

The Force from Star Wars I might consider either magic or profound energy, not sure which. I'm leaning toward profound energy because there's the whole Light/Dark side that has to do with the character of a person and whether they are "evil" or "good" that makes me think it has to do with someone's soul rather than just their mind/magic. At least that's my take on it.]


	42. ATG 8

On the first day of the first month of the New Year, outside the entrance to the Golden Crow Lightning Flame Valley, early in the morning before the sun had even risen yet, servants were already busy organizing the grounds. Pavilion tents, tables, and chairs were being set up for each Guardian Family or Duke Palace. Only the scions of the Duke Palaces and Guardian Families, or those specifically gifted the opportunity by the Illusory Demon Royal Family, were qualified to enter the trial grounds.

On one side of the clearing grounds the Yun Family tent was being raised. It was a noteworthy event because for the past 100 years the Yun Family had been prohibited by the Illusory Demon Royal Family from participating in the Proving Trial. The punishment had seriously impacted the Yun Family's prestige, as well as taking away a prime opportunity for the scions of the Yun Family to get stronger. As a result, their young generations have been weaker than average for missing out on the opportunities inside the proving grounds, thus losing the Yun Family even more prestige.

Next to the Yun Family tent the Mu Family and Under Heaven Family were also setting up their tents. Their close ties through marriage or betrothal ensured that they would stand with the Yun Family, even if the Yun Family was not as prestigious as they used to be.

The sun finally climbed into the sky, and the various young cultivators participating in the trials in the proving grounds started trickling in. There was a boisterous atmosphere among the participants. Some were bragging to their friends about how well they would do. Some were simply there to play around. And others were deadly seriously. They felt that it was the best chance they would get to prove their worth to their family's elders and earn more resources and training.

Carl strode onto the grounds confidently. He was looking around at all the various colored tents of the families, as well as vendor stalls set up on the outskirts. It certainly looked lively.

He stepped into the crowd, pushing his way through the milling people. Following the directions he had, he soon found the Yun Family tent. Waving at the guards, who were told in advance that he would be part of their group, he entered the tent to settle down as he waited for the starting time.

Only a couple months ago Carl had a few breakthroughs. Thanks to his perks he never had bottlenecks when breaking through, so he had been advancing at a steady pace. He had finally reached the Tyrant Profound Realm.

Once a cultivator entered the Emperor Profound Realm, a domain was learned that was helpful in battle. When entering the Tyrant Profound Realm, a cultivator's lifespan was greatly increased to over eight hundred years. It was a direct result of the increased density and quantity of profound energy after the break through that extended their lifespan.

With Carl's age constantly being reset as he entered new worlds every ten years, he hadn't really had to worry about aging. And now with his new lifespan guaranteed by his profound level, he had even less to worry about concerning his lifespan.

When Carl and Rover had broken through, Carl had received another drop of Phoenix blood which increased his life force even more. By this point he now had 8 drops of Phoenix blood circulating his body, 6 drops of Golden Crow blood, and 6 drops of Dragon God blood. According to the information about his Dragon God bloodline, his marrow had been altered and he would be generating Dragon blood in the next few years, which would improve his physique even more.

Over the past several months Carl had mastered the fifth stage of the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World: Golden Annihilation. And now he was working on mastering the sixth stage: Red Purgatory Lotus, which was back to being a single target attack.

Carl honestly felt that with his affinity for fire he could advance even faster through the stages of the Record of the Burning World, but certain ideas caused Carl to hold back and advance at a slower and steadier pace. He felt that it was important not to rush through the stages, but to spend time mastering each level and learning as much as he could from each stage. Letting his knowledge of each stage be the foundation for learning the next stage. He was already ripping through the levels as it was.

He wasn't positive he was doing it right since he had no mentor. But in the spars against Caiyi he had been proving just how skilled he was getting, and incidentally helping Caiyi improve too.

And since Carl wasn't going around slapping people in the faces and starting wars, he found that he wasn't being placed in improbable situations. The kind of situations that would make him gamble his life on a one in a million chance. Or utilize some risky life threatening technique that was the only way he could beat an enemy, but which would injure him and make him live a normal life for three years as a mortal before finally getting his cultivation back.

And since Carl wasn't doing all those story protagonist things, he found that his life was actually quite calm and tranquil. At most it was full of training. He could handle a bit of slice of life, it wasn't so bad. It would make for a nice montage.

Carl had been hoping to break through to the fifth stage of the Great Way of the Buddha before entering the proving grounds, but he was still just a hairs breadth away from the needed comprehension to make the breakthrough. He figured it would be another few days if he managed it in a short time, and another few months if he took a long time.

While waiting for the rest of his friends to arrive, Carl was pondering just why Rover had decided not to accompany him into the proving grounds. Was there something there Rover was afraid of? He couldn't get a straight answer from the damned bird. Even though Rover was as smart or smarter than any human by this point, he was also sometimes incredibly stubborn and independent. And Rover had been spending more and more time abroad, roaming around instead of hanging with Carl.

Carl figured that with the increasing intelligence Rover was exhibiting, it was very likely Rover would gain a human form when they reached the Sovereign Profound Realm. It would be interesting to see his buddy in human form. Maybe then he could finally get some answers from him as to what he had been up to lately.

"Brother Carl!"

Carl's thoughts interrupted, he turned to see Seventh Sister leading Yun Xiao into the tent. He gave the couple a smile in greeting.

"Hey, you two. Are you excited for this?" Carl asked his first two friends in the ATG world.

"Yes, we've got this!" Seventh Sister declared with an upraised fist of determination.

"As a member of the Yun Family, I can't let them down!" Yun Xiao played along with Seventh Sister's enthusiasm and also raised his fist of determination.

Carl chuckled for a moment and also raised a fist of determination. "To winning!" He cheered along with the other two. After a bit, they settled down as they chatted about various topics.

"Greetings." The soft but emotionally distant voice of Caiyi interrupted their conversation a short time later.

"Ahh, Sister Caiyi is joining us! This is great!" Seventh Sister cheered.

Carl and Yun Xiao greeted Caiyi in return. Carl looked over Caiyi, who looked like she was prepared to join them on the five day expedition to the proving grounds.

"Glad you could join us." Carl said while looking Caiyi in the eyes. "It wouldn't be the same without you."

Caiyi blushed slightly, pleased at what he was saying.

The group of four then settled down in their chairs while they chatted about how they were going to tackle the proving grounds for the next five days.

Eventually they heard the horn signifying that it was time to gather. The entrance would soon open. No one wanted to be late and miss their chance. The entrance would only be open for three hours today, and five days later at the same time would open for another three hours. If they missed their opportunity, they would be locked in for five years. To date no one had survived being locked inside for five years, so it was basically a death sentence if they didn't make it out in time.

They soon arrived at the gathering grounds and stood among the members of the Yun, Mu, and Under Heaven Families.

Carl soon found himself snickering at Seventh Sister's predicament. Since she was the only girl in her family, having six older brothers, she was treated as the treasure of the family. Which meant that her brothers were very protective. And all her brothers were late stage Tyrants or early stage Sovereigns. So it was somewhat funny to watch the play that always happened when her brothers saw her with Yun Xiao.

Each time her older brothers met Yun Xiao they would nearly growl at him, before going on to demanding that he be a man and swear to protect her. (Since they couldn't protect Seventh Sister from Yun Xiao due to the betrothal, they had resigned themselves to recruiting him to their cause.) And while Seventh Sister's brothers would go on and on about defending their poor innocent sister from everything, Seventh Sister would get more and more exasperated by them until she finally would stomp on their feet and drag Yun Xiao away from her crazy brothers.

This time, Carl was standing next to Caiyi while watching the Under Heaven Protective Brother act out their play. He didn't think she had seen Seventh Sister with her brothers yet. Carl nudged Caiyi's shoulder and indicated that she should enjoy the play.

As the brothers went through their usual spiel with Yun Xiao, Caiyi started giggling. She struggled to hide it, feeling that it was beneath her dignity. But it was hard to stop, seeing the over the top behavior of Seventh Sister's brothers.

Seventh Sister and Yun Xiao eventually rejoined Carl and Caiyi, with Seventh Sister pouting at Caiyi laughing at her, and Yun Xiao as usual being sheepish that he was, once again, caught up in the Under Heaven Brother's tempo.

Carl always enjoyed the unrestrained attitude of the Under Heaven Family. It just suited a family whose surname was 'Under Heaven', whose patriarch was named Greatest Ambition Under Heaven, and who named his children Number One, Number Two, Number Three, etc. to be such a lively and rowdy bunch. How in the world Seventh Sister got to be so kind Carl couldn't fathom. He would expect her to be a lot more forceful, if only so she could protect herself from her brother's shenanigans.

The crowd quieted down when the officials at the front gave the signal, and Carl and his group paid attention to the stage set up in front. Duke Gu stood on the stage, getting everyone's attention.

"Once every five years our Illusory Demon Empire's youth are given the opportunity to test their skills and fortune in the proving grounds of the Golden Crow Lightning Flame Valley." He intoned through an array that projected his voice across the entire crowd of thousands of youth and their servants and guards.

"There is opportunity in this five day long trial. But there is also danger. Be aware that your safety and lives are in your own hands. Only through struggle can we be strong. As the future of the Empire, it is your duty to be strong. The rules for this trial has already been made known to you, so I'll just say these final words. Act in a manner befitting your station and dignity. Good luck."

The entryway then changed colors, indicating it was open. The crowd surged forward, Carl and his group following along.

As the mass of cultivators poured in the valley and spread out, Carl got his first glimpse of the Valley. It was enormous. The sheer size of the valley rocked Carl's mind. 'If the Grand Canyon from back home were to be compared to this valley, then the Grand Canyon would possibly be considered a little ravine.'

The entrance they were at was at a high point, allowing them an overview of the Valley. Far in the distance, there was an actual freaking Sea of Fire at the end of the Valley. There was a large river made of fire and lightning that ran through the valley and poured into the Sea of Fire.

There were plenty of forest and grasslands through the valley, but everything had a red or purple-whitish tinge to it, indicating that even the plant life had a fire or lightning nature to it.

Looking over the extreme fire and lightning nature of the valley, Carl realized that there had to be some pocket dimension shenanigans going on to make the whole valley possible. Especially because all _this_ wasn't visible from the outside.

As Carl's group made their way into the valley, he watched as some of the cultivator groups immediately took to the air to get more distance from each other as they spread out. Other's stayed on the ground to not make a target of themselves while in the air.

Soon enough Carl's group of four plus the twelve "guards" assigned by the Yun Family and Under Heaven Family to follow them were away from the other groups of cultivators. They slowed down their speed of movement. It wouldn't do to rush into an ambush set by other cultivators or accidentally stumble on a beast's lair.

Now that they weren't rushing at speed, Carl looked around him at all the fire and lighting element plant life. It was interesting, that even plants could gain a fire nature in the valley. So Carl began gathering samples of the different plants to add to his farms later.

"What are you doing, Brother Carl?" Seventh Sister asked.

Even though he was gathering samples, he hadn't slowed the group down. He had used his combined magic and profound energy to dig up the plants and stow them away for later.

"Oh, I find it fascinating that even the plant life here has gained a fire attribute. I mean, usually fire is the enemy element of plants. But here, they are imbued with it. I want to experiment with it later, to see if I can find anything useful to do with it." Carl replied as he continued gathering samples.

"Oh. Well, should we help you gather samples then?" Seventh Sister asked.

"Seventh Sister, we should stay on the lookout for ambush." Caiyi intoned. "Carl can handle his sample gathering himself. We'll make sure we all stay safe."

Seventh Sister nodded energetically. "What Sister Caiyi said makes sense. Brother Carl, you continue your sample gathering, we'll keep you safe." She promised.

Carl chuckled. "Thank you, Seventh Sister." He then winked at Caiyi for her efforts to keep Seventh Sister occupied and was rewarded with a shy smile from Caiyi.

Seventh Sister's vigilance was rewarded a short quarter hour later as she was the first to spot the attack by the group of 8 foot tall lizards that were sneaking up on them from a rock formation.

Seventh Sister and Yun Xiao engaged one each, while their guards kept four of them occupied. Carl almost casually unsheathed his blade and enhanced it with wind cutting power, cutting the head off one of the lizards, before he used a powerful stun enhanced with his fist to knock out another lizard. He swiftly threw the live one into a prison containment unit that he had built.

The spatial storage rings were amazing for keeping all one's wealth with them, but live animals and people couldn't be put in them. So Carl had designed and built some prison cells built into a box with Wizarding expansion charms built in and utilizing profound energy to move the unconscious lizard into it.

Looking over the lizards that attacked, Carl was immensely glad that using a scent blocker cut down on 99% of the problems he had with his drawback that made him seem delicious to animals. If he didn't have that bracelet and several backups with him, he would never have dared enter the valley. He would have gotten mobbed to death.

As it was, he was still taking a bit of a chance that something could go catastrophically wrong. But the ability to simply hide in his Warehouse for the remainder of his time gave him the needed survival option to brave the dangers.

After killing and disabling two lizards, Carl let the rest of his group deal with their attackers. Caiyi had killed four just as fast as Carl took care of his two. Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister struggled a bit with their opponents. They were about the same profound level, and Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister weren't used to fighting beasts, so they took some time to get their rhythm down. But once they regained their equilibrium, they managed to kill their opponents just fine.

The group of guards meanwhile had ganged up on the four that attacked them and managed to kill them. Carl frowned at the thought that the guards were not especially powerful or skilled, but he figured their numbers made up in part for their lack of ability. At the very least, if they were ever in an untenable position, the guards would delay the attacker while their charges escaped. At least that was the Family's logic in assigning the guards.

While Carl didn't particularly like the idea of throwing away lives, he was forced to realize that the guards knew what they were signing up for, and that it was part of the cultivator society. That's just how things were. If he didn't like it, then he had to get strong enough to do something about it instead of just whinging and moaning about it being unfair.

Carl pushed away his idle thoughts to congratulate his group on their adroit handling of the threat. After the guards dismantled the lizards and retrieved the profound cores, they soon continued on their way, looking for anything interesting they could profit over.

"We should head more in that direction." Caiyi stated, pointing them towards a certain direction.

"You know of something good over there, Sister Caiyi?" Seventh Sister eagerly asked.

Caiyi nodded and then shook her head. "There's a place I need to go to while we are here."

"That's fine, then. Lead the way, we'll follow you wherever." Carl offered, and Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister nodded in agreement. They then followed along as Caiyi guided them to whatever the mysterious spot was that she needed to visit.

Carl found that he was quite interested in what there was in the Valley that would cause the Little Demon Empress to miss the big Traitor Mop Up Operation. That obviously wasn't the official name for the operation, but that's what it was.

While they were in the trial grounds, the families loyal to Caiyi were cleaning up the traitors right now. Usually Caiyi was completely serious about taking her duty seriously and would not leave the operation to be carried out without her. So whatever was here in the Valley must be really important to her. Which meant it was important to the Illusory Demon Royal Family, and to her Empire.

After only a few hours of travel, and several more encounters with beasts that were easily slain, they arrived at the destination that Caiyi had sought out.

Looking around, the only thing that Carl saw of interest was a cave that had a profound array and a fiery barrier in front of it. Carl extended his senses to the array to get a sense of it, and found that it was incredibly complicated. It was far more powerful and complicated than anything he could craft currently.

Shocked at the surprise of finding something so far beyond him in this place, Carl pulled back his profound energy probe, but not before it was snatched by a force. While Carl struggled to pull back, two enormous red eyes appeared in the air in front of the barrier. They exuded a sense of immense pride and disdain for everything else in the world.

The pair of eyes ignored Seventh Sister, Yun Xiao, and the guards. They glared at Carl for a moment, before moving to focus on Caiyi.

Caiyi didn't spare a moment and bowed down. "Great Golden Crow Ancestor, I am Huan Caiyi, the Little Demon Empress. I beseech your help for our Royal Lineage." She almost begged.

Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister stared with mouths agape. They were shocked beyond belief that the Sister Caiyi that they had been interacting with for the past year and a half was their ruler. And to see the Golden Crow in front of them, which was the progenitor of the Royal Family was almost too much. They too bowed down, along with the guards.

Carl couldn't move though. Not only was his profound energy probe caught, but his body was frozen too. He couldn't even utilize his magic, let alone his profound energy, so heavy was the suppression on him. This Golden Crow was so far above him that it could destroy him in a moment. Sweat sprung out on his brow at that realization.

[Where did you get the bloodline of the Golden Crow.] A loud female voice echoed in his head.

'The Golden Crow was female? All this time with the Yang heavy profound energy, I thought The Golden Crow was male!' The thought popped up in Carl's mind almost involuntarily. Sensing that the Golden Crow in front of him was displeased that he didn't answer immediately, Carl hastily made a decision.

[Have you ever heard of a Jump Chain, Honorable Golden Crow?] Carl respectfully sent back at her.

Carl had immediately realized that in front of this powerful entity, he could do nothing but be obedient. She could snuff him out in a moment. He had no idea what kind of information could be pleasing or angering to the entity. And lying in their mind to mind conversation would be useless. So he could only answer truthfully and hope that he came out of the encounter alive.

And if he did survive, he would never again go within a thousand miles of this location voluntarily. Carl briefly wondered if Rover had popped in to see what was what in the Golden Crow Lightning Flame Valley and seen that he should stay the hell away from this place. Why didn't the little shit warn him?

[Are you saying that you are a little world jumper? Kind of scrawny for one of those entities.] She disdainfully scoffed. [How many worlds have you been to, little world jumper?]

Carl could see out of the corner of his eye that Caiyi, Yun Xiao, and Seventh Sister were still kneeling, waiting for the judgment of the Golden Crow.

[This is my eighth world, Honorable Golden Crow.] Carl answered plainly.

[Humph. So young and weak.] The eyes floating in the air scrutinized him for a moment. [But with some amount of potential, after all.] The eyes of the Golden Crow then turned to Caiyi and paused for a moment.

"Speak, little girl. What is it you seek here from me, without the Demon Emperor's Seal that is the symbol of the bargain between your family and me."

"Traitors to the Empire have conspired against the Royal Family. They killed my father and brother, leaving me the last of the Royal Family. As we speak, my troops are rounding up the traitors and imprisoning them until I return and pass judgment. I came to beseech your help and advice, Great Golden Crow Ancestor. Due to the actions of the traitors, the Demon Emperor Seal has been lost for over 100 years."

"I found that the man here, Carl, had the Golden Crow Bloodline, and I wished your blessing to bring him into the Illusory Demon Royal Family to continue your legacy. I hoped to attain your blessing and renew the bargain between my family and the Great Golden Crow Ancestor." Caiyi finished up and waited with bowed head.

"Get up, girl. I don't like to see any of my blood bow so subserviently, even to me. Do it again, and I'll destroy you." The Golden Crow chastised Caiyi.

Caiyi shot to her feet, and stood tall and proud once more. "Yes, Ancestor." Caiyi affirmed that she understood.

The rest of the group didn't rise to their feet, since they did not have leave to. They continued to kneel where they were. Carl was still held tight, unable to move.

The eyes of the Golden Crow looked over the two standing individuals for some minutes, as if weighing the pros and cons of her decision.

Eventually she came to a decision. "You two will stay here for some time." The Golden Crow decided. The fiery barrier in front of the cave disappeared, and both Caiyi and Carl were floated inside. Once the two were inside, the barrier rose once more.

The eyes then turned to Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister. "You will go back to your families and tell your leaders that their Little Demon Empress is receiving my guidance for some time. They will ensure that the traitors are imprisoned, that the Empire is running smoothly, and they shall wait for her return."

"Yes, Great Golden Crow." Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister acknowledged the order.

The eyes of the Golden Crow disappeared.

Yun Xiao immediately turned to the guards. "You will not speak of this to anyone. You will not even speak of this with each other on the chance that someone might overhear. Our Guardian Families that are loyal to the Little Demon Empress will decide if and when this information is passed. Any who break this order will be a traitor and will condemn not only themselves, but their family too. Am I clear?" He sternly ordered the guards.

"Yes, sir! All clear!" All twelve guards immediately shouted. No way were they going to endanger their families for a little gossip.

Yun Xiao then turned to Seventh Sister. "Come Seventh Sister, let's head back to the Valley Entrance so we will be there when it opens once more."

Seventh Sister nodded seriously. No way were they taking any chances in getting delayed or ambushed and missing their exit. Especially now that their two strongest fighters, Carl and Sister – no, the Little Demon Empress, were no longer with them.

Yun Xiao took one last look over his shoulder before leaving. 'I hope you're alright bro. And how did you get the Golden Crow bloodline? And Sister Caiyi was the Little Demon Empress all this time? Too crazy! No wonder you were always so strong.' Yun Xiao shook his head before decisively turning around and departing the are.

* * *

Carl found himself floated into a large cavern room alongside Caiyi. Surprisingly, the room was furnished like a normal house for the world he was in. He was set down sitting on the couch next to Caiyi, but he was still bound.

'And I thought I was getting pretty strong so no one could push me around in this world.' Carl thought ruefully. 'Guess there is always a bigger mountain after all. I thought I would have to explain the Jump Chain, but she already knew about it. How did she know? Has she run into jumpers before? Or did she meet Jump Chans before? Too many questions, not enough answers.'

The eyes appeared in the air in front of Carl, causing him to startle a bit.

"So, a world jumper that was given my bloodline. What should I do with you, little jumper?" The Golden Crow mused.

"Let him go his own way with a warning?" Carl offered, surprised that he could speak again.

Laughter bubbled up as the eyes squinted in humor as they looked at Carl.

"No, I think not, little jumper. I think I'll have you connected to my bloodline. Then I'll have a descendant who is a future G̷̺̋̈o̵̩̳͒ḑ̸̢͑̀s̶̗͗p̶͍͝͠a̵̦̱͛͌r̸͙̆̊k̴̡̠̏́ ̴̟̫̅̈́H̵̨̜͂ò̵͕l̸̬̎d̴̝̥̆ë̷̮ͅȓ̵͎̯".

Carl and Caiyi felt pain in their heads when she said that phrase. Carl did note that it caused a lot less pain then when Spere 037 had said something to him. So either he was getting stronger, or the words from the Golden Crow was less damaging to hear.

After some time, the pain subsided from Carl's head.

"Hmm. You have plenty more to grow, if you can't bear to hear that phrase without pain." The Golden Crow mused. "I'll tell you what, I will help you and little Caiyi. Right now I will help you two get stronger, in exchange for one favor in the future. When you gain enough power and can accomplish the task I will ask of you, I will let you know what that favor is. How about it, little jumper? Is it a deal?"

Carl thought about the offer before making a decision. He was under her power and was vulnerable. Would she destroy him if he rejected her? He didn't get the sense that she was a bad sort. Very prideful and arrogant, yes, but not bad.

And she was promising payment up front by making him and Caiyi stronger. He realized that his expectation that he was among the strongest in the world was rather naïve of him. He needed to gain strength. So why hesitate? He felt that she was being honest, and he didn't think it was too onerous to expect a favor from him in return in the future.

Besides, with Caiyi gazing at him like that, almost demanding / pleading with him to accept the deal, then how could he reject her?

"I'd say it sounds like we have a deal then." Carl answered. What else could he say but yes?

"Good." The Golden Crow almost purred in satisfaction. "Now, before we get to the part where I help you and boost your strength, I think it is story time, little jumper. Little Caiyi still doesn't know what you are, so you will tell us all about the Jump Chain and what you have been doing. What worlds have you visited, and what powers have you chosen. This will also serve to help me choose how to assist you."

Carl sighed. This would take a while. "Okay. But how about I grab some refreshments and a magical device called a pensieve. I think even one such as you will appreciate the Root Beer I have, and the Pensieve will allow me to show you memories of the worlds I have been to. It will help me tell the tale."

Carl then opened his warehouse portal. Caiyi followed him inside, looking around at all the things he had his warehouse stocked with. The computers looked strange to her eyes, but didn't cause her to marvel in ignorance. Caiyi was an Empress in a society that had tools that used profound energy for various almost magical effects. So seeing a strange tool was at most a little diversion.

After fetching his Root Beer Keg and the pensieve, as well as food for them to snack on, Carl settled down and started his tale.

"First of all, you need to realize that I didn't have anyone around to explain exactly what I had been recruited for. I first realized what was happening when I found myself in a black void…"

* * *

"…and looking at the evidence, I realized that the disasters befalling the Illusory Demon Royal Family and the Yun Family were probably the work of enemy action. Traitors that wanted to supplant the Illusory Demon Royal Family. Since I hate traitors, I decided to work against them. It just so happened that I coincidently met Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister in the market and made friends with them, which allowed me to ally myself with the Yun Family. And that led us to this day."

Carl finished his story for Caiyi and the immensely powerful Golden Crow that could destroy him if she was displeased with evasiveness or lies. But he got the sense that as long as he acted properly, then she wouldn't act against his interests. Her power and threat were always there, though, in the back of Carl's mind.

Caiyi sat back, looking thoughtful at all he had told and shown her. There were many worlds out there, far different than her Empire. And Carl, whose presence she had grown to enjoy, would be leaving this world behind in another six years. She wasn't sure what to feel about that fact.

"A decent tale." The Golden Crow finally pronounced. "You made quite a few mistakes, but you were still learning." The Golden Crow paused. "Oh, you think you didn't make mistakes?" She asked when she saw that Carl didn't fully accept her words.

Her voice was amused, causing Carl to feel relieved that she wasn't angry at him, but confused about what mistakes he made. He had struggled and worked as hard as he could. He may not have been perfect, but how could he have done any better?

"You are now carrying my bloodline. It is the most noble bloodline there is, and as such I expect certain standards of behavior from you." The Golden Crow sniffed.

"Let's take your first world and your decision to take the one known as Buffy to your bed. First off, I don't care if you have several or several dozen consorts. It is the nature of powerful men to collect beauties, that is just natural. No, your mistake was that once you secured Buffy into your bed, you should not have let her go. At that point, she was yours, not anyone elses. A Royal Personage does not share their toys with just anyone. Let alone releasing her to join such a low ambition male as that Angel character. It's an insult. The only reason I'm not angrier with you is that you didn't have Royal Blood at the time, so you weren't to know the standards you should be acting by."

Carl gaped at the Golden Crow. That wasn't what he expected her to say. Not by a long shot.

"If you decide to add pets to your bed, they become yours, no one else has claim to them." The Golden Crow continued to lecture Carl on what was now expected of him. "In your second world, you did well to amass a decent army of Pokemon. But you didn't do anything with them. You languished in obscurity, instead of carving out your kingdom. I expect better of you from now on. You are of Royal Blood. Your ambitions need to be bigger!"

Carl looked over to Caiyi to see what she thought of the lecture, and found no help. Caiyi was nodding along with the Golden Crow, fully of one accord with her. It looked like Carl was caught in the grips of dominant and ambition filled women, and he would have to shape up in the future to meet there expectation.

'Or,' and Carl thought this is the deepest recesses of his mind, obscured and hiding from the women in front of him, 'or I need to get strong enough I am the one to dictate to them what is proper behavior.' Carl worked hard to make sure that thought didn't see the light of day while he was in front of the Golden Crow.

"Now, in your third world, you barely passed. With the resources and abilities you had available to you, you did a decent job, but here's what you did wrong…"

Carl sighed inside. It was going to be a long night of lectures, it seemed.

* * *

[AN: I like the ideas the readers have been throwing out about other powers, worlds, and whatnot. I'm glad to see lots of people enjoying the story. As far as worlds he's going to visit, I've already picked out the next 8 of them. I won't say here which world it is, but the next one will be a science and technology world, finally.

As far as Kaiju or Titan like monsters, I'm sorry to say it won't be happening any time soon, but the idea had me thinking about changing one of the worlds I had picked out, cause those monsters are just so cool.

As far as the ATG world goes with which of the original protagonist Yun Che's lives it is. Yun Che had his first life and was poisoned to death at like 15 or 16 just before he could marry the next door girl hottie. Then he started as a baby (I think) in the Azure Cloud Continent where he was picked up by the medical saint and grew up studying medicine. The very first of the original story is the end of his second life where he threw himself into the endlessly deep gorge and died. When he woke up again he was on his third life back in his original body just after he was poisoned and a week or so before he was to get married. Which is the same time that Carl was flushed into the world. I hope that clears up the confusion, and creates even more, hehe.

One of the things I decided to do with this story was to try to write it as I went without going back and editing things to be more "perfect" if something occurred to me later. And by that I mean keeping what Carl does or decides without going back and changing his decisions later.

So if I overlooked something obvious that Carl could do, or it only occurred to me to do something a couple chapters later, I would just write it as Carl figuring things out at that time and learning and fixing things. I dunno if that annoys readers, but I was kind of hoping it would add a bit of realism to the character. Like, even if he is super smart from perks or powerful, sometimes he just doesn't think of the "perfect" solution or something along those lines. (Besides, Carl is being written by a normal schlub who sadly had no super powers, le cry.) Thanks for reading!]


	43. ATG 9

The large red eyes of the Golden Crow hovered in mid air the next morning, looking down imperiously at Carl and Caiyi, awaiting their decision in regards to her proposal.

* * *

The previous evening, once the Golden Crow had finished cataloguing Carl's various mistakes, as she saw them, she had told him a little bit of the history of the world / dimension he was in.

He learned that the Golden Crow in front of him, the being that had enough strength to snuff him out with barely any effort, was only a remnant spirit of the original Golden Crow. Even at a fraction of her original self's strength, she could still destroy him.

Sometime in the distant past, someone had become the master of the Heavenly Profound Treasure, the Evil Infant's Wheel of Myriad Tribulations. They had done _something_ and released the treasure's poison, which spread across the entire galaxy. The poison was so virulent, it could kill even Gods. Every God, Demon, and Devil that lived at that point, was poisoned to death. When they died, they left the galaxy empty of life for a time.

Certain Gods, like the Golden Crow, the Dragon God, the Phoenix, and others saw their end coming. They placed certain legacies behind, along with a certain amount of their blood essence, and left it guarded by a remnant spirit. When life once more flourished, and cultivators came to their proving grounds, the spirit would determine who was worthy and pass their legacy down to them.

The Golden Crow then went on to explain that her Yang heavy bloodline was most difficult for mortal women to endure, which is why Caiyi had been suffering from being burned by the flames inside her. Until Carl provided the Flame Freezing potions, she had to dip herself in large lakes of water to release the heat and prevent herself from taking harm from her own body's flames.

The Golden Crow explained that even with the lessons in the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World that taught her how to control her fire, Caiyi couldn't expect to avoid the flames forever. But that there was a way to help her.

Due to Carl having the Dragon God's Blood and the Dragon Seed that would heal whoever received it, the Great Way of the Buddha's regeneration and nature energy, as well as the Phoenix Blood's regeneration and life properties, there was a way to increase Caiyi's bloodline and rid her of the weakness of succumbing to her internal fires.

The first step to accomplish the task of healing and helping Caiyi was that first the Golden Crow would infuse 6 more drops of Golden Crow blood into Carl, bringing his bloodline purity up to 12 drops.

The Golden Crow would then infuse several more drops of Golden Crow blood into Caiyi, also bringing her blood purity to 12 drops. Normally, the addition of more drops of Golden Crow blood would burn Caiyi up, but with the Dragon Seed passed through sex immediately healing her, and Carl's various bloodlines and regeneration abilities, it would keep her alive and help her body adjust to it. Caiyi would gain a stronger bloodline, and become completely adjusted to it, no longer burned by her own bloodline.

Then the Golden Crow really dropped the bombshell on them. The adjustment period couldn't be done in one go. They would have to perform the deed several times a day for two months in order to accomplish what they sought to do in adjusting Caiyi to her bloodline. The constant influx of regeneration would be necessary to keep her alive until she was fully adjusted to the burning fires of the Golden Crow bloodline.

Caiyi's deep blush at hearing the proposal showed how embarrassed she was. She was still a virgin after more than 140 years of life, so the frank talk about sex was a bit embarrassing for her to adjust to.

After explaining the plan to Carl and Caiyi, the Golden Crow had dismissed them for the evening to think on it and make their decision in the morning. Caiyi didn't seem to want to talk about it, so Carl turned to his own meditations and thoughts.

At first Carl pondered about how strange his life had become. Ever since he embarked on this Jump Chain, he found himself in situations and doing things he never would have before.

Even just being in a life threatening situation and making the conscious choice to end a threat to his life or those he cared for wasn't something normal civilians back home had to seriously worry about.

Making those kinds of hard decisions had changed Carl. And the longer he spent on the jump chain, the more strange circumstances he was likely to encounter. But one thing Carl was beginning to realize was that while much of him had changed, the core of his being hadn't.

Even after so many years he was still the same being at heart. He still enjoyed making new friends and lovers. He still loved getting the upper hand over what he saw as evil and winning. He still loved learning new things and exploring new worlds.

And that brought Carl to think about the Golden Crow spirit's evaluation and advice about his Jump Chain life, and what he should have done in different situations. He had spent the rest of the evening thinking about his past and the advice he received from the Golden Crow. The advice that she gave him was basically how a prideful member of the Golden Crow bloodline should act. How a powerful cultivator would act in those situations.

But that advice was coming from a powerful entity that had memories of living for many, many millennia after having a very different upbringing than Carl. An entity that had lived in a cultivation society full of murder hobos. He wasn't sure just how much of her advice he should take to heart. And would taking any of her advice change who he was at the core? Would he fundamentally change who he was?

He knew he wasn't perfect, and some of his decisions were made impulsively. From the point of view of a prideful entity of great strength, he could see where she got her ideas for how his conduct should be, and that he hadn't measured up.

But he was still hesitant to consider acting like she wanted. It felt like he was being told to give up a key part of his self. He enjoyed his learning and practicing. He enjoyed interacting with the people in the worlds he found himself in. He enjoyed making friends and being concerned with the things that were happening in their worlds. He enjoyed being just one of the guys among whichever group of friends he made, even if he did have to fix some problems that crop up.

He didn't quite consider it role playing, because he was always being himself. But it was true that he often immersed himself into the worlds and concerns of the worlds he was in instead of holding himself aloof and "superior".

Carl didn't think he would have fit in with his friends and loved ones in the BtVS world, for example, if he had acted like a cultivator does. He didn't really like the idea of using his Pokemon as a conquering army, instead of an organization of friends.

He didn't completely want to act like the dominating cultivator that the Golden Crow Spirit suggested. Aloof. Prideful. Demanding. The Ruler of everything he surveyed.

But at the same time, he could see how he might need to change in the future in certain circumstances. He could also see how he was always holding himself back to fit in with the world's story, and how he hadn't really cut loose much. With his abilities it would be a simple matter in so many worlds to simply force things to be what he wanted.

After analyzing his character, he could see how the abrupt way he was thrown into the deep end in a world of Vampires and Demons had shaped his behavior. He was more circumspect than his abilities required him to be. He hid behind the veil of normality and only acted in dire moments, instead of making grand changes.

Should he take her advice? At least a little bit? Not to the point of acting arrogant. But should he stop worrying about hiding his abilities and playing the blend in game? Should he start carving out little empires in each jump world?

Even after a night of meditation on the topic, Carl wasn't sure what his answer was, except that he would think on it more in the future.

* * *

But for the time being Carl dragged his attention back to the present. What was Caiyi's decision about gaining more drops of the Golden Crow's bloodline? About healing through sex with him?

Caiyi was looking down, thinking deeply. She raised her head and looked Carl in the eyes. Seeing the support that Carl offered, whatever her decision, she nodded decisively.

"Yes, I agree to the plan. You will do this for me, Carl, yes?"

Carl nodded soberly while gazing back into her eyes. "Yes, I will join you in this Caiyi."

"Good girl. That's the ambition and determination you will need to survive this. For it will hurt." The Golden Crow Spirit advised.

Caiyi nodded somberly. "I am ready."

"Good." In front of the Golden Crow Spirit's eyes, several drops of blood appeared. "We'll start with you, little jumper. Ready yourself."

A moment later, the blood entered Carl's body. Carl felt the drops of blood moving through his blood vessels. They felt lively and warm. He imagined that if he didn't have the Evil God Fire Seed that gave him immunity to fire, then he would have felt quite a bit of burning.

There was also a lot of energy that was filling his body. He started using his cultivation technique, using the energy to bolster his cultivation. The profound energy started gathering, and Carl could feel the speed at which his profound level was rising. He reached and immediately broke through to Tyrant 2, but the energy didn't stop there. Shortly thereafter, he reached the boundary once more, and broke through to Tyrant 3.

Carl briefly wondered why the Phoenix blood he received from Rover didn't have the same effect. But then he realized that while Rover had all the properties of the Phoenix bloodline, he was the same cultivation level as Carl, while on the other hand, the blood he received from the Golden Crow was from a literal God of the ATG world. It was similar to the Evil God Seeds he had bought and eaten earlier. They were packed so full of energy that aside from the chunk of energy that he used for cultivation, there was so much that he couldn't utilize all of it.

The energy he didn't use was diverted to his inner world, joining his fire elemental energy there. His profound level finally stopped at Tyrant 8. Carl could tell that each of the Evil God Seeds had more energy than the six drops of Golden Crow blood he had received, but the Golden Crow blood was still from a god level creature, so it still had plenty of energy. And the fact that he hadn't been able to process all the energy in the drops of blood showed that he was still far from the top.

Once Carl was finished accepting and adapting to the blood, he opened his eyes. Caiyi and the Golden Crow Spirit were staring at him. He nodded at them.

"Decent." The Golden Crow faintly praised Carl's efforts to use the energy in the blood. "Prepare yourself, little girl."

"I'm ready, Ancestor." Caiyi vowed.

Several drops of blood appeared and merged with Caiyi. She gritted her teeth, struggling to resist the pain. Opening her eyes, she stared at Carl almost hungrily.

Carl knew what his job was, and that it would help heal Caiyi, so he moved forward, and began with a kiss. It might not be the best and most romantic first time for a 140 year virgin, but it was somehow appropriate in the world setting to have sex for power and healing.

Carl's modus operandi of going with the flow apparently also worked in a cultivation world when he was faced with the unusual. Nose to the "grindstone" and do some sexual healing. Thank goodness he got that Parseltongue perk, it made his job much easier. He did his best to make sure his friend, no lover, Caiyi enjoyed her first time.

* * *

…and Carl made sure that Caiyi enjoyed her 323rd time. He was a hard worker like that.

Over the past two months Carl and Caiyi had done little but train and make sure she was healed up enough to withstand her new bloodline. After the first "healing session", Carl had unlocked all of Caiyi's Profound Entrances. He had already been planning on doing that for her in the near future. But since she already knew all his secrets, there was no reason to hold back anymore.

Caiyi had started working on the third stage of the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World. Her cultivation level had risen from Sovereign 6 to Half Step Divine Origin Realm over the two months. The complete infusing of her bloodline was much slower than Carl's had been, to allow her to adjust. But it also meant she could use all the energy available to enhance her cultivation.

Over the two months, Carl had risen another level, to Tyrant 9. Beyond that, he had mastered the sixth stage of the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning World: Red Purgatory Lotus. He was now working on the seventh stage: Yellow Springs Ashes.

He had also managed to breakthrough to the fifth stage of the Great Way of the Buddha. When he broke through, the golden pagoda that seemed to be the power manifestation of the technique had turned an even deeper golden color and grown larger. His physique had been upgraded another level. Carl had to spend a few days just getting completely used to his new strength.

Occasionally Carl would find that Caiyi was in a worried mood. She had confessed to him that she had hoped by coming to the central area of the proving ground that she, along with Carl, could have begged the help of the Golden Crow Spirit, even without the Demon Emperor's Seal. It was the only reason that she had forgone supervising the capture of the traitors. That, and all the devices that Carl had built to help her troops gave her some confidence that the operation would go well. Without the aid that Carl provide she would have had to stay and supervise, no matter that the long term hope for her Empire's prosperity was predicated on getting the assistance of the Golden Crow in stabilizing her bloodline and teaching her the cultivation techniques.

Carl knew she was worried about the results of the operation, having been stuck there for two months. Their communication mirrors hadn't been working, so they didn't know how the operations had gone. Carl suspected that it was either something to do with the pocket dimension they were in, or the Golden Crow was blocking communications somehow to force them to focus completely on their immediate goal, since there was nothing they could do about what was going on outside.

But the opportunity given her by the Golden Crow Spirit was too good to pass up, so even if they knew things had gone bad, they would have stayed and cleaned up the mess once they exited. The enriching of the Golden Crow bloodline would ensure the continuation of the Illusory Demon Royal Family, even more than cleaning up the traitors immediately.

Carl had hastened to assure Caiyi that he was with her, and would continue to support her. The Empire would survive and thrive, even in the unlikely case that the traitors had been running rampant. Once they exited at the end of the two months, they would take command and resolve everything.

"Little jumper, come here." The Golden Crow Spirit called out to him the evening before he and Caiyi were set to depart. Once Carl presented himself, with Caiyi alongside him, the Golden Crow Spirit nodded approvingly. "You two have made decent progress. When you first entered here, I scanned your body. I already knew what bloodlines you had. Normally I would have reacted quite strongly against anyone with that pathetic Phoenix's blood, especially if they also had my bloodline. I would normally have erased the Phoenix blood in you, but in this case it was a good thing you had it, for it strengthened my own descendent."

Carl shivered. Apparently she even had the power to burn a bloodline out of him? Terrifying. He definitely wasn't going to be getting cocky anytime soon. He wasn't strong enough to be arrogant around here.

"Now, I called you here to give you some aid. You have the Evil God's Profound Veins, and the Fire and Water Evil God Seeds, which make you practically immune to Fire and Water. I happen to have in my possession the Evil God Lighting Seed. I will gift it to you to help you get stronger. You will survive and thrive, until you are strong enough to return and repay me that favor."

Carl saluted the Golden Crow Spirit and thanked her as he accepted the purple-white marble sized bead that was floated to him.

"Now, before you consume that seed. You also told me that you have an ark that has no power." A green crystal the size of Carl's head appeared floating in front of him. "That is a Jade of the Nine Suns. It stores incredible amounts of power, and is rare even in the Realm of the Gods. You can use that to power your Ark, to give you another survival method."

Carl gave another salute in thanks and received the large Jade crystal. He put it away in his spatial ring for the moment.

"Now, consume the Evil God Seed. Once you've assimilated it, it will be time for you to return to the outside world. Little girl, take good care of your Empire, for I will not make another exception. If you or your descendents don't have the Demon Emperor's Seal in the future, no one may enter this place to petition me." The Golden Crow Spirit sternly ordered.

"I understand, Ancestor." Caiyi said with a little bow.

The eyes of the Spirit of the Golden Crow gave the impression of nodding before they disappeared.

Carl and Caiyi looked at each other for a moment.

"Go on then, Carl. When you're finished let us go and take control of our Empire." She gave him a sweet smile that was at odds with the aloof demeanor she had when they first met.

"Sounds like a plan." Carl smiled back at her. He then sat down and threw the Lightning Seed into his mouth, swallowing it down.

Just like the previous two seeds, this one released massive amounts of profound energy into his profound veins as the electrical nature of the seed seeped into every bit of him. He felt a squawk of surprise over the bond he had with Rover, and the impression that Rover too was undergoing the same change.

His profound level began rising. A short time later he was at the Tyrant 10 level. Thanks to his perks, he had no problems overcoming the bottleneck, and smoothly entered the Sovereign Profound Level. The moment he broke through, he felt two things happen at once. He received another drop of Phoenix blood from Rover, and the nature of their bond changed. It was no longer a familiar bond, it was more like a familial bond. His sense of rover faded to a much more distant sense.

He vaguely sensed over the lessened bond that Rover was changing. He had finally attained his human form. The two of them were no longer so closely bound that they would share profound cultivation levels or physical changes like what happened each time Carl ate an Evil God Seed.

Carl felt his cultivation rising again. It didn't stop until he reached Sovereign 4, the rest of the energy having been siphoned off into his inner world. Carl worked on feeling the differences the Sovereign Profound level wrought in him. His lifespan had grown. A Sovereign Profound Realm cultivator had a lifespan of 1,000-2,000 years. The ability that Sovereign Realm cultivators gained was control of a pocket dimension. Carl basically had his own Inventory or Hammer Space now. When Carl examined his Profound Energy, he was amazed at the density and amount of profound energy that he now had running through his veins. It felt exhilarating.

When Carl finally felt like he had control over his energies, and that he wouldn't accidentally destroy things, he opened his eyes. Caiyi was sitting across from Carl, looking at him in concern.

"I'm good for now. Anxious to get going?" Carl smiled reassurance at Caiyi as he asked her.

"Yes. I'm eager to make sure our Empire is stable."

Carl had just stood up when he and Caiyi were picked up by an invisible force and floated out of the cavern. They were then teleported to the outside of the trial grounds, where two months previously all the different families and palaces had camped.

Carl looked around at the empty grounds. Obviously something was happening if there wasn't even guards here waiting for them.

Caiyi looked worried for what was happening. She looked at Carl, and he nodded back at her. "Follow me to the Palace. That is probably the best place to find out what is happening."

Carl followed behind Caiyi as they flew through the air. He was thankful for his profound energy boosts that let him keep up with her as she flew at an incredible pace. Half step Divine Origin was no joke.

Outside the palace gates they saw guards wearing the colors of Duke Huai guarding the gates. Carl didn't waste any time talking; he sent multiple fireballs their way. They had no chance to avoid the fire, and were burnt to ashes. Meanwhile Caiyi hadn't paused at all, she continued at a fast pace, and slammed open the gates to the palace.

As they passed through the halls to the main audience room where the Emperors held court, Carl continued to burn to death any guards that were wearing traitor colors. Something had obviously gone wrong while they were in the Golden Crow's cavern.

As they approached the outside of the throne room, Carl heard yelling and fighting going on inside. They slammed open the massive 20 foot tall doors.

Stepping inside, Carl saw who he assumed was Duke Ming, Duke Huai's father, sitting on the Demon Emperor's throne. Duke Huai stood next to him. Carl sent out his profound senses and learned that Duke Ming was Sovereign 10, so that explained how he was eventually able to fight his way out of the entrapment, and apparently set up a resistance.

Arrayed around the room were the fighting factions. On one side was the forces loyal to Caiyi of the 12 Guardian Families, the Yun, Mu, Su, Yan, and Under Heaven Families, as well as the loyal Duke Palaces. Duke Xu, Duke Xi, Duke Gu, Duke Yu, and Duke Baoqing and their forces.

On the opposite side were the Helian, Xiao, Jiufang, Lin, Nangong, Chiyang, and Bai families, along with the forces of Duke Zhong, Duke Xiang, Duke chu, and Duke Zhao.

At a motion from Caiyi, Carl sent out his fire domain and the Red Purgatory Lotus flames that he mastered to force the traitor forces back from the loyalists. The loyalists looked like they had been through the ringer.

Carl's strong Yang Flames from the Golden Crow legacy and the aura that Caiyi was putting off were strong enough to cause the traitor forces to be cautious, so they backed off as they eyed the newcomers. Some of the traitor forces flinched when they saw Caiyi's murderous expression.

"I'm away for only a short time. And I left orders to detain Duke Ming, Duke Huai, and any other forces that were disloyal. Why is it that when I return, I find traitors to the Empire still loose. And what's more, I find the traitors being helped by over half of the 12 Guardian families, and several of my Duke Palaces?"

Caiyi glared at Duke Ming. If what they suspected was true, he was the cause of her father and brother's deaths.

"Now, now, Little Demon Empress. I think it's past time for your family to give up your rule. It has been on the downfall for a number of years." Duke Ming smoothly stated as he stood from the throne. "I was just making sure that the Empire was stable in your absence. But it was proof that a stronger hand needed to be holding the reigns."

Caiyi stared at the man for a moment, before she moved. Before anyone in the hall could blink, she had taken off the right arm of Duke Ming with her flames, and had him, bound, on the ground. It really was amazing what the difference between Sovereign 10 and Half Step Divine Origin was.

Carl stepped up his flames surrounding the traitors. When they felt just how hot his flames were, and realized he could easily burn them to death, most of the traitors resigned themselves to having been caught. Their leader was on the ground, crippled. The coup was over. They lost.

One of the young men, though, thought he could make a break through the flames. A moment later when he was nothing but ashes, though, proved him wrong. It didn't help that he was only at the Tyrant 7 level. He really overestimated himself.

"Now, secure the traitors." Caiyi ordered her loyalists forces while ensuring that Duke Ming went nowhere.

Carl eased back on his flames as the loyalist forces approached the traitors. They disarmed and bound the traitors. Carl was watching very closely, making sure that none of the traitors made an escape.

The profound energy restraints that he had made previously were pulled out by the loyalist forces and placed on all the traitors. Carl made sure that Duke Ming wouldn't bleed out before he answered some questions.

"Yun Qinghong, report. What happened the past two months I was gone?" Caiyi ordered. Carl moved over near her throne, lending his support to her and keeping an eye on the proceedings.

Yun Qinghong moved forward and bowed. "At first, the operation went well. We captured the majority of the traitors. But unknown at the time to us, Duke Ming was at the tenth level of Sovereign Profound Realm. He was able to escape, and took to randomly attacking and freeing his forces. We couldn't pin him down, or stop him. And if we attacked, he was swift to counterattack us while we were vulnerable. So we took a defensive stance, and held on as long as we could. Today was the day that he finally broke into the palace and we were moments away from defeat when you arrived, Little Demon Empress."

She nodded seriously. "Very well. Thank you for the summary, Patriarch Yun. Each family patriarch or Duke Palace will submit a full and detailed report. We need to know just how much damage was done to my Empire in my absence."

"Forgive my impertinence, Little Demon Empress, but where have you been?" One of the loyalist Duke Palaces, Duke Baoqing, asked. He was the only Duke that could refine the Overlord Pills that allowed the youth of the Duke Palaces and Guardian Families to easily surpass the bottle neck and enter the Tyrant Profound Realm.

"Along with my consort Carl, we entered the central grounds in the Golden Crow Lightning Flame Valley. We received the blessing and training of the Golden Crow. I am now fully qualified to assume the title Demon Empress." Caiyi announced, and flared the aura her Golden Crow bloodline gave her.

Many among the traitors moaned piteously at the proof that they had chosen…poorly. The only reason they had even listened to Duke Huai and joined him and Duke Ming in rebelling was that they thought that the Royal Family would end, since both the previous Demon Emperor and the Little Demon Emperor had died without passing on the Demon Emperor's Seal that would let the Demon Empress receive the inheritance. They gambled on the wrong horse.

"Patriarch Yun. I command you to use you Profound Handle and find answers. What did Duke Ming do to the previous Demon Emperor and the Little Demon Emperor. What happened to my father and brother?" The Demon Empress commanded.

The Profound Handle was a special ability that the males of the Yun Family had. It was a special manifestation of their profound energy and could be used in a number of ways. It was useful in combat, but more importantly, it could be used to put a person under into a hypnotic state where they would answer any question put to them without having their mind being torn apart that usually happened with the normal mind scanning techniques employed by Cultivators.

The Yun Family's ability to act as veritaserum was one of the reasons they had such a prominent place in the empire. Their loyalty to the Royal Family was the other reason.

Yun Xiao's inability to awaken his profound handle is another reason that he had been treated so poorly by his family while his parents had been crippled. The Yun Family laws stated that only a male Yun Family member that had a profound handle of a certain grade could become the patriarch.

So the Yun Family had believed him to be useless, or not an actual blood member of the Yun Family. Carl knew from his medical scans that he wasn't actually blood related, but he hadn't questioned Yun Qinghong or Mu Yurou about it at the time. There were more important things to do than stick his nose into family business.

Yun Qinghong moved forward and utilized his Profound Handle on Duke Ming. Duke Ming told a tale of spending years, even centuries, plotting the downfall of the Illusory Demon Royal Family. He was the one who instigated the Four Sacred Grounds into attacking the Illusory Demon Royal Family. He was the one to lure the previous Demon Emperor into a deadly trap set by the Four Sacred Grounds from the Profound Sky Continent. He used the mind scanning technique to rip apart the Little Demon Emperor's mind on his wedding night before killing him and sending his body on to the Four Sacred Grounds.

Duke Ming's tale of betrayal after betrayal made the traitor Guardian Families and Duke Palaces moan again in agony as they realized they had willingly followed a traitor. They had been blinded and persuaded by Duke Huai that the only way the Empire could remain strong was if a strong leader like Duke Ming were their Emperor. But the only reason they were even in the situation where the Royal Family was weak was because of the traitor Duke Ming's actions. And now they and their families may be killed because of their stupidity in following a traitor.

It was obvious that everyone there was completely shocked by how much damage one traitorous Duke had done to their Empire. Even the Families and Duke Palaces that had fought on his side were drowning him in hate and spit. They didn't consider themselves traitors, they had been duped into thinking they had been doing what was best for the Empire.

Caiyi spent some time in thought about what to do with the traitors before making a pronouncement on their fates.

"Lock these up for later judgment." Caiyi indicated all the dupes of Duke Ming. "All of Duke Ming and Duke Huai's family are to be executed immediately. I will start with Duke Ming." Caiyi announced.

She then burned Duke Ming and Duke Huai to ashes with no mercy. He was the scum that killed her family and tried to kill her. He almost succeeded in destroying their over 10,000 year heritage for his greed.

"Now, imprison these fools. And bring order back to my Empire." Caiyi ordered. The Guardian Families and Duke Palaces that remained loyal hastily jumped to, and began carrying out her orders.

Once the Hall was empty, Caiyi fell into the hug Carl offered. It was a trying day, and it was only half over. But Caiyi needed time to process everything they learned. It was one thing to only suspect the extent of the traitor's actions, but to hear the details of how her family died was distressing.

With Caiyi's direction, Carl soon found her quarters and spent the rest of the day simply taking care of her. Being there for her and comforting her while they talked out what was to be done.

The two cultivators may have not needed sleep, but felt that a night of sleep would do good to reset their emotions and prepare them for the work they would have to do to get the Empire running properly again. Caiyi especially would need to find her center and be balanced the next day when she would pronounce judgment on all the prisoners.

* * *

The next day was a somber affair. The prisoners were brought up, a family at a time. Their crimes were read out, and Caiyi pronounced judgment.

The difficult part was that half of the most prominent families of the Empire were implicated. If she simply executed the families, it would cause more problems than she wanted. Losing so much of her government would weaken the empire greatly and cause chaos. They still had strong enemies out there in the Profound Sky Continent, and the last thing Caiyi wanted was civil unrest.

It would also paint her as a bloodthirsty and unforgiving Empress. The caution and wariness of the remaining families would be detrimental to her rule.

But she couldn't just let the families go with a slap on the wrist. The civil war had almost torn up and destroyed the Empire.

She pronounced that the leaders of the Families and Duke Palaces that rebelled would be executed.

The remaining members of the rebelling Guardian Families and Duke Palaces would be placed under a slave seal. They would be closely monitored and would have the chance to work off their debt. If they followed the rules and taught their next generation properly, then within one generation they could get rid of the slave seals and retake their places in the Empire.

If they continued to make the same mistakes, the next generation would be placed under a slave seal as well. And if that happened, then Caiyi would make a judgment as to whether the family or palace should continue or be abolished and replaced.

Abolishing any of the 12 Guardian Families that had been doing their duty for the past 10,000 years would be a poor repayment unless they couldn't be reformed. It was a huge consideration for why she was giving them the chance to redeem themselves, and not just washing her hands of them after they were enslaved.

Once the judgments were passed and carried out, Caiyi and Carl started working to restore order and build the strength of the Empire.

Carl decided he finally figured out why the Jump chain had let him choose the Four Sacred Grounds as his enemies even though he wasn't on the same continent. It was because he had chosen to receive the bloodline of the Illusory Demon Royal Family. If he ever ran into any member of the Four Sacred Grounds, they would want to kill him for no other reason than he might be a member of the Royal Family. And now that he was the consort of the Empress, well, that just made him that much more of a target.

He would have to be very cautious in the future to be wary of assassins. If he ever found a reason to go to the Profound Sky Continent, he would definitely be even more on guard.

But now that he was a member of the Royal Family, Carl could requisition all the rare herbs, crystals, ores, and beasts so he could start growing them on his Farms. It would help him and also help Caiyi rebuild her Empire when he could start providing all kinds of high end cultivation pills to increase the numbers and powers of their forces.

That way if the Sacred Grounds came calling, they would be ready to kick their asses.


	44. ATG 10

Carl stood stiffly outside the main doors of Duke Huai's manor estates in the capital. He watched as the soldiers under his command rounded up the family members of the Duke's Palace. He did his best to ignore the wailing of the women and children as they were dragged out and placed in chains.

In such a cultivation world, even children as young as 8 could have the strength needed to lift a car or more, depending on their cultivation. So they couldn't be treated completely as non combatants. The cultivator in the empire with the highest cultivation was Caiyi, so it was obvious that even "weak" women could be incredibly dangerous in this world and must be treated as such.

It still went against Carl's instincts to be so strict with civilians who weren't an immediate threat, but in a dynastic Empire, they had to root out all the traitor's families to ensure they didn't have a platform and resources to grow up and rebel again.

From what Carl could figure, they were already being merciful by not putting them to the sword. At least in the future their children or children's children would have a chance to work themselves out of slavery. Maybe.

And that was a concept so very against Carl's moral upbringing. Slavery. Such an ugly concept for one raised with the belief that all men are created equal. That all men had a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Faced with such a grey topic of morality, Carl wasn't sure what his answer would ultimately be. When the only choices were between slavery and death, what was the right answer?

But here and now, Carl had already made his choice. He would stand with his lover, Caiyi. He would not abandon or condemn her because she was forced to make tough decisions to maintain her family's legacy. Eventually Carl realized that he was even forced to contemplate such grey questions because of the actions of traitors.

That was the main thing to keep in mind, Carl decided. Everything that was happening now was because a family of traitors desired power above all else. Their ancestors had made oaths and promises to uphold the Empire. They had made the same oaths while growing up. They chose to betray everything their family stood for, betray their allies, and betray their leader, and betray the empire.

If they had not turned traitor, Carl would not have been put in this position. He would not have to contemplate bloody no win scenarios. It wouldn't do to take his anger at the circumstances out on his allies when it was the traitors that pissed him off and put him in such a morally grey position. So Carl put the blame where it was warranted.

When the last of the prisoners was carted off, Carl led the efforts to tear apart the manor and strip it of anything valuable. Every piece of information that could give them a clue about how the traitors had operated.

Who they employed, who they blackmailed, who they undercut, betrayed, and killed. All the information they could glean would help them put the Empire back together again, and place safeguards to protect against such a thing from happening again.

Several hours later Carl returned to the palace and reported everything he'd found, passing over a number of spatial rings to Caiyi.

"Thank you, Carl. I'm glad you're here to help me with this mess." Caiyi said with a weary smile as she tucked herself under his arm as they sat together on a couch.

"It's a right mess, that's for sure. Just let me know what you need me to do to make things easier for you." Carl replied in a comforting manner as he rubbed her back.

With the day over, and marching orders assigned to their subordinates, Carl and Caiyi retired for the evening to their chambers. The servants were well trained to ignore certain sounds that came from out of their master's chambers in such times.

* * *

Over the next few weeks as Carl worked hard to help reorganize the empire, he came to a realization. In the cultivation world, the strong demanded obedience from the less strong because then they could just order their subordinates to do the nitty gritty work, thus leaving them more time to cultivate and continue to stay strong.

After the first week where Carl was seeing to everything himself, he realized that he couldn't keep up the effort. Not if he wanted to spend any amount of time on pursuits that would be more profitable in the end. His own cultivation, refining medicines and pills, and crafting tools. All those were things only he could do, or only he could do to such a high standard.

So he realized that he was wasting his needed talents in administration work. Once he realized that, he started looking for talents among Caiyi's people that he could assign work to and trust that they would get it done.

He soon found a number of people that were good at administration, negotiations, and other such jobs and started handing out assignments to them. As they accomplished the feats, he rewarded them for a job well done, or scolded them for failing to accomplish their tasks and sent them out to try, try again.

With a large part of the workload he picked up to help Caiyi organize being handled by his new subordinates, Carl turned to gathering samples of resources so he could start producing them in his farms.

The first thing he looked into was producing an Overlord pill. It would help cultivators overcome the bottleneck to breaking into the Tyrant Profound Realm. If he could produce a large number of the pills, then they could start filling up their ranks with Overlords to replace all the ones they lost due to the actions of the traitors. Getting their overall strength back up to par was a high priority.

Even though the Empire had placed arrays that blocked the Sacred Grounds from teleporting to the Illusory Demon Realm, obviously it didn't completely seal off the continent, since Duke Ming had been able to remain in contact with them. And so they were still a threat.

The Empire desperately needed to quickly regain their strength before the Sacred Grounds realized how weak they currently were.

He had several recipes for the Overlord pills in his mind from the medical knowledge his perk granted him. The quality and effectiveness of the pill varied depending on the ingredients and the methods of preparations. Carl sent out lists of herb ingredients, and after a month received at least one of each, that he introduced to his Farm.

He then had the VIs that managed his inns and properties start purchasing local foods to stock their kitchens. It lessened the amount of money he made, but at this point, being the Consort of the Empress, he didn't have to worry about money, really.

He was then able to repurpose most of his farm space to producing the ingredient for making pills and medicine.

While the Overlord pills were important, Carl also realized he needed to make pills and medicines to help cultivators get to the Emperor stage in the first place. If there were no candidates to take the Overlord pills, then they would just sit there, a wasted resource.

So after gathering all the herbs needed, Carl planned to spend time in his Heavenly Time Pearl, which was finally charged up, and refine all the pills needed to help Caiyi get her forces back up to where they should be and more.

There was one key aspect of the Heavenly Time Pearl that raised it above all the other time manipulation devices that were out there. With most devices, the elapsed time inside would be counted against a cultivator's lifespan. But the Heavenly Time Pearl defied the ordinary rules. Any time spent inside wouldn't detract from their lifespan.

It would be a poor Heaven defying treasure that caused a cultivator to use up his entire lifespan in one night if he couldn't break through and increase his cultivation realm to have a longer life span. There was a reason that the entire Cultivation world would hunt after an individual who had a Heavenly Treasure. Only those who hid the news or had a large enough organization to protect them could hold on to their Heavenly Treasures.

So Carl and Caiyi spent a couple centuries in the Heavenly Time Pearl over the next two days. It had been a long time since Caiyi had been able to just relax and let down the burden and stress of ruling. Nearly 100 years, in fact, ever since she was made the ruler after her brother was killed.

So being able to spend time simply relaxing and watching a movie without worries, or training without her bloodline's fire burning her, or simply reading a book for enjoyment, was almost a novel experience for her.

Carl's Farms were in full production for pill ingredients. He had enough food stored to last the two of them for many years, even though they didn't really need to eat all that often at their level of cultivation. And he could always have some small parts of the Farms repurposed to provide them food.

While a large majority of Carl's time was spent refining pills or crafting arrays and magical items, he still kept up a small daily routine of cultivation and martial practice. It wouldn't do to spend so much time in time compression and not come out even stronger.

The refining process for the Overlord pills was a long and exacting one. Each batch would take 30 years to finish, while producing dozens of pills. Carl was determined to build up their forces, so he made several batches of all the pills needed before being satisfied and exiting the Heavenly Time Pearl.

Carl made a lot of progress in his cultivation level. Both he and Caiyi entered the Divine Origin Realm around the same time. Their cultivation speed slowed down greatly after that. Apparently in the lower worlds, the profound energy wasn't thick enough to continue to support their speedy cultivation speed.

Despite Carl's fear of breaking through into the seventh level of the Great Way of the Buddha causing him to explode, he couldn't stop himself from breaking through. Due to the incredible comprehension abilities from the Heart of Snow Glazed Glass and the constant powering up of the Dragon God's Bloodline, he accidentally broke through after a few decades in the Time Pearl.

Either it was an effect of the Nine Profound Exquisite Body that was able to handle the huge amounts of energy, or an effect of the Heavenly Time Pearl, Carl was just fine when he broke through. The pagoda that was a manifestation of his skill with the technique turned into a mix of deep gold and light jade.

The regeneration and strength his body had when he broke through had a huge jump. He practically never got tired anymore.

Carl had long since mastered the seventh stage of the Golden Crow's Record of the Burning world. While Caiyi continued practicing the lower levels of the Golden Crow's Record, Carl started experimenting with his shadow, wind, water, and lightning affinities. His comprehension was so absurd that he was able to jump far ahead of Caiyi in the fire skills, so he wanted to work on his other elements while Caiyi caught up to his skill level.

It took Carl a long time to figure out the best training methods for the other elements, since he didn't have a guide and cheat like the Golden Crow's Record for those elements. Even though he had many cultivation records from the Royal Library, he needed to figure out which ones were correct in their training methods.

But while it took him a long time to figure out, as he communed with the elements he slowly puzzled out many secrets of how to use the elements.

In some of her spare time, Caiyi took to perusing his library. The movies that he had shown her had opened her eyes to different cultures than the one she was born with. It was fascinating to her. She was especially interested in the magic texts, seeing what was possible with magic that the cultivators of profound energy never tried to do before. It somewhat made him sad that he didn't have a way to induce magical ability in others like he did with profound cultivation.

Now that Carl had extra time available, and with Caiyi's interest, he finally got around to building his own Room of Requirement. The room that could become anything allowed Carl and Caiyi to spend time in recreations of any place they could think of. It added more to the feel that they were on vacation at times.

Carl was also able to delve into many of the magics and sciences that he hadn't had time to study before. He would have to thank Hermione for insisting he stock up his library with everything the HP world could provide, science wise, the next time he saw her. Even though he thought he wouldn't have enough time to study all the science knowledge, it turned out that she was right and he was glad to have those books.

By the time Carl and Caiyi exited the Heavenly Time Pearl, they were both in the third stage of the Divine Origin Realm. Caiyi especially was rejuvenated from her long training and vacation time. She had been able to consider for a long time just what to do with her Empire when they exited time dilation.

With new plans, and all the pills that Carl refined to use as bribes and rewards for her people, Caiyi began working on making her Empire run the way she wanted it to. Carl would occasionally help out, but it was mostly her show as she trained her people to work the way she wanted them to.

She knew she couldn't make huge changes all at once, or she would get too much blowback, and people would stop working wholeheartedly. But little changes here and there were implemented.

One of the things that continued to keep Caiyi centered, was that Carl had Yun Xiao and Seventh Sister continue coming around for twice a week for training or simply to hang out. In private Seventh Sister continued to treat Sister Caiyi exactly like she had before she knew Caiyi was the Demon Empress. Having that kind of intimate friendship was helpful for keeping Caiyi feeling refreshed and balanced amidst all the stress of ruling an Empire.

Several months after they swept away all the traitors, the Empire had stabilized and Carl and Caiyi were wed in a grand ceremony.

Carl was quite glad that he had gotten the Heavenly Time Pearl. It had been a while since he felt so settled down. With the knowledge always in the back of his mind that he would leave a world behind after 10 years, he never really bothered making long term plans. He had begun feeling like a transient.

But with all the domestic time he spent with Caiyi, he was feeling…good. He sometimes spent a bit of time imagining just how great it would feel when he had this kind of life with everyone that he'd grown to love over the years in the Jumpchain.

Two months before the Hundred Year Celebration of Caiyi's rule, which meant that Carl had been in the world for five years and ten months, Yun Xiao showed up with a long face, obviously feeling down.

It took Carl sitting him down and pouring a couple cups of wine in him before he finally told Carl what was bothering him.

"I just found out that I'm adopted. Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou aren't my real parents." Yun Xiao muttered.

"Yeah, I know." Carl responded before slapping him on the back of his head.

"What was that for!?" Yun Xiao aggrievedly exclaimed. "And what do you mean, you know?"

"That was for being an idiot and saying they weren't your real parents." Carl responded. "I've known ever since I healed your parents that you were adopted. It didn't seem important at the time. Besides, how was I to know you didn't know?" Carl responded. "Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou are your parents in every way that matters. They raised you, cared for you, loved you, taught you as you grew up. At most all it means is that you have two sets of parents. They will never not love you, or stop being your parents. And didn't they arrange your betrothal to someone who you love? See, they are looking out for you."

Yun Xiao just had a stunned look of revelation on his face. "Yeah, you're right. I've been a fool."

Carl shrugged. "Eh, happens to the best of us. So, what brought this on anyway? How did you find out you were adopted?"

Yun Xiao looked over at Carl, blinking for a moment. "Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you that part. Their biological son, Yun Che, showed up one day while Seventh Sister and I were on a picnic. He was asking for directions, so we brought him back to the city. After some time and meeting our parents, it came out that he was their biological son." Yun Xiao shrugged. "I suddenly felt like an outsider when they found out." He stated, embarrassed.

"Hmm, well, Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou are probably a little worried about you running off then. So what's the story anyway about how you ended up getting switched?" Carl asked.

Yun Xiao then told him the tale of how, when Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou were on the Profound Sky Continent looking for Yun Canghai, they had met Yun Xiao's biological father, Xiao Ying. Xiao Ying and Yun Qinghong had became sworn brothers while adventuring around. Both were upright and forward kinds of men. They had immediately felt a kinship with each other.

So after adventuring together for some time, they went their own ways. Sometime later, when Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou were ambushed by members from the Sacred Ground while Mu Yurou was pregnant with Yun Che, they had sought temporary refuge with Xiao Ying to recover before running again. Mu Yurou had borne Yun Che that night, the same time that Yun Xiao had been born.

Xiao Ying, knowing that they were pursued by the Sacred Grounds and knowing that it was basically a death sentence, had switched Yun Che and Yun Xiao, in order that Yun Qinghong's son might have a chance at living and that his bloodline wouldn't go extinct.

Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou, however, managed to escape the blockade and made their way back to the Illusory Demon Realm with Yun Xiao before they succumbed to their wounds. They realized later what Xiao Ying had done, thinking that he was sacrificing his own son to preserve Yun Qinghong's family line, they honored Xiao Ying by raising Yun Xiao as their own son, giving him the name Xiao to honor his blood family.

Meanwhile the members of the Sacred Grounds had followed Yun Qinghong's trail, and tortured Xiao Ying to death while trying to get answers he wouldn't give about where the couple were. Xiao Ying's wife died soon thereafter, weakened from giving birth and grief at the loss of her husband and son.

Xiao Lie was Xiao Ying's father, and he raised Yun Che alongside his daughter, Xiao Lingxi, after his own wife passed away.

Yun Che hadn't gone into great detail about his adventures, but he was here now and reunited with his biological family.

Yun Xiao admitted to Carl that since he wasn't of the Yun Family blood, he was thinking about changing his name to Xiao Yun. Xiao was his biological family name, and taking on the name Yun would continue to honor the Yun Family that had raised him.

"Whether you choose to keep the name Yun Xiao, or change it to Xiao Yun, you will still be the same person that Seventh Sister loves. You'll still be mine and Caiyi's friend. So whatever you choose is good." Carl assured his friend. "Now, let's get a few more drinks in you before you return to your family for the evening." Carl said decisively before pouring more drinks.

After chatting for another hour, Carl sent Xiao Yun on his way back to his family. Xiao Yun had eventually decided that he would choose that name. While he was strongly bonded to his Yun parents, he didn't have a lot of good memories of the Yun Family, even though they were better ever since Carl gave them a talking to. And he didn't want them to think he was trying to cling onto the little Patriarch position now that it was known he didn't have their bloodline.

After Carl sent off Xiao Yun, he went in search of Caiyi. After finding her, Carl relayed the story that Xiao Yun had told him about Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou's time in the Profound Sky Continent.

"I do believe I'm going to make Xiao Yun a Duke." Caiyi eventually decided. "He's loyal, hardworking, and my friend. And his family did a lot for the Yun Family, who has done a lot for my Illusory Demon Royal Family."

Carl chuckled at her pronouncement. "I like it. I can't wait to see his face when you announce it." The two of them chuckled at the good surprise they would soon spring on their friend. "Giving him the standing of a Duke will also settle down any concerns the Under Heaven family has about Seventh Sister's marriage." Carl agreed.

Over their time in the Heavenly Time Pearl, Caiyi had told him about growing up with her father and brother, and how her father's best friend was Yun Canghai, the previous patriarch of the Yun Family. He was her favorite uncle, and he had done a lot for her growing up. She missed him when he disappeared after going in search of her father.

"After this 100 year ceremony, I'm going to do something nice to commemorate Yun Canghai's grandson returning to us." Caiyi said, her eyes unfocused as she thought about her memories of her father's friend who was like an uncle to her. "We still don't know what happened to him." Caiyi frowned.

"When we've built up our forces to make sure our home is secure, we can go find answers from the Four Sacred Grounds. Something tells me they won't be able to handle our methods of questioning and will be more than happy to give us answers." Carl stated with a feral grin. Carl got the message that Caiyi approved when she tackled him in a deep and passionate kiss. Things only got better from there for the rest of the night.

* * *

The following two months leading up to the Hundred Year Ceremony was busy. Plenty of Nobles that were stationed around the continent made their way to the Capital for the ceremony to renew their oaths and celebrate the 100th anniversary of Caiyi's reign.

After leaving the time dilation, Carl returned a portion of his Farms to producing food for his inns and properties. They certainly needed it as the population of the Capital swelled for the upcoming ceremony.

Carl was kept busy meeting the nobles as they arrived. His subordinates would arrange housing if they didn't already have property in the city. Since his underlings took care of the details, Carl was left free to make friends and network.

Through networking, he started hearing many tales and stories of just what was around the continent. Despite the planet, Blue Pole Star, only having three continents and the surface was 97% water, each continent was much larger than Asia, Africa, and Europe combined from his original home world. So there were all kinds of nooks and crannies and wild untamed areas that were unknown to most except the locals that lived in the area.

It also made Carl aware of the amazing accomplishment that the original Demon Emperor did in conquering the land. As well as the ability of the subsequent Demon Emperors in keeping the Empire in one piece. There was a reason the members of the Empire were proud of their 10,000 years of history.

And Carl enjoyed hearing the different nobles talking about their homes and lands. They had a large sense of pride in what they accomplished, especially when they had to fight of hordes of beasts to keep themselves safe.

There was another purpose behind all the networking and ceremony and pomp. These were the nobles that Caiyi would be asking to send some of their most promising scions to live in the Capital for years while they trained them up before sending them back.

Caiyi wanted to raise the average profound level of her vassals around the Empire, to make sure they had a deep well of talent to pull from in times of need. With the local nobles strong, the Empire's backbone would be strong and even harder to break than before.

And while they could make it a Royal Command that the different Nobles send their scions to be taught, it took some delicate work to make it viable in the real world. If the nobles weren't convinced that it would benefit them, they would likely send the least talented members of their Clans in to technically fulfill the quota, but it would defeat the purpose that Caiyi was making the program for.

So Carl worked hard to schmooze the nobles and convince them it was in their best interests to wholeheartedly embrace the student exchange program.

On the night of the Ceremony, Carl stood besides Caiyi from just outside the banquet hall as the crowds of nobles filed in. The 12 Guardian Families and the Duke Palaces were seated closest to the Royal seating. Even though many of the Guardian Families and Duke Palaces were placed under the Slave Seals, their prestigious positions and many prerogatives were still granted them, for appearance sake if nothing else. It was all about face and politics. In order to remain an important part of the administration, they had to retain a certain level of position.

Looking over at the Yun Family, Carl saw Xiao Yun accompanying them. Good. And he saw who Carl assumed to be Yun Che. Carl had to admit that Yun Che was a good looking man with good features and an air of competence, danger, and manliness about him.

But what caught Carl's attention was that he saw what looked like a ghostly figure hovering behind Yun Che. It was the figure of a young and petite redhead girl. Carl could sense that even though she had no physical body, she was still very powerful and deadly. And no one else seemed to see her. Not even Caiyi when he asked her.

Carl wondered if it was his Wizarding blood that allowed him to see ghosts that let him see her. He was concerned about what it portended for the ghost to be there.

After a few moments, the young redhead ghost seemed to notice Carl's gaze, and looked over sharply. The feeling of being under her gaze struck Carl. It was an oppressive feeling. Not as strong as the Golden Crow Spirit, but plenty strong to deal with him if she so chose.

Carl, not being an idiot, respectfully gave her a salute from where he was hidden from most of the banquet goer's sight. Obviously she could still see him. She simply snorted at his salute then ignored him, acting as if he was beneath her.

'Which I really am.' Carl mumbled in his mind as he smiled wryly. 'Who knew I would keep running into strong women that could obliterate me easily on this world. Well, hopefully she will not do anything too overbearing.'

Eventually the guests had arrived and been seated, and it was time for Caiyi and Carl to enter and take their seats in the place of honor. Caiyi took one last look over Carl's ceremonial robes and made sure they were settled properly before taking his arm and the two swept out into the banquet hall.

Because of the powerful redhead spirit Carl kept his attention focused that way, so he perfectly saw Yun Che lustfully swallow his saliva when he first saw Carl's wife Caiyi.

'Of course. As a harem protagonist of the cultivator world he would be lustful.' Carl rolled his eyes, ignoring the fact that he himself had many ladies. At least he wasn't drooling over other people's wives so blatantly. 'Here's hoping the protagonist of this world can be reasonable and act like a jerk tonight.' Carl hoped that the presence of the MC wouldn't ruin his wife's night.

After the feast was served and talk began, Carl put Yun Che and the strong red headed ghost out of his mind and focused on interacting with the surrounding nobles. This 100 year Reign Ceremony Feast was an important time to strengthen the bonds among the nobles of the Empire. Only though being banded together as one could they hold strong against enemies like the Four Sacred Grounds of the Profound Sky Continent.

Suddenly the sounds of scoffing was loudly heard by all the banquet participants. The loud sound of a cup being slammed onto a table was heard. Carl looked over and saw Yun Che with an expression of anger and contempt on his face.

'Just what is this guy upset about?' Carl sighed. 'Evidently I'll be finding out soon. It was obviously too much to ask for the protagonist to keep his trap shut for one night when he wasn't the center of attention. Primadonnas."

Yun Che stood angrily and started pointing at all the nobles around the banquet room while haranguing them.

"I can't believe you people. Sitting here in luxury, playing at games. Smugly self assured in your power. While you have vilified and ignored a hero of your Empire. I'm talking about my grandfather, Yun Canghai!" Yun Che yells out.

Carl looks around to judge what everyone's expressions were. Not a lot of happy expressions, as expected when being berated by some stranger at a feast to celebrate the 100 year reign of the Demon Empress. This wasn't the time or place to be bringing up such topics.

The red head ghost girl behind Yun Che just folded her arms and looked on neutrally. Carl was relieved to see that the powerful ghost wasn't as angry about the topic as Yun Che himself. It gave Carl more leeway to act if the ghost herself wasn't emotionally invested in the scene.

Yun Che then went on a spiel about the suffering suffered by Yun Canghai over the past 100 years. Yun Canghai had been captured by the Sacred Grounds and imprisoned, starved and tortured over the past 100 years while protecting the Demon Emperor Seal.

Meanwhile the Illusory Demon nobles had been sitting in comfort and been enjoying the protection of Yun Canghai while being ungrateful and trashing his reputation and the prestige of his family. Yun Che continued to blather on about how every one of the nobles of the Empire should be ashamed of themselves.

Yun Che then brought out a coffin with Yun Canghai's corpse in it and demands that all the Duke Palaces and Guardian Families kneel down and apologize to Yun Canghai's corpse before he will return the Demon Emperor's Seal to the Demon Empress. But if he isn't satisfied then they can forget it.

Carl sighed in exasperation as he pinched the bridge of his nose at Yun Che's declarations. He looked to Caiyi, and silently asks her with a profound energy transmission if he can take care of this. She nods, so Carl stood up and steps in front of everyone.

"Yun Che. I get it. I really do." Carl's smooth voice carries to every corner of the banquet hall. He worked hard at his presentation, causing everyone to hang on his words. "You were stuck with your newly reunited Grandfather and managed to bond with him as he trained you. You saw his suffering, what he went through. You came to admire him. Then you saw his death. Seeing your loved ones die right in front of you is heartbreaking." Carl paused as he approached the angry young man.

"Then you arrive here at your Grandfather's home and find out that during all that time your grandfather was suffering, life here went on like normal, or so it seemed to you. I get that you've got this big ball of rage inside. I understand that you want others to suffer to make yourself feel better." Carl shook his head mournfully.

"But you're going about this all wrong. I get that you didn't grow up in the Illusory Demon Realm. You don't really know the Empire and how we do things here, so you want to lash out and punish everyone here for what you perceive as slights against you. For not caring about the things you and your Grandfather went through."

"But you're going about it all wrong. These people here that you're castigating? They are your family's allies. They stood by your family. They helped to capture and punish the people responsible for the whole treacherous plot. They stopped it and restored justice."

Carl motioned Yun Che's attention to his Yun Family. Yun Qinghong struggles to keep the embarrassed expression off his face was clearly seen by Yun Che.

"And they are more than happy to see Yun Canghai return home. They would love to celebrate his heroism and toast his bravery."

"But for you to come in here and berate your family's allies like they are naughty three year olds when they don't deserve the scolding is alienating them from your family. It honestly sounds to me like you're throwing a tantrum. Especially when you are interrupted a very important ceremony for our Demon Empress."

"And your threat to not return the Demon Emperor Seal until you get what you want? How dare you." Carl put some added disdain in his voice. "How dare you take the duty that your grandfather laid upon you and spit on his sacrifice? Did he say to only give back the item he was entrusted by the late Demon Emperor if you felt like it? If you had your demands met? If you felt appeased? NO. He gave you a familial duty. One that your family has been entrusted with for over 10,000 years. And here you are, making petty demands to assuage your petty anger."

Carl saw Yun Che's face getting red as his anger mounted. He kept an eye on the red headed ghost to see if she was going to do anything, but she seemed content to watch the play in front of her.

"Our Demon Empress thinks of Yun Canghai as an Uncle." Carl motioned to Caiyi. Everyone there could see the competing desires and stresses in her expression. "She grew up with your grandfather. He treated her as a favored niece. She loved the man. If you had come to her in person, she would have been happy to arrange a funeral of state and declare a period of mourning for Yun Canghai, the hero of the Illusory Demon Realm Empire. But instead you get up here and berate your family's allies, after they already caught and punished the culprits."

"So, do your duty, Yun Che. Do the duty Yun Canghai laid upon you, for no other reason than it reflects on Yun Canghai's honor how you comport yourself. Yun Canghai has suffered greatly for his duty. Don't besmirch his good name at the last moment over petty anger."

Feeling ashamed and a great anger at the same time, Yun Che struggled with what he wanted to do versus what he should do. He had always given in to his rage and anger to repay grievances before. Ever since his second life when he gained some strength, he wasn't willing to allow any slight to him go by without punishment. Not with the memories of being powerless and bullied in his first life.

But what Carl said was right as well. He shouldn't dishonor his Grandfather's last wish. But Yun Che just couldn't let the anger go. His habits were too ingrained to let it go without a fight.

"Fight me." Yun Che finally ground out.

"What was that?" Carl asked with an eyebrow raised. This Sky Profound cultivator wanted to fight him? Was he suicidal? Carl saw the Redhead ghost whisper something to Yun Che. Carl couldn't hear what she said, but Yun Che seemed to ignore her advice.

"Fight me. If you can defeat me, then I'll go along with what you said. If you can't, then we'll go along with what I said. Or are you afraid to put your money where your mouth is?" Yun Che arrogantly stated. "Don't tell me you're afraid to bet?"

Carl sighed at Yun Che's pitiful provocation. This protagonist was nothing but stubborn. He looked at the Yun Family. Yun Qinghong was looking somewhat embarrassed, like he didn't know which way to go. This was their biological son, their long lost boy. But he wasn't following the teachings of the family. It made sense though, since he was raised away from them. But it was still bloody embarrassing.

He looked at Caiyi, to see what her opinion was. She had personally grown up with Yun Canghai after all. He saw that she wanted him to resolve the issue and uphold his own honor. And Carl wanted to protect Caiyi's honor.

Despite Yun Che's assumptions and blatant stupidity, she had planned on honoring Yun Canghai, and still would no matter the circumstances. But there was her honor and prestige as the Demon Empress that couldn't be impugned if she was to remain their leader. So he had to fight Yun Che and win. And he had to win handily to send a message. Not that fighting a Sky Profound cultivator was something threatening in the Empire.

'Bloody idiot stubborn retard.' Carl cursed Yun Che in his mind. He had always hoped to avoid fighting the protagonist of the story, since he didn't want the drama. But he couldn't back down here.

Carl then looked at the powerful red head ghost behind Yun Che. He sent a voice transmission to her. [What about you miss? Will you interrupt this fight if it looks like Yun Che is about to lose? I promise I won't go overboard, I just want to beat some sense into the boy's head. At the rate he's going, he will continue to offend people he doesn't need to, especially his own allies, and cause his own destruction one day.]

The red head looked him over with pursed lips for a bit, a strange glint in her eye. [Fine. You may beat the idiot up. I won't do anything unless you take things too far.]

Carl nodded respectfully at her.

"Okay." Carl turned back to Yun Che. "If I win, you will apologize for being rude to your allies and drop your notion of forcing everyone to bow down in penance for the wrongs done to your Grandfather. You don't even have to kowtow or any nonsense, a simple verbal apology will be sufficient." Carl knew that with stubborn idiots, they would rather die than bend a bit. And he was trying to fix the problem and rift caused by Yun Che, not make a permanent enemy.

"If you win, the allies of your family will be forced to bow down and damage their prestige in order to appease your petty and misaimed anger." Carl wasn't above twisting the knife as he stated the terms in such a way to show just what he thought of the dude.

Judging by Yun Che's scoffing, he knew what Carl was doing but was beyond caring at this point.

Yun Che pulled out a great big honking sword. The thing must have been 9 feet long. Carl had no idea just how heavy it was, but Yun Che wielded it pretty well, although it seemed a bit on the heavy side of what Yun Che could handle.

Carl pulled out his own sword, Blue Orchid. Carl's sword looked puny compared to Yun Che's massive hunk of metal.

Carl noticed Yun Che focus abnormally on his sword a moment later. Yun Che didn't wait any more and came in swinging thes big hunk of metal. Carl didn't lag and swiped his own sword, blasting Yun Che's sword back. The sword must have weighed at least several hundred thousand kilograms, because it was _heavy_.

But the strange thing was that it almost felt like Yun Che's sword was sticking to his sword before losing contact. Carl saw a greedy look appear on Yun Che's face as he gazed at Carl's sword. Yun Che then started swinging non stop, trying to break Carl's sword.

Carl wasn't having a particularly hard time fending off Yun Che as he tested the man to see how skilled he was. He was much slowing and weaker than Carl. But despite Blue Orchid being a full realm above Carl's own cultivation, he felt a sense of danger for his sword from Yun Che's sword. It was almost like Yun Che's sword wanted to devour Carl's sword. Carl scowled at the giant sword, not at all pleased with the idea.

Eventually Carl saw a small crack appear on his blade and Yun Che's sword seemed to swallow the chip that fell off. Carl was furious. He had spent a lot of money and effort getting the goblins to make his blade, then spent cp to transfer it in to his profound weapon.

At this point his sword was in the Divine Soul Realm level, but it was still damaged by Yun Che's sword.

'Damned Protagonist luck!' Carl cursed in his head. 'Of course he would find such an interesting blade.'

There was no way he was letting some jumped up hungry sword devour his blade.

He quickly put his blade away to protect it, and used his own hands to start beating on the flat of Yun Che's sword, not holding much back, and thereby knocking Yun Che around like a pinball. He transmitted his voice to Yun Che's hungry sword. [Bad sword! Bad! It's not nice to eat someone else's sword. Get your master to buy you food if you're hungry. But I'm not feeding you my sword. Bad sword! Bad!]

Carl felt a sense of pouting and crying from Yun Che's sword. 'Good. Serves it right to be scolded!'

After some time and being unable to do anything, Yun Che put away his giant sword and glared at Carl. Carl scoffed inside. What is the point of glaring at him? Yun Che is the one with a nasty sword that wants to eat other people's property.

Yun Che then started summoning giant fire birds and sent them at Carl. Carl vaguely sensed that they felt like the Phoenix bloodline. He didn't bother avoiding them, simply swatted them out of the air, and sent some small fireballs back at Yun Che. Not enough to seriously harm Yun Che, since Carl was acutely aware of the redhead ghost watching the fight, but enough to scorch him a bit.

Carl snorted when he saw that his fireballs didn't even singe Yun Che. 'So, he must have immunity to fire too? What, did he also get the Evil God's veins and the Evil God Fire Seed? What a pain. No wonder the dude is getting arrogant, if he's got some special trumps.'

Once Yun Che saw that he couldn't hurt Carl through fire, he started using ice. Yun Che attempted to freeze and strike Carl with ice attacks. Since Carl was also immune to water and ice attacks, he wasn't fazed.

He could see the shocked expression on the red head ghost when Carl also shrugged off the ice attacks like they were nothing. Carl felt a probe sink into his body from the redhead ghost. Scowling a bit at the ghost who was the whole reason that Carl had been holding back on beating Yun Che black and blue, Carl made a decision.

Carl was getting tired of this fight, of accommodating the childish Yun Che. It was past time to end this. Carl dashed forward to melee range and started taking Yun Che apart, figuratively speaking. He didn't break any bones, but he pummeled the stuffing out of Yun Che. He treated him like a rag doll, and made sure to beat his handsome face until it was swollen. Carl then used a jolt of electricity like a taser to knock Yun Che out.

Carl bent down and sent a profound probe into Yun Che to ensure his health was fine, before he levitated Yun Che to his biological parents with a transmitted assurance that he was only a bit bruised and would be fine.

Carl picked up the enormous sword, feeling the great weight. Shrugging at the look the redhead ghost was giving him, he sent a transmission to her. [I'm not interested in stealing his sword. Should I prop it in a corner for him to pick up later or have his parents bring it back for him?]

The red head ghost scoffed, although Carl wasn't sure at what, and nodded her head at Yun Qinghong. So he carried the sword over to him and placed it in his arms. Carl smiled reassuringly at Yun Qinghong so he knew that Carl wasn't going to hold a grudge over Yun Che's actions that night.

Carl then looked around at the gathered nobles, making note of their reactions to the fight. Caiyi was giving him a look like he was getting lucky tonight for his strong actions at defending her honor and the fight.

Carl then noticed a concerned and conflicted looks on the faces of Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou's faces as they too looked around. They were incredibly conflicted at the moment. They were dedicated to their roles as a Guardian family, and Carl himself was their savior and benefactor. But Yun Che was their biological son that they were just getting to know. Even with Carl's reassurance they were extremely conflicted about the goings on of that night.

Yun Che woke up at that moment, looking around frantically, before the realization that he lost came over him. He slumped down. Carl looked over at Yun Che consideringly.

[You're a somewhat decent man, Yun Che. At least I know you can be good to your people. But you carry a big ball of pus of anger in your heart. Like an abscess that has festered, your anger is festering. Whatever wrongs were done to you in the past, it's causing you to lash out for the slightest perceived wrong.] Carl transmitted to Yun Che. He didn't want to air the dude's laundry, that would just get his dander up again. But he felt that Yun Che needed to hear these words.

[I want you to think back to your past, Yun Che. How many problems have you had to deal with were because you were lashing out for the slightest insult, causing you to retaliate beyond justification? Which caused your enemies to escalate. How many enemies have you made because you lashed out in anger? How many times did those enemies you make try to attack you through your loved ones because that's the only way they could get to you?]

[I'm not saying you can't be a man with pride, or stand up for yourself. But you need to lance the boil of anger inside yourself and learn how to think before you respond with a belly full of anger. Maybe then you'll make a few less enemies that you didn't need to make.]

Yun Che looked like he was at least thinking about Carl's words. That would have to do for now. Carl stepped into the middle of the hall. Caiyi gave him a nod of approval for winning and how he had handled the situation so far.

"Now, before Yun Che offers his words, I'd like to announce that one week after the celebration of the Demon Empress's 100 year reign ceremony, the nation will be in mourning for two weeks. We have lost a great hero that has done so much for our Empire. Yun Canghai fulfilled his duty to the late Demon Emperor at a great cost to his own self. For that, we will honor him, now that he has been returned to us."

Carl then looked back at Yun Che. [The Demon Empress grew up with your grandfather as one of the few people she interacted with and loved and admired. Don't think that just because she must uphold her dignity as the Empress that it meant that she didn't wish to honor Yun Canghai. You could have come to us and talked about how to go about honoring Yun Canghai, and we would have been more than happy to give the great man his dues. Instead you decided to wait and crash the celebration of her rule, lessening her prestige in the eyes of her subjects. She may forgive you for that, for the sake of your grandfather. But I'm a little more petty. You offended my wife, and I'll remember that. I won't act against you due to the respect my wife has for your grandfather. Not to mention I really like your family. They are good people.]

[But just think about what you really accomplished here. I would have been more than happy to become your friend and help you in anything you needed because of your family connections. But now, you've made me dislike you. And you'll have to work hard in the future to get me to do anything for you. And look at how embarrassed your birth father looks over your rash actions. So my advice to you is to figure out how to temper your anger. Don't lash out at everyone. Learn to rely on your allies.] Carl finished and stepped back to Caiyi's side.

Carl gave Yun Che one last final look. Yun Che appeared to be in deep thought at the moment. Carl then joined his wife at their seats while Yun Che swallowed his pride and offered an apology for his rudeness at the celebration and hoped that everyone would give him advice in the future. He then offered up the Demon Emperors Seal to Caiyi.

'Good, looks like even a story protagonist can be gotten though to by my **Celestial Profound Basic Decency Inducement** perk.' Carl thought optimistically while sighing in relief. He had seen the way that the red headed ghost had looked over Yun Che. They had obviously been through some tough times, and had some kind of relationship with each other. He was just glad the red headed ghost seemed to be reasonable and not killing him because he bruised up Yun Che a little bit.

The announcement of Xiao Yun Being awarded a Duke's Palace position was almost anticlimactic after the drama that Yun Che brought to the feast. But Carl determinedly focused on Xiao Yun and cemented a good mental picture of his face when he realized his elevation. Carl would have to use a pensieve some time to make a picture or poster with Xiao Yun's face, just so his friend could properly enjoy Carl's amusement of the face Xiao Yun made.

The rest of the evening went well. Carl's show of force and strength seemed to have done a good job of making the nobles even more amenable. Far more than his diplomatic efforts previously had.

'Just goes to show they were raised in a culture of might makes right.' Carl snorted amusedly. For some reason he only felt a very faint twinge of feeling that it wasn't right to have a society set up like that. A remnant voice of conscience that he learned growing up that was somehow growing fainter and less important the longer he was on his jump chain adventures.

He wasn't going to go full on murder hobo on people. But there had been too many situations in Carl's life until now that required him to use force to solve the issues he faced. So he found it hard to keep thinking idealistically about some nebulous idea about how society should be; not when he had to keep relying on his own abilities to keep him and his people safe.


	45. ATG 11

Carl was sitting in his and Caiyi's rooms, looking down at Blue Orchid that had a chip in the blade. He never thought that his blade would be damaged one day. Especially with how much higher cultivation level he was compared to Yun Che, his sword was even higher.

He had been holding back a lot in that fight in order to not give that redhead ghost a reason to intervene and smack him down. Not to mention it would have seriously hurt his and Caiyi's relationship with the Yun Family, their biggest supporters in the Empire, if he had humiliated or crippled their newly returned son. Politics.

It would have been so easy to chop of some of Yun Che's arrogant limbs off. Carl sighed, letting go of the desire to hurt Yun Che for what his sword did to Blue Orchid.

Caiyi sat up in bed, and looked over at him sitting off to the side brooding about his sword. She got up and hugged him from behind while looking over his shoulder at the sword.

"Oh, your poor sword." Caiyi tried to keep the humor in her voice from showing, but it was obvious.

Carl chuckled a bit. "Fine. I get it. I'm brooding too much over a sword that will repair itself." He put the Blue Orchid away in his inner world so it could bathe in the energies there and work to repair itself.

"You did just the right amount." Caiyi reassured him. "You told me about that ghost that hangs out around Yun Che, so I'm in agreement with you on not doing anything too harmful to him. And the Yun Family actually feel grateful for how much you restrained yourself when the arrogant berk was embarrassing them in public."

Carl turned his head and kissed Caiyi. He enjoyed it when she used phrases she picked up from movies and books that he had stored.

"Now let's get ready for the day. We still have much to do, and people to meet before everyone returns back to their places." Caiyi got up and beckoned him to follow her to the baths.

"Yes, ma'am." Carl replied, throwing his other considerations aside as he joined her. So much better thing to do than brood.

* * *

After a few weeks, the various clan leaders and Dukes returned back to their territory and life returned to a more sedate schedule. Xiao Yun and Seventh Sister had their wedding and it was a grand affair for the newly raised Duke.

The honeymoon lasted a couple weeks before the couple returned, completely happy with each other. Carl was glad that his and Caiyi's friends continued to join them for weekly training sessions, as well as just coming by to hang out a few times a week.

Unfortunately they brought Yun Che with them more often than not. Carl sighed when it happened the second time. Apparently Yun Che was like and octopus that just wouldn't say no, and he was very clingy to invite himself along and get his way with Xiao Yun and Seventh Sister. They were just too nice to reject him, and Carl and Caiyi gave them face by not kicking him out.

Ever since Carl met Yun Che and started to interact with him a lot more, he was really, really glad that he had rolled the Illusory Demon Realm for his starting location. The reason being that he had enjoyed almost 6 years without ever having to interact with Yun Che.

Yun Che was just so _needy. _Needyand pushy. And he barely listened to anyone. Even Carl's use of the decency inducing perk only barely affected him. It had to be the legendary stubbornness of protagonists that made Yun Che's head so hard and resistant to change. If Carl could just beat him up a few more times, he was sure he could induce real decency in the brat…

But it felt like Carl couldn't get away from the brat. Anytime he went out to the market, Yun Che happened to show up. Whenever he visited Xiao Yun at the Yun Family, Yun Che was there with his smarmy face, knowing he was protected from being beaten down as long as he didn't take things too far. Anytime that Xiao Yun and Seventh Sister came visiting Carl and Caiyi at the palace, Yun Che stuck to them like sticky rice.

Carl wouldn't have minded him quite as much if Yun Che hadn't been constantly flirting with Caiyi. Yun Che got nowhere, of course, but the guy was relentless. Carl could see how so many ladies would fall to his charms after he wore them down over time. If Carl didn't trust Caiyi so much, he might have started acting jealous and possessive, which would have ruined their relationship.

Carl sometimes wondered if that Yun Che's plan, to attempt to induce stress in the relationship, and have the beautiful girl that Yun Che desired see the poor quality of her husband's character so Yun Che could come sweeping in and save her from a horrible life with a bore. Or something along those lines.

But Carl and Caiyi had spent more than a single year together since their marriage that was apparent on the surface. They had spent a few hundred years together in time dilation, so their relationship by this time was solid.

After one particularly trying afternoon, Carl looked over at the red headed ghost, whose name he still didn't know and raised an eyebrow at her in question. [And you've had to put up with this guy for how long?] Carl indicated Yun Che.

The redheaded ghost snorted in agreement. [The lecherous fool has some good points.] She muttered as she looked away to avoid Carl's gaze.

[If you say so.] Carl didn't pry into just what she'd seen Yun Che do or why she would defend him. He just wasn't that interested. [I'm just tired of him trying to get a rise out of me by flirting with my wife in front of me. I'm sure if someone did that to one of his women he would blow a gasket and go overboard again. You wouldn't mind if I beat him a little bit, right?] Carl fired right back, but immediately saw from her reaction that he wouldn't get the pleasure of beating up Yun Che just because he was annoying. [Whatever. Just as long as he doesn't take things too far. So, why do you hang out with him?] He idly asked, just to see what her reaction would be.

[None of your business!] The redheaded ghost turned her nose up at him.

[Eh, that's fine.] Carl replied and went back to his practice with his wife, friends, and Yun Che, ignoring the ghost's somewhat shocked look that he hadn't kept trying to dig for information. He laughed a bit inside when he saw the redhead ghost looking like she wanted to argue or fight some more, like she wasn't satisfied with him easily dropping the subject, but she didn't want to drop her dignity and start arguing with him.

* * *

After a couple months, Yun Che finally let the people around him know that he needed to find a way back to the Profound Sky Continent so he could check up on his wives, friends, and relatives. Apparently they all thought he died over two years ago.

Carl just sighed inside. Yun Che had spent the past three months just hanging around them, making a nuisance of himself while flirting with Carl's wife, and generally enjoying the training he could get from Carl, all while his family back home thought he was dead? And he didn't tell everyone that he already had a couple wives while trying to get Carl's wife's attention?

'What, when he finally realized he wasn't getting anywhere with Caiyi, he finally decides he needs our help to go find the women who will give him the time of day after ignoring them for so long?' Carl spitefully thought.

Despite his best efforts to have nothing to do with the guy, Yun Che just kept clinging on. It sometimes made Carl question his decision to befriend Xiao Yun back when he arrived here. The friendship with Xiao Yun was great until Yun Che showed up. It was through Yun Che abusing Xiao Yun's kindness that Carl couldn't avoid the damned protagonist of the world. And because of the friendships and relationships he had made, he had to play nice with the annoying octopus.

Carl could already see how Yun Che would try using him as a stepping stone and help for Yun Che's rise to greatness if Carl was dumb enough to listen to the octopus. The guy liked to take what other's offered, but he didn't give back quite so freely. Besides, Yun Che didn't have anything Carl wanted. Aside from that sword, maybe, that he would merge into Blue Orchid given half a chance to strengthen his sword. But he couldn't do that without stepping all over his relationships with people.

It almost reminded Carl of his time in Monopoly. He found Yun Che annoying, but he just couldn't get rid of the guy. He would just have to endure.

Which is why, when Carl found himself volunteered by Xiao Yun to act as a chauffer, he wasn't too surprised that Yun Che just assumed that Carl would be happy to do so.

'I should not have ever told Xiao Yun about my Ark, dammit.' Carl muttered in his mind as he looked at Xiao Yun's hopeful face, and Yun Che's smug expression. Obviously Yun Che used Xaio Yun's desire to meet up with his biological family to convince Carl to help. Yun Che was smart enough to know that Carl wouldn't have helped for Yun Che's sake alone, but roping in someone that Carl would help had helped Yun Che get his way.

"Fine. I'll ask Caiyi if it's alright." Carl muttered, ignoring Yun Che's not so quiet insinuation that Carl wasn't a real man for having to ask his wife to go somewhere. Stupid friends asking for help. He just knew the idea was mostly Yun Che's. If it wasn't for the fact that Xiao Yun was so desperate to meet his biological family, Carl wouldn't have ever agreed to help Yun Che.

"But you have to listen to me on this trip." Carl warned the two young men. Not that he expected Yun Che to actually listen to his orders. That was asking too much. Protagonists are above all that! 'Just a few more beatings would do him good.' Carl thought as he eyed Yun Che.

"Okay, Brother Carl! I can do that." Xiao Yun exclaimed.

Yun Che barely even nodded while keeping his smug expression in place, obviously not paying Carl's words any attention.

The only one who seemed to hear Carl's mutter of "Damned puppy dog eyes" in reference to Xiao Yun's begging was the ghost. As he was leaving the room, he saw the red headed ghost eyeing him in a strange manner. Carl put it out of his mind as unimportant for now.

* * *

"…and so they asked me if I would ferry them over so Xiao Yun and Yun Che could gather Xiao Yun's family, and Yun Che's wives and lovers." Carl finished explaining to Caiyi. "I told them I would ask you if that was alright." Carl finished, hoping she would have a reason so he didn't have to go.

Caiyi smiled at him with that warm smile, knowing exactly what he was hoping for. "Normally I would be nervous of you going to the continent where those treacherous Sacred Grounds are, but I have confidence in your strength. And I know just how important family is. So go and bring back Xiao Yun's family for him so we can protect them here. And come back to me."

What could Carl do when Caiyi greenlit a trip that he really didn't want to go on but smile, kiss her, and answer "Of course, dear"?

So a few days later Carl gathered everyone up for the trip. Xiao Yun, Seventh Sister, Seventh Sister's brother, Number One, the redheaded ghost, and Yun Che were going on the trip, along with a few dozen guards. Just like how the Illusory Demon Realm had arrays set up to block off transportation arrays from transferring people in, the Profound Sky Continent had arrays to track anyone teleporting in from outside. So using Carl's Ark would ensure that they would be able to sneak in unobserved.

Carl pulled out his Sky Overlord's Ancient Profound Ark, and the group boarded his airship. With the Jade of the Nine Suns powering his Ark, Carl had the boat flying along incredibly fast. It only took a short few hours to travel the immense distance west to the Profound Sky Continent.

While flying over the ocean, Carl looked down and wondered why he never saw any giant monsters from the depths. It made sense in a cultivation world that the oceans would be teeming with creatures of great strength. He then swiftly knocked on the wood of the table, hoping that he hadn't just cursed himself with a future encounter.

While flying his Ark, Carl set out some refreshments and sat down with the group to chat. He had met Number One on several occasions, but he hadn't spent a lot of time with him before. He managed to get Number One to tell some good stories about Seventh Sister growing up that embarrassed Xiao Yun's girl, but was very entertaining for the rest of them.

They eventually arrived at the continent, and with Yun Che's directions, Carl steered them towards the little Floating Cloud City where he grew up. As they flew over the continent to the little city where Xiao Yun's Grandfather, Xiao Lie, and his Aunt, Xiao Lingxi, lived, Carl enjoyed the beautiful view of the rugged land.

A great deal of the land was empty of people and was wilderness where strong profound beasts lived, hunted, and roamed free. Carl kept half an ear on the conversation as he watched the land pass by beneath, just enjoying scene.

Soon enough, they arrived at the home town of the Xiao Clan. Strangely, they saw something that was out of place. A large army of cultivators was stationed outside the city.

"That's the banners of the Divine Phoenix Empire. What are they doing here?" Yun Che muttered angrily. Yun Che was about to jump off the Ark and go find answers, when Carl's voice (and hand on his shoulder) caused him to pause.

"Stop. I can understand your concern, but don't get worked up, remain calm while we investigate." Carl ordered the impulsive young man.

"What do you mean, stay calm? How can I stay calm when I see an army here where it shouldn't be?!" Yun Che shouted back.

Carl rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"As for how you're supposed to stay calm? How about you use some freaking discipline for once in your life, take a deep breath, and stop _reacting_ for just a damned minute." Carl ground out. "There is no active battle happening. Whatever has happened in the past, you can't do anything about. But for now, the important thing is remaining calm so you don't do anything stupid."

Yun Che gave Carl an angry look, but went along with what he said. He knew he couldn't defeat Carl, so he sullenly followed his lead. Once the group left the Ark to fly down to the city entrance, Carl put away his Ark.

The city guards looked at the group nervously, but having seen them flying down and realizing how much stronger they were, the guards quickly passed them into the city with no questions and much respect shown.

As they were walking towards the Xiao Clan grounds, Carl overheard talk from the citizens about how the Divine Phoenix Empire's army had been stopped outside by a powerful cultivator and how they didn't dare set foot in the city.

Yun Che looked relieved at hearing that bit of news, until he also heard that the Divine Phoenix Empire had also been attacking the Blue Wind Empire. Yun Che got all mad again and stopped listening and would have stormed outside the city to kill the army there, if Carl hadn't smacked him in the head and forced Yun Che to stop.

"Idiot." Carl scolded him. Carl could tell that Yun Che wanted to explode at Carl, but since Carl was much stronger, he couldn't do anything about it. "At least listen to the whole thing. You got so mad just off of a little _gossip_, that you didn't hear them say that the Divine Phoenix Empire suddenly stopped attacking several months ago, and now they are in negotiations. _That_ is exactly why you need to stop being a hot headed idiot. If you had gone blazing in and killing everyone like you looked like you wanted to, it would have ruined the peace and negotiations that your wife was doing right now."

It still boggled Carl's mind how Yun Che had managed to convince the Princess of the Blue wind Empire to marry him. Especially when Yun Che didn't stick around and immediately ran off to do whatever and left her behind.

'I mean, I know that is the trope of protagonists in these worlds, but damn.' Carl thought. 'At least he could have taken her with him, right? If he wasn't strong enough to protect her as she travelled with him, maybe he could have tried negotiations first while he got stronger? Instead he just charged ahead like a bull.'

"Now, is that the reunion you envisioned with your wife? 'Hey honey, I'm alive. Surprise! Hey, I hope you don't mind, but I ruined your hard efforts to negotiate a peace treaty and made an implacable enemy for you. The next time I'm off on adventure, you'll have to deal with them yourself. But I love you, so it's all good!'" Carl mocked Yun Che a little while trying once more to get in his head and induce some decency.

Yun Che had the decency to look a little embarrassed, and seemed to actually be thinking for once. Yun Che just muttered indistinctly while seeming to have cooled down. Apparently stubborn idiot protagonists needed constant reinforcement of inducing decency.

Out of the corner of his eye, Carl saw Number One looking away and coughing, trying not to laugh at the scene, while Seventh Sister was staring at Xiao Yun fiercely and daring him to go off on adventure without her. Xiao Yun was doing his best to reassure her that he wouldn't possibly do that.

Carl had a vague idea and hope that Seventh Sister would get together with Yun Che's wives for a good gossip session and put a bug up their nose about controlling their hot headed husband. Carl would even donate all the resources they needed to advance their cultivation so they could make their words stick with Yun Che.

If he was busy placating his wives, he would trouble Carl much less often.

"Good. Now, let's go and meet the relatives. That is why we're here, after all." Carl stated and made sure that Yun Che would try to slip off the moment no one was looking at him.

A short time later, they arrived at the Xiao Family grounds. When the guards tried to throw their pitiful weight around, Carl snorted, amused that such low cultivation guards would dare be arrogant.

"Listen here, friends." Carl sarcastically said to the guards. "You do realize that there are people who are very powerful in cultivation in the world, right?" Carl levitated a bit in the air while summoning a fireball in the air that radiated heat they could feel, that gave them a sun burn from such a small exposure. "Well, it's in your best interest as guards and the public face of the Xiao Clan to be polite to even strangers who you don't recognize. You never know when you'll run into a high powered individual who would take extreme offense to rudeness. Is my message clear?" Carl heavily stressed his question.

"Y-yes, sir. Sorry, sir! It won't happen again, sir." The guards stammered while bowing in apology.

Carl vanished the fireball and landed on the ground again. He nodded approvingly at the guards. "It's good that you learnt the lesson from me. If it had been someone else you likely would have at least broken bones at the moment." Carl was eyeing Yun Che, who had a look of anger on his face once more.

Carl swore Yun Che was like Pavlov's dog. The moment he saw something he didn't like he immediately wanted to resort to violence. Carl himself didn't have any problem taking out threats violently, but damned. A few words would easily do to put the guard in his place. No need to flip out so easily.

"Now, it's important that we meet with Xiao Lie and Xiao Lingxi immediately." Carl briskly said. "Would you be so kind as to show us to a place to wait while a messenger is sent?"

Carl nodded at the guards assurances and followed them to a reception room. After a short wait, three figures, two males and one female, appeared outside the room. Carl watched the touching reunion between Yun Che and the two family members he grew up with.

When the third figure, the second male, was introduced as Fen Juechen, Yun Che started getting angry again. Carl once more smacked Yun Che's head, dispersing the flames and gathering profound energy.

"Idiot. You really think it's appropriate to start a fight while your Grandfather and Aunt are in the room with you? Why would you even try to ruin your reunion?" Carl exasperatedly commented.

"Stop calling me an idiot!" Yun Che ground out.

"Then stop being one. Whoever this Fen Juechen is to you," Carl gestured at the red haired and red eyed man who was sporting a faint smile on his face at the situation, despite the overall serious look he sported. "Then he obviously doesn't have bad intentions at the moment. He has apparently been here some time, peacefully living with your loved ones. And if I'm not mistaken, judging by his strength, he was the one who initially protected them from the Divine Phoenix Empire's army until your wife could start negotiating a peace settlement."

"That's right! Brother Fen has been protecting us all this time. You shouldn't fight him. Otherwise you'll waste all my efforts in convincing him not to kill you." Xiao Lingxi exclaimed before pouting at Yun Che. Fen Juechen smirked a bit more at Yun Che, seeing how even Yun Che's loved ones were arguing against Yun Che for his sake.

Plus, he could tell that Carl was much stronger than him, so he was willing to wait and see how things go before acting.

Yun Che was gritting his teeth angrily at being ganged up on by Carl and his loved ones. Idiot shouldn't be so hotheaded if it bothered him.

"Let's drop that for now." Xiao Lie said to move things along, not wanting to ruin the reunion but seeing that Yun Che was being stubborn. "Now, why don't you introduce your friends to us."

Xiao Lie successfully diverted Yun Che's attention. Yun Che gestured to Xiao Yun, who was looking very nervous and hopeful.

"This is Xiao Yun. He is your biological grandson. He's here to meet his family." Yun Che said with some tender emotions, having realized how important the reunion was and that he shouldn't get in the way of Xiao Yun's reunion, just like how Xiao Yun had supported his reunion with his birth parents.

Carl made a note to himself that he would play the memory of the reunion for Caiyi when he returned. It was a Hallmark moment, seeing Xiao Yun getting to know his blood relatives, introduce his betrothed and her brother.

For Xiao Lie, seeing how well his grandson, Xiao Yun, was doing, and how excellent his wife was, pretty much justified all the heartaches and sacrifices he and his son had made for Yun Qinghong all those years ago. The Yun couple had treated Xiao Yun as one of their own, showing loyalty and kindness.

Carl stepped off to the side with Fen Juechen and chatted about random things, trying to stay off sensitive topics like just what the history between him and Yun Che was. If the kindness of Xiao Lingxi could turn an enemy of Yun Che's into an ally, Carl could at least not try to upset the balance.

They only spent an evening at the Xiao Clan grounds. Yun Che was eager to get a move on and see how one of his wives, Cang Yue the Princess of the Blue Wind Empire, was doing. The servants packed up all of the things of Xiao Lie and Xiao Lingxi so they could join them on the journey. Fen Juechen had all he owned in a ring, so he was ready to go at a moments notice.

Yun Che tried to argue against Fen Juechen following them, but he was overridden by several voices, especially Carl's.

Once more Carl summoned his Ark and, with directions from Yun Che, continued their trip. After only a few hours, they arrived at the capital city of the Blue Wind Empire. Apparently Yun Che was well known by the guards, since they were ushered inside immediately.

As they were approaching, Carl realized that he was about to get a surprise due to the feeling of a special link he had with a certain individual he hadn't seen for some time. When he stepped into the large hall he saw two groups that were facing each other over the negotiating table.

On the one side was the ruler of the Blue Wind Empire, Cang Wanhe and his daughter and Yun Che's wife, Cang Yue. Carl ignored the reunion that was happening between the married couple, but he made note of the look of dismay and yearning on the face of Xiao Lingxi as she gazed at Yun Che. He would address that later.

What had his attention was that on the other side of the negotiations was the human form of Rover. 'I guess I now know where Rover was always disappearing to. How appropriate that he would hang out at the Divine Phoenix Empire.' Carl chuckled to himself. He saw that next to Rover was a lady of exceptional beauty. Even when wearing a veil, she was obviously gorgeous. And she seemed to be almost hanging of Rover.

[Hey there, buddy.] Carl sent a profound transmission to Rover. [I see you found some "adventure".] He sent a mental wink.

Rover chuckled back at Carl. [Indeed. When I was traveling around the continent, I heard about an Empire named for me, and thought I'd check it out. This little cutie had a strong bloodline that called to me. When I checked on her, she was in a coma. So I sorta borrowed the medbay unit to heal her.] Rover replied, anxiously hoping that Carl wouldn't be upset.

[That's fine. She seems taken with you.] Carl chuckled at his Casanova Phoenix. The brotherhood bond between Carl and Rover was still strong, and he didn't feel any upset that he had found someone interesting to spend his time with.

[Yeah.] Rover gave the hint of a blush. [Her name is Feng Xue'er. When she woke up I was still a bird and wasn't talking much. She gave me the name Feng Ra. Then when we hit the Sovereign Profound Realm and I gained my human form, we talked a lot more after that. Normally her dad would have been furious about any dude talking to her, but with my Phoenix Bloodline and incredible strength, they gave in and let us start dating. We're betrothed now and will be married soon!]

[Congratulations! When's the wedding, I'll have to attend!] Carl was excited for the newly named Feng Ra. He would have to push a bunch of resources his way to make sure his Divine Phoenix Empire was up to snuff.

Carl and Rover paused as they became aware of Yun Che saying something.

"Xue'er, it's good to see you again." Yun Che tenderly greeted Feng Ra's betrothed while trying to get close.

"Brother Yun, I'm glad to see you're alive. Once more I'd like to express my thanks for protecting me back on the Profound Ark." She stated politely but obviously distancing herself from him.

Yun Che tried to go give the girl a hug, but Feng Xue'er avoided his embrace, while Feng Ra stood in front to block him.

Carl snorted in his mind. 'The little horn dog has no sense of timing or propriety. He only just reunited with his wife for like 5 minutes and is already trying to grab another girl. And he's leaving poor Lingxi hanging.'

"Why are you acting so distant, Xue'er? I know we had more of a connection than that." Yun Che complained softly, as if he was trying to coax a small child. Carl snorted aloud at Yun Che, trying to ruin Yun Che's attempts to seem serious.

"I'd ask you not to be too familiar with my betrothed." Feng Ra stated, staring Yun Che down.

Yun Che really was a good actor, or he felt his emotions too strongly, if the stricken and betrayed look he plastered on his face was any indication.

"But, I thought…" Yun Che trailed off.

Carl stepped in and slapped Yun Che's head again, seeing the red headed ghost that always accompanied Yun Che snort in amusement at Yun Che being denied by a girl. "Idiot. The lady has a fiancé. Go back and comfort your wife who thought you were dead for two years and leave these two lovebirds alone."

Feng Ra and Feng Xue'er gave Carl smiles of appreciation. Carl also saw Cang Yue give him a grateful look as she took Yun Che's arm in hers, clearly staking her claim.

When Carl saw Xiao Lingxi's look of yearning for Yun Che, he almost gave her some surreptitious words of encouragement in her feelings for Yun Che, before realizing that he almost fell under the sway of the protagonists luck. There was no way he was going to act as a help for Yun Che to expand his harem. Yun Che would have to do that himself.

Carl himself had many lovers in different worlds, so he wasn't upset at Yun Che for having multiple lovers; that would make Carl a hypocrite. No, the thing that had him refusing to help Yun Che on principle was how the overly amorous protagonist had flirted with and tried to get Carl's wife interested in him right in front of Carl. It showed that Yun Che had no good morals, and now he tried to pick up another girl right in front of his wife who thought he was dead for so long? Disgusting.

Even if Carl wasn't still holding a grudge against Yun Che, he would be incredibly irritated at the dude for his antics.

Carl looked around at the gathered people. "Well, let's get some introductions going." And while the people were introducing themselves, Carl continued mentally talking with Feng Ra.

[So what was the Divine Phoenix Empire starting this war for, anyway?] Carl asked Feng Ra.

[Apparently they found some Purple Veined Divine Crystal mine at the Floating Cloud City, so they started a war to cover their mining operation.] Feng Ra shook his head in amazement at their money grubbing activities.

[What, really?] Carl looked around at the people. He noticed the Divine Phoenix Empire's people were looking stressed and upset that some really powerful people had showed up on the side of the Blue Wind Empire. It pretty much spelled an end to their operation. And they looked like they were desperate. [How badly did they need the Crystal? I can't have your Empire lacking funds.] Carl joked a bit with Feng Ra.

Feng Ra pursed his lips. [Well, apparently the Empire has only been as strong as they were because of the threat of the Phoenix Spirit that used to protect them. But it's gone now, and they are deathly afraid that the Sacred Grounds will take advantage and come in and trash them. So they were hoping to bolster their strength to be able to keep up a strong front.]

[It's a decent strategy, I guess. What quantities of crystal are we talking here?] Carl asked while looking over the two groups.

[From what I heard, about 50 kilograms.] Feng Ra reported. While he was getting married to the Princess of the Divine Phoenix Empire, Feng Ra knew Carl's character, and was sure that Carl would help out Feng Ra's in-laws if he could.

[Damn, only 50 kilograms? I've got like 5 times that in stockpile from my Farms, and they are still producing more.] Carl exclaimed. Until that moment Carl hadn't really thought about just how amazing his Farmville Farms were. Entire nations were more than willing to go to war just for the chance to mine a fraction of what he could easily produce. Talk about cheat codes.

Carl looked over the negotiations once more and realized that things were quite tense and neither side seemed like they would back down. Something needed to be done to break the stalemate.

Coughing loudly to get everyone's attention, Carl moved forward. When everyone's eyes were on him, Carl pulled out 100 kilograms of the Purple Veined Divine Crystal.

"Seeing as Feng Ra is my sworn brother, it's only right that I pass a little gift to him in congratulations of his betrothal." Carl stated, amused at the sight of everyone's gaping mouths. Feng Ra was chuckling as he unpretentiously gathered the crystal into his storage space.

"Thanks bro, that will help my new family immensely." Feng Ra gleefully said. Carl was happy to see that Feng Ra's fiancé, Feng Xue'er was beaming at the two of them happily that the whole mess would be solved just like that.

"Just be sure to let me and my wife know when the ceremony is. We wouldn't miss it for the world." Carl commented.

The lead negotiator for the Divine Phoenix Empire coughed, finally coming out of his daze. "Right. It seems like our negotiations were a complete success." He dreamily stated. Now he wouldn't have to go back and report a failure, or have to go against the people who were so much more powerful than them. "I suppose we'll pick this up tomorrow. I'm sure you want to celebrate the return of the Blue Wind Empire's prince. And we have…things to discuss." He stated as he got up from the table and stumbled out the door.

Feng Ra held out his arm and Feng Xue'er latch on. Feng Ra then started escorting his fiancé out the room, giving Carl a fist bump as he passed by. "Talk to you later, bro." Carl passed him a communication jade, in case Feng Ra needed to get in touch with him. Feng Ra then cheerfully left with his gorgeous woman, the rest of the Divine Phoenix Empire people following them out.

"Right, so the newly reunited couple can get reacquainted while the rest of us get to know each other." Carl shooed Yun Che and Cang Yue out the door. Cang Yue was enthusiastic to get her lover back in her bed, even if Yun Che was acting a bit dull since one of his apparently prospective harem members had slipped out of his grip.

[Do you have any more Purple Veined Divine Crystal?] A surprising voice asked Carl.

Carl was quite surprise that the red headed ghost that always accompanied Yun Che was speaking to him. She was giving Carl a very penetrating look. Carl stiffened his spine. It wasn't like she could rob him of the crystal, even if she killed him. If a Sovereign Profound Realm cultivator had something in their pocket dimension space, even if they died it wouldn't pop out like loot. It would be lost in the ether. Which was how Yun Canghai had kept the Demon Emperor's Seal safe even though he was held captive for over a hundred years.

[Why, I just might. But I'm afraid it's only for friends.] Carl commented idly to the redheaded ghost who could apparently linger away from Yun Che.

Carl followed the remaining people as they filed into a banquet hall and sat down to food and the chance to get to know each other.

[What do you want in return?] She eventually asked after some time thinking.

[Sorry, but even if I was so inclined to negotiate with a ghost to see just what she could offer me, I'm afraid the crystal is for friends only.] Carl smirked at the ghost, who just gritted her teeth at being forced to be…nice, to someone so far beneath her.

[Fine. My name is Jasmine. Can we be friends?] The redheaded ghost, Jasmine, sarcastically said.

[Sure, why not. How much do you need?] Carl responded, which caused Jasmine to blank out a bit, surprised that Carl gave in just like that.

[What, just like that?] Jasmine asked, dumbfounded at his gullibility.

Carl shrugged in response. [I've got a good feeling about you. You seem like a decent sort. Besides, if you can hang around the idiot for so long and not kill him, I figure I'll be safe as long as I behave myself.]

Jasmine snorted in amusement.

[So, how much, where, and when do you want it?] Jasmine glared at Carl. [The crystal.] Carl clarified, only then realizing how much of an innuendo what he said was. [How much of the crystal do you need, where and when do you want me to deliver the crystal?] Carl exaggeratedly explained.

Jasmine actually blushed a bit at her making a big deal out of the innuendo. And if Carl heard her mutter [I've been hanging around the idiot too long] to herself, he kept it to himself.

[35 kilograms. You can just pass it to me now.] Jasmine finally answered Carl.

[Done.] Carl passed her the requested amount. [Good luck with whatever you're using it for.] Carl commented before turning back to the feast and joining the conversation.

While most people would think that him just giving Jasmine the crystal without strings was a loss, he felt it was similar to bribing officials for good relations. She was a powerful cultivator that had apparently run into problems, so helping her out in her time of need was sure to get him good will. He didn't really want to be her enemy, so being her friend was much better.

Out of the corner of his eye, Carl could see that Jasmine lingered for a moment, surprise on her face that Carl actually didn't try to press his advantage or ask for anything. She eventually came back to herself and disappeared to where ever red headed ghosts hang out.

Carl settled down at the impromptu feast that the Blue Wind people had put on, chatting with the new group of people that would likely become the Empire's trading partners on the continent, or something along those lines. Friends of some kind through their links to the Yun Family.

* * *

[AN: First off, in the last chapter's comments I'm happy to see some people really enjoy seeing Yun Che taken down a peg. It was a great pleasure for me to write it. I'm trying not to bash Yun Che too much. But he's just such a stubborn character with so much wrong in his head, it's hard not to.

And yes, I know that the perks are supposed to magically work based off of jump chain fiat, but some people (protagonists) just have so much stubbornness that they need special attention for the decency to be induced. So, Carl has resorted to slaps to the back of Yun Che's head. Maybe the lesson will stick one of these days? Hehe.

For those of you who don't like the cultivation world of ATG, the good news is there's only one more chapter left in the world.

Someone asked why Carl didn't take the Poison Pearl from Yun Che, and there are two answers. The first is because he didn't want to anger the powerful ghostly Jasmine who seemed protective of Yun Che.

I know some people don't like that Carl has had to be cautious of the Golden Crow and now Jasmine, but the reality is that, cultivation wise, he's still far below them. It isn't smart to be arrogant in front of someone that can kill you with a word. (Dune reference.) Don't know what to say beyond that. If someone still hates that Carl isn't the most powerful being around... Well, he's just not there yet. /shrug

His cultivation slowed down after he got to the Divine Origin Realm because the mortal world just doesn't have all that much energy for him to use. He would have to go up to a higher realm for an energy rich environment to keep his speedy cultivation up. But ultimately he's a jumper, Carl knows he'll leave the world soon. He doesn't have a guide to get to the world of the gods, and he doesn't have any knowledge of what's out there available for him to plunder, so why should he leave his wife and comfortable situation behind when he knows it may be years and years before he sees Caiyi again after leaving the world?

The second reason Carl didn't try to steal the Poison Pearl from Yun Che is cause he doesn't know anything about it. While I, the author, have read ATG up to just beyond the Illusory Demon Realm arc, Carl hasn't. The Poison Pearl is merged with Yun Che's hand, so Carl can't sense it.

And there is the real reason Carl doesn't go exploring the Gods realm. I haven't read anything about it. I'm not going go read hundreds of chapters of ATG just to add a few chapters here. I'd rather wrap it up and move Carl along to a different world.

I hope that answers some questions and concerns, and doesn't engender a whole bunch more. Thanks for reading and commenting, and I hope you continue to enjoy the story!]


	46. ATG 12

[AN: Sure, why not. Here's the next chapter early.]

* * *

Later that night after the banquet at with the Blue Wind Empire, Carl was talking with Caiyi over the mirror communicators and detailing how their trip was going, when he heard a knock on the door.

"Someone is here, honey. Let me see who it is." He left the mirror on so she could hear and see what was happening.

Carl opened the door and was surprised to see Fen Juechen standing there. "Hey, there Fen Juechen. What can I do for you?"

"Can we talk inside for a moment?" Fen Juechen gave Carl a significant look, as if to let him know that important matters would be discussed.

"Sure, come on in." Carl moved aside and grabbed some drinks to share with his guest. "So, what brings you by?" Carl asked after they had settled down.

The young man with a stern face sat still for a moment, trying to find the words. "As a 6th stage Sovereign Profound Realm, I can sense that you've broken through the bottle neck into a higher realm. Which means you are probably the strongest cultivator on the planet. There are a few things you need to be aware of if you stay on this continent for any length of time."

Carl could tell the young man was exceptionally serious, so he didn't try to crack any jokes to relieve the tension. And he wasn't going to reveal any information about his wife's cultivation being right up there with him. He simply nodded to indicate he was completely focused and listening.

"Over one thousand years ago, there were not four Sacred Grounds, there were five. The fifth Sacred Ground was the Eternal Night Royal Family." Fen Juechen was staring with unseeing eyes over Carl's shoulder as he revealed some secrets with a somber face, as if he was remembering the Eternal Night Royal Family's past glory, and their downfall in person.

"The current leader of the Mighty Heavenly Sword Region, Xuanyuan Wentian put out rumors that the Eternal Night Royal Family possessed a Sovereign Realm sword, the Heavenly Sin Divine Sword, and that whoever wielded that sword would be undefeatable. So Xuanyuan Wentian hatched a plan. He framed the Eternal Night Royal Family and instigated the four Sacred Grounds into attacking and destroying the Eternal Night Royal Family." Fen Juechen spat out with great hate for this Xuanyuan Wentian.

Carl rubbed his chin in thought. During Duke Ming's interrogation, he had admitted to contacting someone from the Mighty Heavenly Sword Region and told them that the Illusory Demon Royal Family had a supreme treasure called the Mirror of Samsara to instigate the man's greed. Together they hatched a plot to betray and kill the Illusory Demon Royal Family. It certainly seemed like the same modus operandi. Carl returned his attention to Fen Juechen as he continued telling his story.

"After Xuanyuan Wentian succeeded in destroying the Eternal Night Royal Family, the other three Sacred Grounds found out they had been duped. But in order to save face, they refused to publicly admit that they were fooled, or do anything against the Mighty Heavenly Sword Region, as that would be admitting that they were dupes." Fen Juechen snarled in anger at the cowardly Sacred Grounds who were more concerned with not exposing their stupidity than they were in righting wrongs.

"So why tell me this?" Carl asked. Why would someone give him such interesting intel so easily?

"From the talk from your group, I gathered that you were from the Illusory Demon Realm. Because of where you are from, the Sacred Grounds, especially the Mighty Heavenly Sword Region, will want to attack you. Xuanyuan Wentian is a greedy and jealous man. He will do anything and everything in his power to drive the entire continent to become your enemy when he finds out you are here."

"And since your company hasn't worried about keeping certain things secret, it's only a matter of time before he finds out you are here and attacks." Fen Juechen baldly stated. "And since you will oppose my enemy, I find it benefits me to warn you of the man so you can prepare. If you can help me kill him, my quest for revenge would be completed. Even if I didn't deliver the killing blow myself."

Carl looked over the man for a moment. "You are descended from the Eternal Night Royal Family, aren't you?"

Fen Juechen nodded soberly. "I am."

"Then it seems we have an enemy in common. Happy cooperation in seeking his death!" Carl faintly smiled as he raised his wine cup in toast.

Fen Juechen gave a twisted smile of grim amusement as he too raised his cup.

"Tell me more about the Sacred Grounds, especially this Xuanyuan Wentian." Carl asked. If they were to be enemies, he needed all the information he could.

Fen Juechen spoke at length about what he knew of the four remaining Sacred Grounds, their methods and their strengths. After imparting all he knew, he finished off the cup he was drinking, and departed from Carl's room.

Carl then picked back up the mirror. "What do you think, love?" Carl asked Caiyi who had been listening to the whole thing.

"I think that when that man shows up, you will call for me so I can kill him personally." She stated plainly while looking into the distance, remembering her family that was killed and plotted against by this bastard Xuanyuan Wentian.

"You have the portkey that will take you to me. I'll alert you by mirror when he shows up so you can come and take care of him." Carl promised. Caiyi bestowed a loving smile on Carl.

"Good. Tell me more about Feng Ra's new bride and the look on Yun Che's face." Caiyi then changed the topic, trying to regain some of the good mood from earlier.

Carl laughed in remembrance. "Oh, it was so good and satisfying. He was so stumped that his charms weren't working, sort of like when you would give him the cold shoulder. I could barely keep myself from laughing…"

* * *

The next day Carl found received word that the Divine Phoenix Empire pulled back to their borders, except for a diplomatic detachment. They had gotten more crystal from Carl than they had hoped for when they instigated the war, so they could return back home without being a disgrace, and they wouldn't have to tangle with the strong cultivators that were Carl, Number One Under Heaven, Xiao Yun, Seventh Sister, and Fen Juechen.

Before they left Carl passed along more resources and some mirror communication devices to Feng Ra, with the promise to stay in touch. Now that Feng Ra had a human form and wasn't his familiar, Carl was pretty sure he wouldn't continue joining him on the jumps. They both knew this fact without saying it.

But Carl was incredibly happy for Feng Ra to have found a place to belong. And in the future, when Carl finally made his way back to this world, he would see if Feng Ra and his bride Feng Xue'er wanted to join Carl on the adventures.

Later that day a very large young man named Xia Yuanba showed up at the Palace. Xia Yuanba was Yun Che's brother in law from his first marriage to Xia Qingyue. He was nearly eight feet tall and built like Brolly in his Legendary Super Saiyan form. His muscles had muscles. He was at the Sovereign Profound Realm, and had the Tyrannical Emperor's Divine Veins, so he was a powerhouse. He was also the disciple of one of the leaders of the Absolute Monarch Sanctuary, one of the four Sacred Grounds.

Carl was impressed at the young man's sheer size, but amused that Yun Che seemed to have gotten a second wind and started strutting a bit more now that he supposedly had back up. Carl didn't care one bit for Yun Che's new attitude and offered to arm wrestle the big guy, if only to show Yun Che that he shouldn't get a big head.

While Xia Yuanba had impressive strength, and made Carl's six foot height look small, he still wasn't as strong as Carl was. After a few minutes of Xia Yuanba straining, Carl almost casually pushed his arm down while looking at Yun Che and smiling the whole time.

After winning, Carl got up, brushed off his clothes, and strolled away, muttering, "Mountains beyond the mountains. Always one bigger."

A bit later in the day Carl sought out Xia Yuanba to have a serious discussion.

"Hey there, big guy. Thanks for coming to talk to me." Carl frowned a bit on the inside though when he saw the angry way that Xia Yuanba was looking at him.

"Just because you're strong doesn't mean you can bully my brother-in-law." Xia Yuanba angrily retorted without any preamble.

Carl sighed in exasperation. Apparently Yun Che had been prepping him with exaggerated stories about what Carl had done to him, to try to get allies to beat Carl's influence.

"Xia Yuanba, I think we've gotten off on the wrong foot here. Let me tell you about my interactions with Yun Che. Once you've heard my side of the story, I'll let you judge if I'm in the wrong here." Carl then began regaling Xia Yuanba about how he had befriended and healed Yun Che's biological family long before meeting Yun Che.

He detailed how he had met his wife, the Demon Empress of the Illusory Demon Realm, and how they had gotten to know each other. He left out a lot of details, like their meeting with the Golden Crow and what they gained. Xia Yuanba didn't need to know those details, and Carl didn't trust Xia Yuanba not to blurt out secrets to Yun Che or his master at a later date.

In a way, Xia Yuanba reminded him of a cultivation version of Hagrid. He was open, trusting, and generous with his loved ones, with not a duplicitous bone in his body. He couldn't lie to save his life. So Carl wasn't going to be trusting him with any of his secrets.

He didn't believe that Yun Che wouldn't try to go and break into the location of the Golden Crow Spirit while trying to gain some more power. He just seemed like the type.

Carl then explained how Yun Che had crashed his wife's 100 year ceremony and made a big fuss when he could have just come to them to make arrangements to honor his grandfather. And that they had a huge funeral to honor him anyway, despite the way that Yun Che had insulted his wife.

He then told Xia Yuanba about all the times that Yun Che had been trying to flirt and tempt his wife in front of him.

"You tell me, Xia Yuanba. If someone was flirting with your woman in front of you, what would you do?"

"I'd break him in half." Xia Yuanba growled, only to realize that the person in question was his good brother in law. He paused, looking awkwardly at Carl, trying to figure out how to excuse Yun Che from what he had just declared.

Carl patted him on his enormous shoulder in commiseration. "Yeah, I wanted to do that to him too. But I can't because he's the family of my friends. So I can only settle for a slap on the back of his head when he goes too far to let him know to back off. Besides, from what I hear he's already got several wives, including your sister. I think he should be focusing on making them happy, rather than adding to his harem." Carl reasoned with Xia Yuanba.

"Yeah, you're right. Sister Qingyue deserves to be happy." Xia Yuanba nodded in agreement, thinking of his sister that didn't seem to have smiled in so long, always so serious and ice cold.

Carl finished by telling him some stories of Feng Ra, Carl's blood brother, who had a fiancé that Yun Che had been hitting on just recently in front of his own wife. Carl explained how Cang Yue hadn't seen Yun Che for over two years while thinking he was dead, and before they even got to have a reunion, Yun Che was flirting with another girl, someone else's fiancé, in front of his wife.

"So that's why I sometimes call Yun Che an idiot. I'm trying to teach him to be more considerate of his loved ones." Carl finished explaining.

Carl could see that Xia Yuanba was still somewhat conflicted. On the one hand he automatically wanted to take Yun Che's side who he grew up with. On the other, he could see that Carl didn't have any malicious motives for chastising Yun Che. He was doing it for his own good.

Eventually Xia Yuanba decided that, in this instance, Yun Che would have to figure out things on his own. He wasn't really being bullied, so Xia Yuanba didn't have anyone to smash.

Once thatissue was resolved in Xia Yuanba's mind, Carl spent some time with the big man, chatting about various things. Carl made sure to have Xia Yuanba send a message to his master at the Absolute Monarch Sanctuary about how he should not answer the call to arms from Xuanyuan Wentian if it came.

Since Carl was strong enough to destroy the Sacred Grounds, he had hope that they would be smart and avoid him when he proved more than strong enough to take them on. Due to the drawback, he knew they would always want to destroy him, but the wording of the drawback said that "…they won't commit to you so extremely that their existence could be threatened…". So they could at least use their reasoning to avoid him.

Maybe that's another reason Xia Yuanba felt some amount of conflict with Carl, yet didn't act on it? Because he was also a member of the Absolute Monarch Sanctuary, he was probably also influenced by the drawback.

Carl shrugged. After the ten years was over, the drawback should be ended too, so when he came back to the world in the future that instinctive hatred should also be gone.

The group stayed at the Blue Wind Empire's capital for another day before leaving. Cang Yue needed the time to pack and make arrangements for the Empire in her absence. She wasn't going to be left behind again while her husband wandered off. Her father had plans to have more sons to try to produce a decent heir, so Cang Yue was free to pursue her own happiness.

So once everyone was gathered, Carl pulled out his Ark again and after everyone was boarded, they set off for the Frozen Cloud Asgard sect, where Yun Che's first wife and Xia Yuanba's sister was studying.

When they arrived in front of the sect, they found that it was being besieged by two Tyrant Profound Realm cultivators and handfuls of Emperor Profound Realm cultivators from the Sun Moon Divine Hall, one of the four Sacred Grounds. Carl sighed while looking over at Yun Che.

"Damn, you must have a curse to live in interesting times, Yun Che. That's two of your wives finding themselves in dire situations when you left them behind. You should start bringing your women with you so at least you can be there to do something about it when the curse strikes." Carl muttered to Yun Che while some of the other members of their group chuckled at Carl's words.

Carl didn't bother to intervene when Yun Che and Xia Yuanba slaughtered the group, since the action was necessary. Although he did intervene when he saw that Yun Che wanted to let one of them go to carry a warning to the Sun Moon Divine Hall. Carl killed off the cultivator that Yun Che wanted to use as a messenger.

"Idiot." Carl called out to Yun Che. "If you want to send a message to your enemies, then wait until you've set up a trap for them to jump into before sending them a message to get them to jump in. Don't just randomly send back a survivor. He's got intel about just how strong you are so your enemies would be able to prepare better."

Yun Che scowled at Carl angrily, although Carl did have a point. All that time back at the Illusory Demon Realm Yun Che had been trying to get Carl to act jealously to paint him in a bad light to Caiyi, and Carl hadn't reacted. Now that Carl was not holding back and calling out his stupid decisions, he really didn't like that it painted him in a negative light in front of his women.

Carl scoffed inside when he saw that attitude of Yun Che's. 'He should have thought about it before being such an ass to me. Never thought Karma would strike so swiftly, right Yun Che?'

Carl didn't even bother to listen to Yun Che's justifications, he just moved on and entered the Frozen Cloud Asgard Sect Grounds after they saw he as there with Yun Che, who had apparently become one of their disciples in the past, despite being an all female cultivation sect.

Carl didn't even bother asking why. Yun Che's identity as the world's protagonist was explanation enough, in Carl's mind. Weird things always happened to protagonists.

After talking with the people of the sect, Carl found out that their sect master, Feng Qianhui, was injured fatally and was on the edge of dying. Carl got to her in time and began healing her with a combination of his profound energy and magical techniques. After she pulled through, Carl found that another higher up, Gong Yuxian, had also been seriously injured and would have died without help. Yun Che was just finishing treating her wounds, and she would pull though.

"Good job there idiot. You've got some good medical skills." Carl complimented Yun Che. No one could claim that Carl didn't give credit where credit was due.

"Of course! My master was a medical Saint." Yun Che bragged.

Carl nodded. "I wouldn't mind comparing notes sometime, or even meeting your master." Yun Che smiled proudly at the compliments. Carl internally rolled his eyes at the man.

After everyone was healed and the group was gathered in the banquet hall for a feast in celebration, Carl finally got some answers about why they were being besieged. Ye Xinghan, the leader of the Sum Moon Divine Hall, had gotten word that Xia Qingyue had a special body type, the Nine Profound Exquisite Body, and wanted to use her as a cauldron, which was basically a sex slave that would let him plunder her profound energy to enhance his own cultivation.

They had just about been ready to use a teleportation array to send away Xia Qingyue to safety. Even though the sect would die from the Sun Moon Divine Hall's retaliation, they hoped that Xia Qingyue would be able to gain revenge for them at some point in the future. Luckily Carl had brought help just in time.

Carl was amused to see Yun Che's two wives together for the first time, and with Xiao Lingxi also in the mix trying to get and keep Yun Che's attention, Yun Che had a bit of a chaotic time of it trying to keep all three of them happy.

Carl spent the time during the banquet talking with the Sect leader and the higher ups trying to get a decent grasp on the political landscape of the Profound Sky Continent, as well as the actual landscape, namely the geography. He was hatching an idea of how to solve several problems at the same time and get some revenge on the enemies of the Illusory Demon Realm.

While talking with the Frozen Cloud Asgard Sect leader about the locations and attitudes of the Four Sacred Grounds, Carl learned that the Supreme Ocean Palace, the last of the Four Sacred Grounds, was very hands off on the continent. They were situated 1,500 km south of the Profound Sky continent and rarely interacted with everyone else.

Apparently their main duty was to watch over the Moon Slaughter Devil Nest, which was a deadly ground that was filled with evil Yin energy. Carl could see that Jasmine, the red headed ghost, was very interested in that information. Carl filed that information away for later, in case it ever became relevant.

Later that night in his room, Carl created a portkey that would bring him back to his room at the Frozen Cloud Asgard, and took a different one back to his and Caiyi's rooms. It had been several days since he had been with her. He missed her presence.

Carl brought Caiyi with him into the Heavenly Time Pearl for their reunion. After they exercised for a full night and had their reunion, Carl brought out the pensieve and showed her his memories of all that he'd learned. The two then put their heads together on how to set up an ambush to gain their revenge on those who had killed Caiyi's father and brother and harassed the Illusory Demon Realm for so long.

A couple weeks inside the pearl was almost no time in the outside world, and so Carl had taken the portkey back to his room in the Frozen Cloud Asgard sect before anyone even knew he was gone. In the morning he had some plans to set in motion.

* * *

Several days later, on the grounds in front of the Frozen Cloud Asgard stood Carl, Number One Under Heaven, Fen Juechen, Xia Yuanba, and Yun Che. The rest of his group and the Frozen Cloud Asgard members were holed up inside the sect, shoring up the defenses.

Carl had engineered certain messages about "treasures" to be leaked to the Sun Moon Divine Hall and the Mighty Heavenly Sword Region. His reward ability that he gained from the completion of the scenario in the Harry Potter world insured that the word would be spread.

So Carl wasn't surprised when forces for both the Sun Moon Divine Hall, with Ye Xinghan at their head, and Mighty Heavenly Sword Region, with Xuanyuan Wentian at their head, showed up.

Carl calmly looked over the results of his information sowing. Carl had made sure that Xia Yuanba sent a message to his master to not bring his forces from the Absolute Monarch Sangtuary to the shindig. He wanted someone that was at least somewhat neutral to him and the Illusory Demon Realm to be in a position of strength after this fight.

But if they still continued to harass him, or went after Feng Ra's Divine Phoenix Empire, then Carl wasn't averse to retaliating against them.

The numerous forces of cultivators arrayed in front of Carl's group came to a halt. The two leaders were eyeing each other in consternation, figuring that each other would be their biggest competition with getting the rumored "treasure". Carl chuckled to himself to see their posturing. The fools didn't even know the trap they had stepped into.

Carl looked down at the communication mirror whose link was open to Caiyi, Carl smiled at his wife. "They are in the target area, eyeing each other up. They are ready to be reaped." Carl then activated the arrays he had set out, which could only temporarily paralyze those inside the confines, as well as keep them from utilizing escape techniques. "Now." He gave the signal to Caiyi.

Caiyi didn't waste any time. Their own army portkeyed in. Carl had set up the paralysis array, which was very temporary, to make sure their troops had time to orient themselves after portkeying in before battle would be joined. The Illusory Demon Realm troops then fell on their enemies with a vengeance. Caiyi didn't waste any time either and attacked Xuanyuan Wentian.

Carl attacked Ye Xinghan with everything he had. From the Yun couple he had learned that the people of the Sun Moon Divine Hall liked to use cold poison, so Carl didn't waste any time and used his hottest flames to burn the guy to ashes in only a few seconds. It was very anticlimactic, but that's what happened when a cultivator at the Divine Origin Realm fought one at the Sovereign Realm.

Yun Qinghong had been a little disappointed that he couldn't end the man himself for what he did so many years ago, but at least he got to go on a killing spree now of the men from the Sun Moon Divine Hall.

Carl, though, kept one eye on Caiyi's battle with Xuanyuan Wentian while occasionally helping their forces out against the two Sacred Grounds that were on the battlefield.

Caiyi was wielding her flames expertly with great skill and precision. But she was toying with the man, picking him apart a bit at a time, making him desperate. Carl kept close in case he had any trump cards. Villains like him always had trump cards.

When it looked like Xuanyuan Wentian was about to lose his life against Caiyi's flames, he suddenly yelled, and turned into some weird black gas that flowed across the battlefield and seeped into Fen Juechen's body.

"Great, we've got a Voldemort wannabe here." Carl muttered, already pulling up his magic to cast some exorcism spells on the bastard. In a flash of flame wings, Carl was next to Fen Juechen and cast the spells.

The black smog poured right back out of Fen Juechen and solidified into Xuanyuan Wentian again. Carl almost casually lopped off the man's hands while he was still disoriented from the abrupt exit from Fen Juechen.

Caiyi flew over, and saw that Carl had Xuanyuan Wentian under control. Carl placed some profound energy blocks on the man so he couldn't try anymore escapes and handed the prisoner off to Caiyi with a smile.

"You get me the best gifts." Caiyi called sweetly to Carl.

"Anything for you, love." Carl replied.

Carl first checked on Fen Juechen, and saw he was doing fine. He then turned to see how their forces were doing and help where he could. It only took another 20 minutes until the last of the enemy were killed, subdued, or surrendered. Carl then went among his men and started healing any injuries they sustained.

Once the battlefield had been organized, Carl, Caiyi, and the leaders of the Guardian Families and Duke Palaces that came to the battle spent some time interrogating Xuanyuan Wentian. The man was a greedy piece of work all right. The number of people he had killed or discredited in order to ascend to his level of leadership was astounding. The man was not particularly talented in his youth, but there were no lows he wouldn't stoop to in order to gain cultivation resources. No one he wouldn't sacrifice or betray in order to gain just a little bit of advantage.

Everyone felt vaguely dirty after hearing of all his deeds. So Caiyi executed the man with little fanfare. The satisfaction of imprisoning him and torturing him wasn't worth the chance he may escape and cause problems in the future, and at least this way Caiyi got her revenge against one of the men who killed her family.

After everything was organized, Caiyi brought her troops via portkey back to the Illusory Demon Realm while Carl would handle the final arrangements. He completely ignored any questions from people about how the troops had arrived.

Yun Che decided to help out the Frozen Cloud Asgard and left plenty of pills that he concocted for the Frozen Cloud Asgard members to help them get stronger so they wouldn't get bullied.

Carl was somewhat interested in just how Yun Che was able to create complex cultivation pills in a snap. He remembered back to the jump documents description of the Heavenly Poison Pearl, and how it could perfectly refine and concoct any pills or elixirs instantly. He had the suspicion that Yun Che had the Heavenly Poison Pearl, but ultimately decided he would leave it be. Killing allies for treasures, no matter how annoying the ally was, wasn't Carl's modus operandi.

Besides, with how Yun Che hooked up the Frozen Cloud Asgard, it showed he wasn't all bad. So it wasn't like Yun Che deserved to die.

Carl also passed out some communication jades so that the ladies of Frozen Cloud Asgard could keep in touch with Xia Qingyue, who would be joining her husband and family back in the Illusory Demon Realm.

As repayment for Carl's help in protecting them, the Frozen Cloud Asgard allowed Carl to look over their ice cultivation methods and techniques. He had already had a pretty decent idea of how the techniques were utilized, based on watching Yun Che use them back in their duel. But seeing the actual text of the method helped Carl immensely and shortened the time he needed to learn how to utilize the ice techniques himself.

Once the battle was over, Xia Yuanba was planning on leaving to join back up with his master to continue getting stronger. Carl beating him in the arm wrestling contest had lit a fire under him to work hard to get stronger. Xia Yuanba had also decided that he liked being in charge of himself and his own group. So he would be taking over the Absolute Monarch Sanctuary soon enough.

Fen Juechen decided to stay and try to rebuild his Eternal Night Royal Family. He had seen that he wouldn't be getting anywhere with Xiao Lingxi because the girl was hung up on Yun Che. So while he remained a sworn brother to her, he left to find his own path in life. Carl made sure he got a communication jade in case he ran into anything interesting or needed help. His information on Xuanyuan Wentian had come at just the right time for Carl to set things up and avoid future troubles.

Right before they were about to leave, Carl finally found out about another woman of Yun Che's that no one knew where she was. Chu Yuechan's sister, Chu Yueli, was really worried about her. The two sisters were part of the Frozen Cloud Asgard sect. But Chu Yuechan had been kicked out for having relations with a man, getting pregnant, and refusing to abort the baby.

'Damn, Yun Che. Can you not keep track of your women? Does the world plot only want you to remember to worry about them at certain key times? Will we get back home in the Illusory Demon Realm and three months later I'll find out you've got yet another woman out there that I'll have to help you save?' Carl scoffed in his mind at the idiot.

Since Carl didn't want to faff about, he simply used the point me spell along with some of Chu Yueli's blood to find the woman. It took only took a few minutes of flight by Carl's Ark, but they found a lonely and remote cabin in the icy fields of the North.

And that's how Yun Che met his 2 year old daughter for the first time. Yun Wuxin was a really cute little kid, Carl had to admit.

But when Yun Che reunited with Chu Yuechan and blurted out that he'd always been looking for her, Carl had to bite his tongue from saying anything to ruin the idiot's reunion with another woman of his. 'What "always been looking for you"?' Carl thought mockingly. 'You haven't been doing jack squat. And you make it sound like it was you, and not my spells, that found her. Whatever, that's a protagonist for you.' Carl found himself surprised his eyes didn't roll right out of his head.

Finally everyone was together, all the reunions over, and so Carl took everyone back to the Illusory Demon Realm via his Ark. Carl happily settled back into the palace with his wife.

Yun Che had a couple more weddings soon after, at the insistence of his mother. He added Xiao Lingxi and Chu Yuechan to his family. Chu Yuechan's sister Chu Yueli had come with them, since she didn't want to be separated from her sister anymore. She settled in with the Yun Family, and became a very interesting topic for the young men of the Empire to pursuit.

Carl was quite happy to make sure that the many women of Yun Che got all the cultivation resources they needed, that their 54 profound entrances were opened so they could match Yun Che's cultivation speed, and that they were on their way to becoming powerful enough to hopefully rein him in a bit.

At the very least with his wives present Yun Che stopped coming by and bothering Caiyi all the time, which meant that he wasn't bothering Carl either. Thankfully.

After a couple of months, Carl got notice from Feng Ra about his marriage, so Carl and Caiyi and quite a large group of people from Duke's palaces, to Guardian families also attended the celebration, gifting the newly wed couple plenty of nice things.

Carl laughed and laughed when he saw Yun Che's hang dog expression at Feng Xue'er marrying someone else. It cracked him up that his pewter dog turned Phoenix familiar was the one to steal a woman away from Yun Che.

'Of course I probably did in the end too.' Carl thought in satisfaction. 'If the way Yun Che was panting after Caiyi was any indication, then the world plot probably wanted to hook the two up. Stupid world plot!'

Another month after returning home from the wedding of Feng Ra, Yun Che came to Carl with the request to ferry him to a couple places. The first place was the Moon Slaughter Devil's Nest that Carl had noted that Jasmine was interested in earlier. Apparently Jasmine needed a Netherworld Udumbara Flower for whatever reason, and it was most likely growing in a place of great yin concentration.

Over the past several months Yun Che had slowly been turning more tolerable due to the constant influence of his family and wives. Now that Yun Che wasn't running around everywhere like a wild wolf and getting in fights left and right, and he was actually being respected by the people around him, he was actually beginning to lance that anger boil deep inside him.

So Carl wasn't as against helping Yun Che as he was before. Besides, the favor was for Jasmine, not Yun Che.

So he accompanied Yun Che and Jasmine to the Moon Slaughter Devil Nest where they hunted down a flower that only bloomed every 24 years. It just happened to be blooming right then. Carl rolled his eyes at the way the world plot worked. Of course they just happened to run across something at just the right time.

'Don't really know why I bother being sarcastic about the workings of the world plot anymore.' Carl chuckled to himself. 'That's just the way it is.'

Carl listened to Jasmine telling Yun Che about the soul attacks they were feeling from the evil Yin rich grounds, and how it was only because of the Dragon God and Phoenix Legacies that he could withstand it. Carl realized that Jasmine was saying it for his benefit too, and simply went with the flow. Jasmine then retreated into some space to protect herself when the Evil Yin became too damaging for a ghost like her.

Carl almost laughed out loud when some strong Sovereign Profound Realm Devil jumped out and bragged about how he used to be a Devil God and would return to his peak once more. Carl didn't even wait to hear what his dastardly plan was and just summoned up his Yang rich Golden Crow flames and burnt the bugger to ashes in only a few minutes.

While Yun Che was struggling to get closer to the Netherworld Udumbara Flower, Carl noticed a small black marble sized bead on the ground where he had burnt up the devil. Carl picked it up and whistled at the luck in having found another Evil God Seed. He realized that if he hadn't come along, Yun Che would have gotten the seed. Smiling quite contentedly, he put it away for later and looked at Yun Che's struggles.

Carl sighed and helped Yun Che collect the flower for Jasmine. Yun Che passed out from the stress on his soul. Carl had been just fine because he was a much higher realm than Yun Che. Levitating Yun Che's unconscious body behind him, Carl brought them back outside and returned to the Illusory Demon Realm.

After examining Yun Che, Carl determined he would be fine and just needed some rest to recover from the ordeal. He delivered Yun Che to his wives with an explanation of how he needed rest so they could take care of him and sit on him.

Carl naturally returned to his wife's palace to continue his daily routine. He was really enjoying his life. He gets to cultivate and train, play with cool toys, and spend intimate time with his hot wife. It really was good to be a jumper.

Carl was a little surprised to see Jasmine a few days later show up. She apparently was no longer a spirit, she was a real girl, with a body and everything. Carl congratulated her on getting her body back.

Jasmine still acted all snooty and passed a few treasures to Carl, trying to balance the books so she didn't owe him. Carl shrugged nonchalantly and thanked her for the gifts. She soon departed to do whatever spirits do when they get a body back. Carl couldn't be bothered to ask. It wasn't like they were BFFs or anything.

Just like clockwork, three months later Yun Che was back with another request to pick up one of his women from another continent. 'Just how does he do that? How did he even get to the Azure Cloud Continent?' Carl wondered.

After talking to Caiyi about the issue, she declared to Yun Che that this was the last time Yun Che gets to pull that kind of thing without planning beforehand. Car naturally agreed with her, he wasn't an idiot to argue with his wife for Yun Che's sake.

So Carl carted the two of them in his Ark and went to track down another of Yun Che's women in a different continent.

It seems they got there just in time, since Su Ling'er was being chased for some treasure of her clan. They saved her and killed her attackers. Yun Che, as usual, took all the credit for finding and saving her. Carl had seen Yun Che do it before, so he just snorted a bit in ridicule but let it go. Why would he care, he wasn't looking to gain favor with Su Ling'er?

'Why am I being a chauffeur again? Oh, yeah. I like the Yun couple and Xiao Yun and I don't want to deal with them acting like kicked puppies if I didn't help expand their family with Yun Che's Waifus.' Carl sighed. 'That's what happens when one gets domesticated. They have to make their friends and family happy. Although, it is certainly working to make Yun Che a bit more tolerable to be around. His women take up most of his time, so he doesn't have much extra time to be annoying.' Carl finished with a smile. Overall it was a win.

And since Caiyi put her foot down, even the Yun couple couldn't prevail on their friendship to have Carl drive Yun Che around in order to borrow sugar from the neighbors. Or snatch more wives.

After saving Su Ling'er and her father, they went and found Yun Che's medical Saint master, Yun Gu, and saved him just in time too from an encirclement of cultivators. Carl wasn't even surprised at the world plot for setting up situations like that anymore. He just went along with it.

With their task finally finished, Carl returned to the Illusory Demon Realm, and settled down to enjoy the next two years of time in that world. Especially now that Caiyi had firmly set her foot down on giving Yun Che rides whenever he asked, Carl could insincerely tell Yun Che that it was out of his hands. And Yun Che couldn't get his family to emotionally blackmail Carl into helping the dude. A Demon Empress' commands always trumped Carl's friend's pleading.

Yup, life was now truly enjoyable for the husband of the Demon Empress.

* * *

[AN: One of the reasons I found writing this last section so amusing is that you rarely see these big bad MCs acting domestic. Yes, they are a holy terror to their enemies. But they are people too. They want their family to be happy. They occasionally get sent to get milk by their significant others on a Friday night.

Funny story, one Sunday evening years ago I was in a Safeway in Monterrey Bay, and I saw, no shit, Clint Eastwood there with a grocery list. He looked a bit frazzled, poor guy. And even though he was a big shot director and actor, made tons of money and all that, there he was, grocery shopping on a Sunday night for his family. I thought it was cool. Very human. "They put their pants on one leg at a time too" kind of sentiment.

So here is Carl, like any other person despite being super powered and jumping from world to world. The powerful MCs still have to go to family reunions and put up with Uncle Bob's weirdness, or their cousin's strange obsessions with frogs, and other such stuff. But, hey. _Family._

So while Carl complains about some of the stuff on the surface, inside I imagine he really enjoys the time he spends this way. Since he knows he's gonna keep jumping. So a bit of domesticity isn't going to hurt his self image or make him any less of a genuine bad ass.]


	47. Stargate 01

Carl snapped back to awareness, suffering from a momentary bout of confusion. Where was he again? The feel of a comfortable mattress under his back and the smells he associated with his Warehouse were enough of a clue for his brain to snap back to awareness. He had just finished the ATG jump and was back in the Warehouse between worlds.

The past two years had been good years for Carl. It had been a while since he felt such stability in his life, thanks in great part to the time dilation of the Heavenly Time Pearl extending the amount of time he could spend in the world. He and Caiyi had occasionally spent years in the Pearl, training and studying together. Just enjoying what time they had left before he moved on.

Carl had been quite surprised when he ate the Evil God Seed he got from killing the Devil guarding the Netherworld Udumbara Flower. He had thought here were only five flavors, er…elements, that the seeds came in. But the one he got had been for the Darkness element. Which made him wonder what other elements there were seeds for. Light? Space? Time? Since Carl had no way of knowing, he put the idea away for the time being.

Carl had already had a minor affinity for Shadows from his animagus form. But the upgrade to full on Darkness element affinity had made some changes in him, especially when he took on his animagus form. He had felt even more comfortable traveling through the shadows, and had the sense that he could control the very darkness around him.

Carl had spent some time playing around with the element, trying to learn as much as he could. But since he didn't have any training guides, it was difficult to advance his understanding smoothly. He had to feel his way, never quite sure if he was doing things right, or if he was missing something that should be obvious.

With the Udumbara flower that they had gotten, Jasmine the ghost had been able to reconstitute her body. After congratulating her, Carl had been relieved that she had taken off to conduct her own business. Carl hadn't seen her for the rest of his time in the world, which made him happy. He wasn't completely comfortable around someone who had a much higher cultivation level than him. He was just glad she didn't make his life difficult.

One of the things that had especially made the final couple of years sweet for Carl was that every time Yun Che came to him to ask for a ride, Carl had easily refused him. The only reason he had been pressured into helping Yun Che gather his harem previously was because of his and Caiyi's connections with the Yun Family. Their pleadings for help hadn't been something that they could ignore, after their family's millennia of loyal service.

But once Yun Che's family was gathered, safe, and protected, they no longer had any reason to convince him to help Yun Che travel. So Carl didn't have to consider his relations with the Yun Family and could just answer how he wanted, with a flat no. He wasn't going to enable Yun Che's wander lust.

Chuckling once more at the memories of Yun Che's face when someone told him "no", Carl got up out of his bed and went through his normal routine after leaving a world. He first approached the terminal that Spere 037 had provided. Clicking through the options, he added the perks from the ATG world. There was no way he was going to forget to add everything he picked up in the ATG world to his base body.

The amount of power and ability he gained from that one Cultivation world was amazing to him. Carl hit the final accept button and passed out once more as the changes were made to his body.

After a period of unconsciousness, Carl woke once more. This time, he knew exactly where he was on waking up. Climbing out of bed, he did a bit of stretching and flexing, feeling the bone deep change in his body. At first when he added perks to his body mod, it hadn't felt any different. Before and after were pretty much the same.

But after all the time spent in the cultivation world he had recently expanded his awareness of his body even more. Especially with the profound cultivation and medical knowledge, he had expanded his body awareness. With his newfound body awareness from the last world's perks Carl was feeling much more aware of the deep changes that happened to his body when he used the terminal left behind by Spere 037.

It didn't change anything, really, about how his powers acted or felt. It was more of a sensation that after he added the perks to his body, the powers felt like they were more…interconnected with his body? A foundation sunk in so deep that nothing could shift it?

Carl wasn't sure of the right terminology to apply to his situation, but it just felt like the powers were more a permanent part of him than before. Like the powers couldn't be separated from him without tearing him apart.

Shrugging away the idle thoughts. Carl went through his usual routine, shower, dress, cook and eat breakfast, and enjoy a frosty mug of Root Beer.

Carl sat down on his couch and started a movie, but just couldn't get into watching it. It felt like a big piece of him was missing.

With the time dilation from the use of his Heavenly Time Pearl he had spent the past couple hundred years with Caiyi, and getting used to not having her next to him was…difficult. Even though it had only been a couple days since he left the world, her absence was noticeable.

Carl spent some time meditating, trying to settle his mind for the next world. He still felt restless and needed to do something to get his mind off things. Carl soon found himself standing in front of the terminal. He stared at the thing for a bit, before looking around his Warehouse.

Carl walked around his Warehouse, and didn't find anything to keep his attention. The setup and projects that he had sitting out were so connected to his time in the ATG world that it didn't help him get away from his restlessness. So he returned back to the jump terminal.

With a shrug to himself, he initiated an early jump just to get out of his warehouse and do something that could distract him. Why sit all alone in the Warehouse when he could get to his next world and find something to distract himself with?

"So, Stargate SG-1 huh." Carl commented with a glint in his eye. He had been wondering when he was going to get a sci-fi world. Ever since the SAO jump he had been thinking about learning more science and technology. The Harry Potter jump had given him the opportunity to learn some basic science and technology, and mix magic and technology, but the technology on that world was so limited.

"But now I'm being offered the biggest pie around." Carl smirked at the possibilities available in the SG1 world. "Aside from what the Earth itself will develop over the next ten years, there are all kinds of alien tech available. Goa'uld tech, Asgard tech, and a whole lot of the most advanced and biggest pie around, Ancient tech. Just sitting there for some enterprising jumper to take advantage of." Carl chuckled to himself in anticipation.

* * *

**Welcome to the world of Stargate! It's a big galaxy out there, so I hope you're keen for adventure!**

**There was a race of beings once called the Ancients. Beings who created advanced technology beyond anything ever seen, and the geniuses behind the eponymous Stargates. See, a Stargate is a nifty wormhole device that when you dial in a set of coordinates, it opens a spatial pathway that connect you to another world that could be hundreds of light-years away instantly. This technology along with other advances (such as the Zero-Point Module which collects energy from a pocket dimension) allowed them to not only colonize other worlds, but to also seed them with human life. At some point in their lives they learned to ascend to a higher plane of existence, but left all their technology behind.**

**Some time later, a race of parasitic life forms calling themselves the Goa'uld found some of the technology the Ancients left behind, and began to adapt it to their own purposes. Some of the technology they could not fully understand, but they managed to use enough that they were able to take most of the Milky Way Galaxy by force. The most powerful of these Goa'uld call themselves the System Lords, posing as the gods of the Egyptian religion in order to convince their armies to fight for them.**

**It is not as bad as it seems, however! The year is 1997, and the Earth has begun to fiddle with its very own Stargate in order to explore the galaxy in the name of Humanity. You will be placed somewhere during this time, ready to take charge of things. Be prepared, for it is a brand new world that is about to be unveiled.**

* * *

With his banked 50 cp in addition to what he got for this world, Carl had 1050 cp to spend. After his spending spree in the cultivation world of Against the Gods, Carl was looking to bank as many points as he could for future use.

At the same time he realized that if there was a perk that caught his eye, he shouldn't hold back. Because he just didn't know when, or even if, he would run into a duplicate of any useful perks. If he passed them up, he might never get the chance to get them.

Looking down the jump document, Carl saw that he had to decide his location first. As usual, Carl saw that he could either pay 50 cp to decide his starting location, or roll the dice for free to select his starting point.

1\. Earth

2\. Delmak

3\. Gaia

4\. Abydos

5\. Chulak

6\. Cimmeria

7\. P3X-888

8\. Free Pick

As Carl dredged his memories of the show, he went over the options available in the free roll. Earth was obvious, and didn't even need explanation.

Delmak was an industrialized world controlled by the Goa'uld Sokar. At the moment Sokar wasn't a System Lord, since he had been kicked out and was gathering his forces in order to have a rematch. Carl didn't particularly like the idea of starting on a Goa'uld world.

Gaia is the home world of the Nox. The Nox were a peaceful, anti-violence race that were very technologically advanced. While Carl thought they were good friends to have, he didn't want to drop in on them unannounced and hope they would help him. Especially because he was a person steeped in violence. It wouldn't be very neighborly to show up like that and expect things from them.

Abydos was the planet where the original movie of Stargate had taken place, where O'Neill, Jackson, and the military men had taken out Ra with a nuke beamed up to his space ship. While it had a stargate that Carl could use to travel around, there wasn't anything especially interesting that appealed to Carl about the world.

Chulak was another Goa'uld controlled world, under the rule of Apophis. It was Teal'c's home world. Similar to Delmak, Carl wasn't interested in starting there.

Cimmeria was a primitive world that had the protection of the Asgard alien race against the Goa'uld. The SG-1 team visited there in one of the episodes, but there was nothing in particular that Carl wanted to visit the world for.

P3X-888 was the home world of the alien race known as the Unas and the Goa'uld. The Unas were the first hosts of the Goa'uld, before they moved on to humans. Aside from the episodes where Daniel Jackson had a chance to shine by communicating with the primitive Unas, there wasn't much interesting in the world.

Normally Carl would just select the free roll and figure out what he was going to do from there, especially if he didn't know the world he was entering. But after looking at the choices of the roll, and that he only had a 1 in 8 chance of getting the Free Pick option, Carl decided he would pay the measly 50 cp to choose.

In this particular jump world, Carl had some very definite ideas of just what he was going to do. Which required a very specific starting location, or his plans would be much more difficult and take longer to get started.

Carl chose a world that would be hard for him to find on his own because he only knew the world from its designation in the television show: P3R-272. So for the low price of 50 cp, he set that world as his starting location. Carl was pleased that the jump document accepted that designation to describe the planet.

Next down the list was a choice of races. There were only two choices, Human 0 cp or Goa'uld 200 cp.

"Like that's even a choice?" Carl scoffed. "Why in the world would I want to be a parasitical little snake? I'm already 1% dragon due to the Dragon God's Bloodline. Changing into a little snake would be an insult at this point."

Carl shook his head and laughed for a moment at what he'd just blurted. "Okay, Carl. A little less murder hobo, and a little more rational human. Take it again from the top."

After thinking it out a bit, Carl began his little speech to himself again. "After all the powers, bloodlines, and legacies I've accumulated, becoming a little parasite adds nothing and detracts a great deal from what I'm building myself up as. I wouldn't even want to speculate what my Ki or Profound Cultivation would do with a little parasite body. Would my cultivation level give me a human form like it did for Feng Ra, or would I be stuck as a jumped up tape worm for ten years?"

"That was a bit better." Carl judged his speech before decisively picking Human for his race. "It is kind of strange that there are only the two choices, though. I know there are more aliens out there, why only the two choices?" Carl would forever have no answer to his question.

The next choice was a roll of the dice for his age. He rolled a six, so he would start as a 31 year old. "Well, that's certainly the oldest I've started one of these worlds as." Carl was fine with it. Unlike in cultivation worlds where you have to watch out for powerful monsters that have lived for thousands of years but look like they are only 13, in the SG1 universe he wouldn't be taken seriously if he looked 13.

Not that it would be a problem for long with his metamorphmagus abilities, or aging potions, or illusions, or any other way he had of disguising himself.

Carl then looked over the identities he could choose. **Drop In** 0 cp, **Special Ops** 100 cp, **Archaeologist** 100 cp, or **Commander** 100 cp.

Each of the identities had some pros and cons. **Special Ops** was right out because of one of the cons. "May not be the most understanding of alien technology."

Carl's focus for the SG1 world was going to be getting as much advanced knowledge and technology as possible. For his very identity to stand in the way of that pursuit, no matter how little, immediately put it on the reject pile.

The **Archaeologist** identity looked decent with one pro looking promising. "More likely to understand alien technology. How an Archaeologist knows is a mystery."

The **Commander** identity was also rejected. "Never alone; there's always someone by your side" and "When things goes wrong, you're the first to blame" were both aspects of the identity that Carl just didn't want to deal with.

After looking at the available perks, Carl decided to go as a **Drop In**. The intelligence boosting and technology handling perks that were discounted for that identity was exactly what he was looking for.

Carl started on the perks section, first adding the free perks to his purchase.

**[Round Telephone** 0 cp: The Stargate is a pretty important piece of technology, that much is certain. It's the name of the series, of COURSE it's important. You have knowledge on how to decipher its interface, and as such can use it to go from world to world.]

Besides chuckling at the perk's name calling the Stargates telephones, Carl wasn't sure why he needed a perk to decipher the interface. According to the show it was as easy as dialing a phone number. Carl shrugged, he would see when he arrived.

**[Unleash the Snark** 0 cp: All these aliens acting all hoity-toity…someone needs to take them down a peg. You always know what to say to be snarky at others, whether it be at a superior or a terrorist or an alien menace. They may have weapons and lasers, but the battle of wits belongs to you.]

"At first glance this perk will just help me with my banter." Carl mused. "But in order to be good at the snark, you have to know the salient points, or understand just what will most get under the person's skin. A very minor and narrowly focused gift of knowledge, maybe?"

**[Toxicology Reports **0 cp: That wasn't there before. For whatever reason your blood contains just a bit of Naquadah now. Not enough to drain yourself and siphon it, but enough to utilize and work the technology of the Goa'uld. As a bonus, this allows you to sense when other Goa'uld symbiotes are nearby.]

"Both good and bad points for this perk. Good for using the snake's tech and knowing when sneaky snakes might be hiding nearby. On the other hand, if I remember right, anyone who hosts a Goa'uld, or has hosted one in the past, would be able to feel the Naquadah in my blood. So I'm going to have to develop an array, spell, or bracelet ward to stop that resonance from being felt by other people. How will I be able to infiltrate SGC if Samantha Carter can feel my Naquadah from several feet away?"

Carl paused for a moment to think if that phrasing would have gotten him slapped if he had said it to a girl at a bar.

**[We Go Together **0 cp: Anyone in this world will tell you that you need allies. Whether it's teammates or minions, one person is nothing. You can import up to 8 companions for free as they gain human forms, along with skills in firefights and the use of various weapons. If human, you form the newly created 'SG-30' team, an exploration group meant to see new worlds. If Goa'uld, you choose to either be a minor Tok'ra resistance group or a new faction vying for the title of System Lord.]

Carl frowned at the perk. There was a drop box when he added the perk to his shopping cart to select among his companions, but the drop box was blank, since Carl didn't have any companions at the moment. Sighing, he moved on.

Carl was fully aware that at least part of his lack of companions was his due to his own stubbornness. He could have gotten at least one Stasis Pod and grabbed someone to join him already. But he had already made a plan and was determined to stick to it.

The next perk he selected was free for a** Drop In.**

**[Theoretical Astrophysicist **0 cp: If you don't get what that means, it means you're smarter than most people. You've got a good understanding of the physics of the universe, including the physical properties (luminosity, density, temperature, and chemical composition) of celestial object such as galaxies, stars, planets, exoplanetes, and the interstellar medium, as well as their interactions. That doesn't mean you have a solid grip on things, but it means you'll be quicker on the upkeep than most.]

"Aside from the vague and somewhat contradictory statement about not having a solid grip on things, the perk seems to boil down to a boost in intelligence and knowledge of Astrophysics. In a science heavy world, I will definitely take a free perk to boost my brain."

**[We MacGuyvered It, Sir** 150 cp: You tend to think outside the box. Like, a lot. Looking at different equipment and items you think of not what it was meant to do, but what it CAN do. That battery? Makes for a nice bomb. That phone? With a bit of frankensteining could make a quick scanner. On the field with little supplies, this comes in handy.]

From what Carl remembered of the history of the Ancients from the show, they fell into several traps in thinking that led to their downfall. Carl didn't know if it was because they just made so many rules that it hampered what they could do, or if they really were a bunch of idiot-savants. But that perk should help him figure out the best use of the tech he planned on learning, unlike the brilliant idiots that were the Ancients.

"Hell, even when the Ancients ascended to a higher plane they made a bunch of stupid mistakes and rules in overreaction to their Ori cousins. Can't interfere with the lower planes my ass." Carl muttered. "They sure didn't have a problem with leaving Anubis as half Ascended and having access to a multitude of knowledge and power that made him such a pain in the posterior. But they made sure to fully de-power Daniel Jackson like the hypocrites they were. They were so inconsistent in their enforcement of their own rules that they actually appeared very much like villains to me. Makes me want to bust a cap in their metaphysical asses."

Carl wasn't sure how his profound energy and magic would stack up against ascended beings. He wasn't in a particular hurry to find out either. But he felt some confidence that he wouldn't come off second best.

"But, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. Maybe the show just didn't put them in the best light. Maybe they've got _reasons_ for acting like they do? Who knows." Carl shrugged the topic away for later.

**[Remember The Time You Blew Up a Sun? **300 cp: Your intellect has been significantly increased, to the point where you know how to really get the most out of your technology…probably could have built a nuclear reactor in grade school. Crazy plans tend to succeed by virtue of how well you cover your bases, and whenever they work people KNOW it works. Expect to surprise people from just how off-the-wall your plans are…only to shock them when they work.]

"Ahh, another intelligence boost and probability (luck) inclined to favor me. What's not to like about that perk?" Carl gleefully grinned. "Well, that's it for perks." Carl then started looking over the Items. The free one was naturally added first.

**[FN P90 Submachine Gun **0 cp: A standard weapon for most humans as they explore the galaxy and the planets within it. It is a stable weapon for close-range skirmishes.]

"Well, aside from that one free item, I'm really not interested in anything else." Carl shook his head. "The only thing I'm tempted by is the Naquadah Stash. But that only gets me a small burlap sack's worth each month. I can get some samples of the metal in the world and then start having my Farms produce it at a much faster rate, so I don't think spending the CP is worth it. Anything else, I can just build myself once I get access to the advanced technology."

"Let's check out the Drawbacks to see if I can bank any extra points. Looks like it limits the drawbacks to only picking two drawbacks for a maximum of 600 cp." Carl mused as he read over the options. "Well, there are two enemies the drawbacks give me that I figure I can deal with." He finished with a feral smile.

**[Trust Issues** +200 cp: The corrupt NID, and later the group called 'The Trust' has found you're in the world. They will attempt to steal anything of yours they can in order to analyze it and adapt it to their use, and they don't exactly pay mind to such things as 'privacy'. They will do what they can with the government's resources to keep you in a position where they can try to take your possessions.]

"I'm not even going to be on Earth for a while, so the NID will be a nonissue at first. And when I do get around to visiting Earth, it's not like there is anything they could actually do to me. Bunch of normal humans versus a Grand Master Martial artist, a high level cultivator, or a wizard? Any one of those would be more than they could handle, let alone all three in one person. And that's without taking into account my plans to build up a technology base so I can actually do something on a galactic scale. So, free points."

**[System Lord Sortie** +300 cp: The Goa'uld System Lords have decided you're a threat. Many of their worlds will deny you any help or information in fear of suffering the wrath of their gods, and their technology has been coded to simply not work for you outright. Attempts to make this technology work or change the opinions of their worshipers will always end horribly.]

"Eh, I can see a few loopholes there. While the System Lord's tech won't work for me, there are plenty of Goa'uld who aren't System Lords that should be free game if I was inclined to go that route of stealing their technology. Which I shouldn't actually need to do."

"And while the people on the System Lord's worlds won't help me, all I have to do is take over the world. Then they won't belong to the System Lord. Easy peasy, taking over worlds breezy." Carl chuckled at something that may have been an empty boast once, but now he had enough power to back up those words. "If they continue to worship the Goa'uld even after they have been defeated by me, well, I'll just have my followers round them up and lock them away. I don't even need to try to convert them, just make them powerless to do anything." Carl concluded.

At the end of the Drawbacks section there were a few notes that made Carl wary.

[Death in any form still counts as a lose condition; the Sarcophagus will not change this fact.]

Normally Carl would go for his Medbay for healing anyway, unless he was trying to keep secrets from people. So it was good for him to realize that if he ever found himself in a dangerous situation then he should damn the consequences of letting a secret out in order to not lose.

[You can still use the Sarcophagus to heal injuries, but if you are driven mad by it, it will count as a lose condition. Your Jump Chain adventures will end.]

Carl was pretty sure that it would take a lot for the Sarcophagus to drive him mad, with his perks and Occlumency. But now he was definitely not taking the chance and playing with fire.

"Bad analogy." Carl muttered. "Fire doesn't burn me anymore now. The point still remains. No playing with the parasitic danger noodle's coffins." He vowed.

[Ascending in this world counts as choosing to give up the Jump Chain and stay in the world, and will end your journey here. It should be noted that Ascension will not work outside of the Stargate Universe either.]

"Good to know. I wasn't planning on giving up my physical body to ascend anyway, but that information just ensures I won't even play around with the idea of partial ascension." Carl muttered. "No fighting fire with fire." Carl chuckled a bit. "Another bad analogy. I'm definitely fighting a partially ascended Anubis with fire. If that doesn't work, then a good exorcism or ritual would probably do wonders. Hmm…rituals. That bears looking into, for sure."

Carl then looked over his selections and double checked that he was satisfied with his purchases. He had his intelligence boosts, some enemies that he felt he could handle. And he had 1050 cp banked for the next world.

He pressed the finalize button and was surprised when a huge circular portal of what looked like very blue shimmering water appeared beneath him. Carl instinctively tried to employ his profound energy to fly above the portal whose sudden appearance startled him. Despite his efforts he found himself easily sucked into the portal that looked like a Stargate wormhole.

He was treated to the sensation of traveling through the wormhole for a few moments. Upon exiting the wormhole, Carl found himself landing on a smooth concrete like floor. Testing out his control over his profound energy, he found that he could once more use it like he should as he hovered over the floor. "Guess the jump chain wanted to expedite my world entrance." Carl grumbled over having lost control of himself, even if it was just for a moment.

"Come to think of it, that felt a lot like the Wizarding technique of apparition, except without the squeezing sensation. I'll have to do some testing. Maybe the reason apparition has the squeezing sensation is because wizards don't normally have enough power to make a bigger wormhole?" Carl mused.

Brushing off his clothes as he stood up, he looked around the location he found himself in. Behind him was the Stargate, which currently didn't have an active wormhole. Directly in front of him was the dialing device. Carl stepped around the device to look over the rest of the room. He appeared to be in a large and spacious room that had no doors or windows to the outside. The walls and ceiling looked like a uniform concrete, exactly like the floor. In the center of the room was a white circle that appeared to be painted on the ground.

"Well, looks like I'm in the right place." Carl extended his senses to his surroundings.

With his wizarding senses he felt energy running through conduits in the walls, and in the dialing device and the stargate.

"Looks like that's a point for fan fictions. The special abilities of the Ancients were probably very similar to the magical energy Wizards and Witches use. Telekinesis, healing, mentally connecting to their technology, it's all very similar to what magic can do, provided the tech is robust enough to handle the magical energies."

On the other hand, with his profound energies he sensed that outside of the building he was in there was no life on the planet as far as he could sense, which quite a distance. That was fine, it didn't change his plans any.

Once Carl was done inspecting his surroundings, he walked over to the white painted circle in the ground. When he stepped inside the circle, he felt the shifting vacuum energies in the ground and opposite wall. A device emerged from the wall at his head height. Carl stood still, staring at it for several minutes as he contemplated his actions.

In the television show Jack O'Neill, the leader of the SG-1 team had stupidly stuck his head into the device on the wall, and had the repository of the ancients downloaded into his head. According to the show, the sheer amount of information downloaded into his head began unspooling in some fashion, taking up more and more room in his brain.

He soon lost the ability to communicate in English, could only speak Ancient, and his brain began burning up from being overworked by the sheer volume of information suddenly dumped in his head. He would have died if he didn't build a power booster for their stargate to get him to the Asgard in another galaxy, who helped remove the ancient's repository from his mind.

So here was Carl, planning to also idiotically stick his head in the device.

Carl was quite confident that he would be fine. He had various intelligence boosting perks, his body upgrades from his Ki, Profound Energy, and Magic; the Great Way of the Buddha, The Dragon God bloodline, his Phoenix and Golden Crow bloodlines, his immunity to fire, lightning, water, and darkness from the Evil God's Profound Veins and Seeds, his Heart of Snow Glazed Glass, Nine Profound Exquisite Body, and his Occlumency.

Yes, with everything he'd been upgraded with and learned, he was almost positive that he would be fine to download the repository into his head. It was that "almost" that worried him, though. That slight bit of uncertainty that he wouldn't be able to handle it.

"What if, after all you've done and learned, you end your adventure right here, right now, from being overconfident?" Carl muttered to himself as he eyed the repository of the Ancient's knowledge.

The niggling worry just would not leave Carl's mind, which made him pause and think about reconsidering what he was about to do. He went over his plans, thought about the risks, considered what he could do to minimize the risks. If the worst came about, he could use Obliviation to delete the repository of information from his mind.

And while he was thinking about the issue, his stubborn will kicked in. He wasn't going to let a little uncertainty and fear stop him on his path. He hadn't gone through so much to let it all end here, or let himself shrink back and forever have doubts about himself or his capabilities.

He realized that if he didn't even have enough gumption to attempt this, then he would forever cower away from taking chances. Instead of growing braver and more bold, he would have let his growing powers make him more timid and unwilling to take chances.

Carl strode forward and put his head in the device that would download the database of the Ancients into his head.

The device latched onto his head so he couldn't move unless he destroyed the device. Carl remained calm and still as the crawling sensations in his brain increased as the packets of information were shoved in. There was no organization, no attempt to keep everything in order. It was just shoved in.

'No wonder it messed so much with O'Neill's mind.' Carl thought.

After several minutes the device had finished its work and let Carl's head go. Carl felt the technology in the walls go into power save mode. He ignored that for the time being, and summoned up his profound energy. He entered the time dilated world of his Heavenly Time Pearl. He would need a safe place to sift through the information, and he wanted to make sure it didn't take a lot of his in universe time.

Once inside Carl didn't mess about, he opened his Warehouse and soon lay down on his bed. Using his occlumency meditation, he entered his mind. Looking around at the mess of information just lying every which way, Carl snorted.

"What a mess. Time to get cleaning."

Without any further ado, he started organizing the new information. Carl had to expand his library by quite a lot while cleaning up the ancient's knowledge that was just shoved in his head. Everything about their society and culture, their language, sciences, technologies, maths, and even their entertainment was stored in his head.

Carl lost track of time as he worked. He was determined to work until his mind was cleaned up and organized once more. Because the knowledge came from a machine, there weren't emotions connected with the information. It wasn't even normal memories. It was just pure information. Even so, while organizing the information, each bit was run through his conscious mind as he filed it away, so he remembered it all.

Because of the great mess, for a long time Carl was confused about the information he was receiving. Often times he sorted the more advanced subjects first, which meant he had no foundation of basic knowledge to understand what he was learning.

But as he finally got to the basics, the information he had already sorted started to make sense. And he began to learn and integrate the information he learned into his conscious control.

But because of that original jumble, Carl had to take time to resort and reorganize everything once he came to understand it better.

Carl had lost track of time, so he wasn't sure how long it took, but eventually Carl finished the job of sorting the information. He stood in his mind's library, looking at the truly massive increase of information he'd organized. He felt a sense of accomplishment and triumph.

He had succeeded in grabbing the most advanced science and technology knowledge in the Milky Way Galaxy. He'd boldly grabbed a hold of the chaos and tamed it for his use without burning up his brain.

Exiting his mind, Carl sat up in bed. Looking around, he noticed the clock on the wall. It was a very informative clock. It would be set to the local time whenever he entered a jump world. He'd noticed that while in the time dilation field of his Heavenly Time Pearl, the time would continue running normally to show how much time he'd been inside the pearl. But once he exited the time dilation, it would sync with the outside world and reset it's time.

According to the clock, it was the year 2039. If it wasn't for his profound energy making it so he didn't need to eat, he would have died long before assimilating the repository of knowledge. And his jump into this world would have ended long since, too.

Carl was shocked at how much time it had taken. He realized he should be very wary of future influxes of knowledge, and falling into such work fugues in the future outside of his time pearl. It wouldn't do to waste all his real time when he could be _doing _things.

And if it weren't for the cleaning runes Carl had inscribed in his house, he would be covered in dust and grime from laying still for so many years. Grimacing, Carl got up and took a shower to feel clean after he had been lying still for 42 years.

42 years without a shower. Ugh.

Good thing perks kept him in his top condition with no atrophying or lessening of his skills, or he would be a wreck.

When Carl got to his kitchen, he first poured himself a frosty mug of Root Beer. It had been way too long. Carl sipped his mug with a satisfied sigh while sitting at the table, cooking with magic.

An hour later, Carl sat back, stuffed to the gills. He looked at the food he hadn't been able to fit in his stomach. He knew he had been cooking too much food, but he didn't care. He wanted a bit of everything for his first meal in 42 years.

Once his kitchen was cleaned up, Carl exited his Warehouse, and then left the time dilation of the Heavenly Time Pearl.

Looking around the seemingly empty room with a Stargate on one side, Carl used the methods he'd learned from the repository to reach out with his magic and access the computer of the building. He had the computer open the power system and eject the nearly spent Potentia for Carl to bring with him.

While the Potentia's energy was practically used up, the Potentia wasn't usless; Carl could eventually recharge it when he eventually built the recharge device, so he decided to keep it with him for now. From what he remembered of the show, there was a distinct lack of Potentia floating around the galaxy, and since that one wasn't doing anything, he would use it as a practice device.

After learning the Ancient's science and technology, Carl thought about the third adage, or law from Arthur C. Clarke. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

While there was some truth to the law, there was a large difference between knowing how to build the technology that would do some magic, and Carl himself doing that same "magic". He knew how to build a device to reset the dimension the Potentia drew its energy from. But if he were to try to do it himself, he would likely get the coordinates wrong, or add too much power, thus ripping apart the Potentia as he fumbled for the exactness needed to anchor a new dimension to the Potentia.

Carl planned to build the device that would reset the Potentia and then follow along closely with his magical senses and scanning wards as the device did its thing. He wanted to learn to be able to recharge a Potentia without the technological crutch, if he could.

Because if there was one thing that technology did better than the human brain, it was precise and repetitious actions. Okay, that was two things, but the point remained.

Looking around the empty room on a dead world, Carl decided to leave it as it was for now. But not without putting up some basic wards to keep anyone arriving from getting too nosy. While he had taken the power source, that admittedly wasn't much use anymore, he didn't want just anyone to be able to come here and tear the repository apart and play with it in their lab.

Carl set out some wards stones and set up some basic defenses. Any humans or jaffa coming through the gate would have a strong urge to return to their world, disgusted at having wasted their time on the empty world.

If the naquadah in a Goa'uld host's blood allowed them to shrug off the muggle repelling wards, then they would be stunned and put in a prison box until Carl could get around to collecting them.

With that done, Carl dialed up the stargate. He frowned at the open wormhole, suddenly realizing that while he had the ancient's database in his head, it didn't mean he knew everything. The database was made over 5 million years ago. A lot of local situations had changed. And while the television show he had watched could act as a decent guide, just relying on its vague information was…foolhardy.

Carl let the stargate shutdown the wormhole. He pulled out a chunk of iron and two communication mirrors from his storage space. The iron he transfigured into a large animated bird that would hold one of the mirrors. After going through the stargate, it would fly a circle around the destination gate to give Carl a decent view and idea of what was on the other side of the gate.

After dialing up the gate again, Carl sent his little birdie through and watched through his mirror as the bird did a surveying flight. The world was very earth like. Blue skies, green leaves on the trees. Grass, dirt, and a large headless statue on top of a building a short way away from the gate.

Carl nodded in satisfaction. It looked like the planet was as advertised in Carl's memories of the show. He stepped through the gate before it could shut down again. A quick travel through the wormhole, and Carl was stepping out into the open air.

After double checking with his profound senses that there was no one around, Carl set up the same temporary defenses around this world's gate, to keep the riff raff out.

Using his profound energy, he flew quickly to the nearby ruins, where there was a building made from a giant statue of a headless man sitting down on a throne. At some point in the past the head had fallen off, and landed beside the building.

After entering the building where a second repository of knowledge was placed by the ancients, Carl got to work. He first had the computer eject the Potentia for Carl to gather. He then disassembled the repository.

This was the second of seven repositories that the ancients had placed in the Milky Way Galaxy before they departed for the Pegasus Galaxy. It was the only two that were featured in the show, so Carl had gone for them first. If Carl hadn't messed with the first one on the dead planet, Jack O'Neill would have stuck his head in it in the next year and a half, nearly killing himself while barely benefitting at all from the experience.

After Carl recovered the repository of knowledge, and placed it in his pocket dimension, he began tearing up the building with his magic and occasionally a blow of his fist to shatter a load bearing pillar. He was after all the naquadah metal used in the construction of the building.

An hour later, the building was reduced to so much rubble, and Carl was looking at the pallet sized stack of metal he had recovered. There really hadn't been much metal there. The whole point of the facility had been to keep the repository powered for as long as it could, so it had no extraneous functions. Which is how a 5 million year old potentia lasted for so long.

On the city ship Atlantis, three potentia had only lasted 10,000 years when keeping the shield up to keep the water out when the ancients had sunk the ship to the bottom of the ocean and fled the Pegasus Galaxy from the attacking Wraith.

"Well, it should be sufficient for my needs." Carl said while looking at the small pile of naquadah, trinium, and neutronium. He levitated the pallet and entered his Warehouse.

Upon arriving at his Farms, he soon had the metals entered into his database and set his farms that were actually mines to producing the metals. It still amused him that the Farmville "farms" included metal farms.

While Carl could have jumped back into his time pearl to increase the relative speed at which his Farm's produced the needed metals, Carl chose to do a tour of his new planet instead. He pulled out his Profound Ark, hopped on, and started flying around the world.

While he was circumnavigating the world, he kept his senses on the lookout for any sentient species, most especially humans.

The worlds where cultivation was the big thing the universe focused on were very different. The cultivation worlds almost always grew to be many times the size of earth, but suffered no increase of gravity along with it. It was a strange conundrum that Carl had no answer for.

So while it had taken Carl's Ark several hours to travel across the oceans to reach the other continent back on Blue Pole Star, on this world Carl took only three hours to circumnavigate the world three times. He hadn't found any humans or other sentient creatures.

He would still have to do a full survey once he was able to produce satellites and probes, but Carl was content to start building on this isolated seeming planet.

Upon arriving back at the stargate, Carl looked over the area from above while pondering just what he was going to build at the site.

He definitely wasn't going to just blindly follow the blueprints the ancients left in their database. They had been idiots in many respects. Carl figured it was because they evolved their society while there really wasn't much conflict. After millions of years of not having more than minor policing problems, they had seemingly forgotten how to fight properly.

The blueprints for the city ship Atlantis wasn't in the database, but from the show Carl had a decent idea of what they were like. They put their stargate, which was an easy infiltration point, in the heart of their city. Only a few feet away from the gate was a computer access point that, with the right skills, could change who had administrator rights in the whole city.

The whole setup was a security risk. Even though the ancients had the technology to put a shield over the gate as a security measure, it just wasn't enough to be secure in Carl's mind. They were way too complacent and trusting in their technology to solve their problems, when they could be solved just as easily through simpler means.

And Carl had more than just technology to consider while planning his base. At some point he was likely going to be introducing Ki training and Profound cultivation to the forces he would build. So he needed to take into consideration one of his future troops going rogue, and how to deal with them. Or enemies somehow getting their hands on similar techniques and using them against him.

While Carl could help his troops gain control of their Ki and induce profound veins in them so they could start cultivating, he currently had no way to induce magical talent in anyone. Either they had it or they didn't. Maybe some of the humans with the ancient gene on Earth could be taught, but he wouldn't rely on that what if in his planning.

With a basic idea in mind of what he wanted, and while waiting for his Farms to produce the metals he needed, Carl began sketching out the city / base he would build. With the examples of the proportions of the cities of cultivators he'd seen in the ATG world, he got started designing.


	48. Stargate 02

Carl looked down at the single, palm sized, clunky, spiderlike robot that took him two weeks to properly make, and smiled at his accomplishment.

The Replicators that the little grey Asgard aliens were fighting and losing against in the Ida galaxy were a remnant of Ancient technology. From the example of the relentless self replicating robots, and the fear of Grey Goo that is associated with nanotechnology, Carl had a healthy respect for the dangers inherent with the technology.

Despite the danger of the technology getting away from his control and running rampant, using robots and nanotech was the fastest way for him to build up his technology base. If he had to build everything from scratch by hand, he would be forever chained to the forge. Too restricting.

The first thing Carl had done on arriving on the planet was to build a simple large house from materials from his Farm. A few simple charms, a couple of transfigurations, and the simple house provided everything he needed, but especially shelter from the elements while working on his technology. Already he'd been rained on a couple times on his new world. While he could use his profound energy and control of water to ensure the immediate area around him didn't get soaked, it wouldn't help his budding technology if they got soaked while he was away.

After building a large and simple house, Carl had worked on making a basic generator. It was powered by naquadria, an energy rich liquid produced from naquadah. The generator would "broadcast" the energy needed to power his spider bots.

It had taken Carl a few weeks to use his profound energy and control over fire to manufacture the generator and figure out how to magically alter naquadah into naquadria, as opposed to doing the process with technology.

Since the naquadria was a bit on the unstable side, Carl had taken his experiments away from the stargate and his little base to attempt to master the process. There were several explosions that Carl only survived because of how tough his body was, and his regeneration.

Clearly using tried and true technology was a bit safer than learning how to do it himself by magic, but Carl was still determined to learn how to do the magic of advanced technology for himself. He believed it would give him more insight and knowledge of the principles behind the magic, science, and technology. More insight and skill would in turn allow him to design better systems and technologies.

After finally building his generator and getting a stable source of naquadria fuel for it, Carl had spent the next week working on his primitive computer in his Warehouse, writing the program that would input the base code into his spider like robot.

During that week Carl had written multiple failsafe codes into the base code that would keep his machines from going out of his control. Any tampering with their base code would cause them to self destruct. Not even he could mess with their base code. If he wanted something changed, he would have to destroy the old ones and create completely new ones with new programming.

His robot's base state behavior wouldn't be anything ridiculous like "replicate". They would simply go to standby mode and wait for orders from Carl. Carl had introduced both a password and a magical lock attuned to his magical signature, so no one but him could command his little bots.

Hopefully his preparations would be enough to keep his robots under his control. If anything happened to challenge that control, Carl would act to fix it immediately. He wasn't going to be complacent and think that everything he did was perfect and not able bettered. He would learn from the Ancient's mistakes and improve, not stagnate in his arrogance.

The second week of building his little spider bot was spent using his magic to put together the hardware. It was small, delicate, and difficult work. Thankfully his control of fire was good enough that he didn't need a forge and moulds. He used his profound skills to control the fire temperature and shape in order to mould the metals to what he needed. His use of fire alone wasn't enough, so he used his magic via telekinesis to add a bit more of a delicate touch to the process.

And it had taken Carl multiple attempts to make the parts properly. Some of the pieces were as delicate as clockwork gears, so it had been quite a different and difficult application of his powers.

In the cultivation world, nearly every technique was geared towards more power and destructiveness. There weren't too many techniques out there to build skill in precision use of powers. It was a skill that Carl would have to practice more from now on, since he was going to be playing with technology a lot in the future.

So after an uncounted amount of tries, Carl finally had a finished product sitting in front of him. The only thing he had left to do was to upload the base code to his robot, and turn the thing on.

Carl hooked the little spiderbot into the connections from his computer and started the upload. It would take a while to accomplish, so while waiting Carl started playing with his control over lighting while distancing himself from his robot so he wouldn't damage it.

Over the years spent in time dilation with Caiyi, Carl had some extra time he spent training with his various affinities with fire, lightning, water, and darkness. It had been a bit of a surprise to find the Evil God Darkness Seed, cause he had thought there were only 5 elements. It made Carl wonder if there were other element seeds out there. Like light to balance the shadow, yin/yang, life, death, space, time, and others.

He couldn't imagine what being immune to time or space would do, but having an affinity for space and time is a direction that Carl would like to pursue. If he could learn those principles, or Daos, and if he could take it far enough, he was sure he could gain control over his world jumping. He could maybe even build that world for him and his loved ones that he had seen in the Mirror of Erised.

The dinging alarm, to let him know the upload had been complete, broke Carl from his thoughts. He extinguished the bolt of lightning he'd been playing with, and moved to his computer to double check everything was okay.

After a systems check, everything looked good, so Carl booted up his spider bot. The cute little thing was amusing to see as it got to its feet and started looking left and right to orient itself. It eventually focused on Carl, recognizing his magical signature and waiting for orders.

"Good boy, Pete." So what if Carl named the spider bot after Spiderman? Carl gave the password and then ordered the bot. "Come over here."

"Yes, sir." The tiny voice of Pete responded. Carl had thought it was dumb that the little bots the Ancients built had no way to communicate back to the user, so he fixed that.

"How are you, Pete?" Carl asked the little spider bot when he arrived at Carl's feet.

"Operating under normal parameters, sir. Awaiting orders."

"Good." Carl nodded. He indicated a pallet with trinium, naquadah, and other metals that were needed to create more spider bots sitting to the side. "Your first order is to use this metal to create 12 more spider bots like you, to help you with your workload."

"Orders acknowledged, sir. Beginning work now." And the little spider bot got to work dismantling the metals and started laying out another bot.

Carl enjoyed watching his little spider bot work. It only took it about 2 hours for Pete to finish building the next bot. When the bot was done, Pete 1 hooked an attachment to Pete 2 and installed the same base code into it.

The second bot "woke up" and after a brief look around to orient itself, joined Pete 1 in building the next bot. Carl smiled at his efficient little bots. While the bots worked on building him a workforce on the other side of the room, Carl returned to designing a basic computer system.

While Carl called it basic, it would be far more advanced than anything he had from Earth previously. The computer would be where he placed his designs, blueprints, and build orders for his work force of little Petes.

It was so frustrating working on a slow and primitive computer through a mouse and keyboard, when he knew he could build a computer that he could interact with via his mind. It would be much faster and an easier interface to get exactly what he wanted done.

After a few hours, Carl had finished creating the design for his upgraded computer and was watching the Petes finish building their last worker. Once the last Pete finished orienting itself, the group of 13 spider bots turned as one and strode forward until they stood in front of Carl. Carl smiled at his little squad of spider bots.

"Mission accomplished, sir." Pete 1 reported. "Awaiting Orders."

"Good job. Your next orders are to take the blueprint I'll give you and build the computer." Carl then hooked Pete 1 to the primitive computer and started uploading the schematics to Pete 1.

Since the upload didn't impact on his base code, and only stayed in Pete's normal memory, there was no reason for the self destruct codes to engage. Everything seemed to be working smoothly.

Carl watched the process as Pete 1 passed the schematics to the rest of the Petes. Once every Pete had the schematics, the group started working. The computer they were building was going to be a cube three feet on a side. It should last Carl a good while before he would need to upgrade it to something bigger.

After watching the Petes work for a few minutes, Carl left the house to spend some time wandering around the surroundings for a bit. He flew over the land that he would be converting into a city base soon, and looked over the landscape in the area.

He saw quite a few animals running around the nearby forest. They were all very similar to earth animals, with only some local variations. In the history of the Milky Way galaxy, over 5 million years ago a terrible plague had swept over the worlds of the Ancients. The Ancients had a hard time combating the virus, it was so virulent.

The Ancients that weren't infected decided to leave the Milky Way Galaxy to go to the Pegasus Galaxy to avoid the plague. But before they left they wiped out all life in the galaxy. The worlds were then reseeded with life that was free of the plague. So it made sense that many of the earth like worlds would have plant and animal life very similar to Earth.

Carl gave one more look over the scenery as he considered what it would look like in the future, before he flew back to his house. Even after so long of being able to fly under his own power, the little kid inside Carl was still not tired of flight. He still felt a bit of the thrill from feeling the air whipping past him, singing to him as Carl pushed his speed to the limits.

As usual, the short flight ended too soon when Carl landed in front of his temporary house. He entered just as the Petes were finishing up with the control chair that would let Carl interface with his computer easily via his mind.

Once the job was done, the Petes settled down in front of Carl, waiting for more orders. Carl set out some more metal for them and had them start making more Petes while he worked on inputting his blueprints and build orders in the computer.

Carl turned on the computer and was pleased to see it work just fine. He hooked up his old and slow computer to his new and updated one and uploaded the kernel of an operating system to his new computer.

With that done, Carl put the same magical signature and password security on the chair and computer that he'd put on the Petes. His computer obviously didn't have the self destruct codes for tampering that his Petes did, since he would need to update the operating system and data as he went. But the security made sure that only he could access and operate his system.

Once that was all set up, Carl settled into the control chair and interfaced with the computer. So fast! It was a pleasure to work with an advanced piece of technology.

Carl updated the operating system, adjusting it to be robust and work in a way that Carl felt was comfortable. Once that was set up, Carl pulled out the repository that he'd pulled out of the statue building that was previously standing on the planet. He hooked the repository up to his computer and started copying all the data over. His operating system hoovered up all the information and started organizing it according to the criteria Carl had set up.

Looking at the expected time that would be required to copy and organize the data, Carl wryly smiled. Even as strong, intelligent, and advanced as his body was, it had still taken him 42 years via occlumency to sort the blasted thing. And here his computer was going to do it in just over two weeks.

'There's another difference between humans and machines.' Carl thought. 'The sheer speed machines can operate at.'

Now that the process was started, there really was not much for Carl to do until his computer was finished. Any more designing and building could wait until he could interact with his computer that already had all the science of the ancients loaded onto it. What should he do now?

It had been just over a month and a half since he started the jump. He knew the gate address to Earth from the repository, but he wasn't going to go back to the motherland just yet. He still had a lot to build before he was ready to go and handle the hot mess that was Earth.

He also wasn't sure just when the SGC started using the gate shield to stop any uninvited guests, and he had no interest in seeing if he could survive smacking into the shield and falling back into the wormhole. When he was ready and had built himself a space ship is when he would make his trip to earth.

And while Carl would like to start making trips to different planets to start his meddling in the galaxy, he really wasn't sure where things were. His memories of the show had the different planets being labeled things like PJ2-445. But that didn't correlate to anything in the Ancients database. And that database was very out of date on the local situation.

Carl snorted to himself suddenly. "Even after getting all the information on the 'Ancients' and knowing just what they liked to call themselves, I've fallen in the habit of calling them ancient. The Alterans and ended up doing a lot of stupid things. I don't think I'll change that habit of calling them ancients, to remind myself how outdated they were. If anything it's a warning to myself to not get complacent. Because what happened to their civilization, despite how mighty they were? Gone. Only a bunch of body-less lazy bastiches remain, floating around and making nuisances of themselves."

Carl abruptly reached out with his magic and _twisted_ just so. A ball of glowing white energy appeared in front of him. The magical techniques for controlling or banishing ghosts were surprisingly useful on the bodiless ascended being that used to be an Alteran when it was human. Carl was surprised how easy it was to catch the ascended ancient, despite the ascended being having a lot of power at its disposal.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here? A nosy little snot ball." Carl chuckled as he held the ascended being firmly in his magic and didn't let him utilize his power.

"How dare you trap me, flesh bag! Release me!" A male voice sounded out from the so called snot ball. "I warn you things will go worse for you if you don't release me immediately!"

Carl chuckled as he kept his magical grip on the glowing snot ball. "Well, it sounds like someone has a superiority complex." The bodiless ascended being just had to change his cry to 'I am your god!' and he would sound like a Goa'uld.

"Of course I'm superior to a primitive ape that is meddling in what he doesn't understand!" The snot ball raged.

"Oh, well, I'm a quick learner, unlike you, apparently." Carl snarked at the ascended being. "So why don't you explain it to me. Starting with why you are here spying on me." Carl stated while giving the ascended being a little shake, which caused the being to shriek in startlement. He was certainly not used to being under someone else's power.

"I'm not spying! You're just not allowed to touch the repository! You're ruining the plan by changing things!" The snot ball accusingly stated.

'Hmm, now why does that sound familiar?" Carl thought for a moment before it came to him. 'It reminds me of how the Powers That Be on the BtVS world acted. They too had a bunch of plans on how things should go, no matter what the flesh bags with free will thought about the matter. And they didn't care about how much suffering their plans caused. If these ascended beings are like that too, I might just change my policy of avoiding them.'

Carl's smile unnerved the glowing Ascended being for some reason.

"Now, why don't you tell me this plan?" Carl politely asked, amused that the glowing ball of snot was quivering a bit in fear. "I'm a reasonable being, and I'm sure we can come to some kind of understanding."

"I c-can't talk about it! It's prohibited!"

"Hmm. Can't or won't talk, I wonder? I'm not sure you're even in the know on what the plan is." Carl speculatively mused, eyeing the being in doubt.

"Of course I know what the plan is! I'm entrusted with protecting this part of it, after all!" The glowing ball of energy bragged.

Carl wondered if ascending damaged the brain, or if the being in front of him was always such an idiot that was easily led about by his nose by his peers.

"Hmm, well, it sounds like you're an important person among your peers. I'm sorry I haven't introduced myself. I'm Carl. And what's your name?" Carl suddenly shifted the conversation to keep his prisoner off balance.

"Mordan. Nice to meet you." The creature faintly spoke as if dredging up the faint memories of the basics of politeness that he hadn't needed in years.

"It's good to meet you too, Mordan. Now, since I've ruined your duty to watch over the item left here, how about giving me the broad strokes so I can see if there's anything I can do to help you?"

Carl could almost feel the shifting emotions of the ascended being in front of him, which was interesting. He didn't get that feeling from others that had bodies, but the energy wave lengths of the ascended seemed to transmit their feelings. Carl figured that was a big reason that Anubis found it so easy to manipulate Oma Desala into helping him ascend.

"All I can say is that it will end a threat to the Ascended Council, and we will finally be free of _their_ tyranny." The ascended being explained, clearly trying to get Carl's sympathy with the language he used.

With what Mordan let slip along with Carl's meta knowledge about the Stargate world, Carl could make some guesses what the ascended were trying to do. If Carl was right, the ascended were trying to guide the conflict in the galaxy in order to build some forces that could fight against the Ori, while being capable of being responsible with the technology left behind by the ancients.

Perhaps they only told the creatures on the physical plane that interfering was against their rules. From Carl's memories of the show, there were a whole lot of instances where the ascended interfered with the physical plane. So the fact that they didn't interfere was blatantly nonsense.

Maybe the reason they picked Anubis to interact with was because they were hoping to make use of the Goa'uld, since they were the race in power. Carl figured that maybe the ascended council thought they could use Anubis to guide the Goa'uld, making use of them to be the forces used against the Ori's troops.

But once Anubis ascended, they were able to read Anubis' emotions and understand that Anubis had been hiding his evil nature all along and wouldn't be their pawn. They wouldn't be able to make use of Anubis or the Goa'uld in their war. They would need to encourage and build up a different force.

Perhaps the reason the Ascended didn't permanently take care of Anubis was because the partially ascended Goa'uld was useful as a means of providing an enemy for their chosen troops to sharpen themselves on? It would give them practice in fighting against the troops of the Ori that had abilities.

So all the death and misery that Anubis spread around due to his partially ascended powers and knowledge, could be indirectly attributed to the ascended council for their refusal to deal with the problem they created.

Carl admitted to himself that he may be judging the ascended council a bit too harshly; he may be jumping at conspiracy theories. But Carl decided it didn't really matter if the council was being hypocritical and lazy, or calculative and overbearing. The results were the same either way. Many deaths and lots of suffering around the galaxy because of the ascended council's decisions.

At the very least the ascended council condoned the actions of a murderous and crazy half ascended Goa'uld, one that they empowered to be worse than other Goa'uld. Even if they didn't help Anubis in his actions, they did nothing to stop the problem that they directly created.

The council didn't force Anubis to fully descend, and they didn't imprison or kill him. So they had a certain amount of responsibility for Anubis' atrocities. And Carl wasn't best pleased with their actions.

Carl debated to himself what he should do with the spying ascended being, Mordan.

'Why does this situation seem so familiar?' Carl suddenly wondered. 'Oh, yeah. It is similar to when Yun Che wanted to let an enemy that had vital intel on his strength go in order to send a message.' Carl realized.

'But is the situation and the solution really the same?' Carl thought about whether he should try to kill Mordan or not. 'In the previous situation at the Frozen Cloud Asgard, the enemy was actually attacking with the intent to kidnap Yun Che's wife. It would have turned into a fight anyway unless we let them kidnap Yun Che's woman, which wasn't going to happen. They were for sure our enemies.'

'But in this situation, the snot ball was only spying on me, not actively attacking. He only started blustering and threatening me when I caught him. He probably acted like that because he was very frightened and grasping at straws. The idea that a flesh being could catch and detain an ascended like him must terrify him. So, should I let him go with a warning to the council to leave me be? Should I imprison him, or execute him? Or should I send him back to the council with an offer of being an ally?' Carl was in deep thought as he barely paid attention to the ascended being in front of him, despite keeping a tight grip on him.

'One thing is for sure, whatever I do with Mordan, I'll need to redesign my wards to keep the nosy bastards out. I'll have to be especially paranoid when I start teaching my people Ki and Profound Techniques. I certainly don't want to let these bastards spy on my techniques and spread them among my enemies.'

Making his decision, Carl focused his attention once more on his prisoner.

"Okay, Mordan. Here's the way it is as far as I see it." Carl soberly stated. The feeling from Mordan let Carl know the ascended was paying close attention, which was good. "I don't really know your people. And I don't have any reason to trust you. You also don't have any reason to trust me. But from where I'm standing, you don't get to dictate to me how things go. But I'm willing to listen to your people's advice."

"But, why wouldn't you listen to us? The council is wise and has millions of years of experience." Mordan plaintively complained.

"That may be true, but I don't know that they would look after my best interests. After some time of getting to know each other, I'm sure we'll build up more trust. But right now, I don't know you or your council's cause, what drives you, what I should expect from you. I don't even know the rules you operate under."

"So I'm saying, we need to get to know each other before we can trust each other. That will take time." Carl explained. "Why don't you go back to your people and tell them about our meeting. Let them talk it out, and come back here in a month so we can continue to talk and get to know each other."

"Why so long? It won't take more than a few days for the council to come to a decision."

"They may be ready after only several days, but I won't be. Limitations of the flesh, don't you know?" Carl blatantly lied to misdirect Mordan away from his true capabilities. If the snot ball bought his load of BS, then he deserved to get fooled. "So why don't you have your delegation come in a month so we can chat and talk about a cooperation at that point?" Carl suggested.

Carl got the feeling from Mordan that he was still unconvinced about why Carl wasn't just accepting of his assurances and urgings to trust them, but he had no idea how to go about convincing Carl. Eventually Carl sent Mordan off to talk to his vaunted council.

'And now, here's hoping that I did the right thing. Mordan himself wouldn't do anything too drastic beyond talk my ear off. But who knows how the other ascended will react.' Carl looked around his base. 'One thing is for sure, as I build up my base I'm going to have to ward the shit out of this place.'

* * *

While his advanced computer was sorting the repository of knowledge, Carl worked with his outdated Earth computer to give designs and build orders to Pete 1 and his horde of spider bots. The first thing he had them build was a temporary security building to house the stargate, until something more permanent and secure could be built.

Any uninvited guests that came through the stargate would be immediately disarmed, quarantined into separate rooms, and given a medical checkup. At least that was the plan once Carl had his own forces in place to staff his facilities.

For now Carl set up some wards in the security building that would stun and imprison any visitors, alerting Carl that some people needed to be taken care of.

Meanwhile Carl had set up wards that should keep the ascended out of his base unless he invited them in. It would have to do until Carl could build some Potentia to power stronger planet wide wards.

Once Carl's computer was finished storing and sorting the repository of knowledge, Carl was ready to get to work. He sat down in the command chair and starting interfacing with the computer.

Carl started pulling up different plans that were stored in the database, and began tweaking them. There were so many things to build, he wasn't sure where to start at first. But a little flash of memory of playing some RTS (real-time strategy) games gave him an answer.

If he didn't have a steady and sufficient supply of resources, he wouldn't be able to get anywhere. At the scales that he was going to be working on, he couldn't rely on his Farmville farms. They were great for providing everything he personally needed, and supplying his few businesses. But building an organization that spanned even just one solar system was more than his farms could provide. And Carl didn't want to be the choke point of the whole system.

So Carl needed some long range communications and power distribution systems and satellites to scan for the needed resources and provide his Petes energy. His army of Petes would soon be leaving the little area that his naquadria generator could cover. They would need to be able to continue to get power and instructions from home base wherever they went on the world.

And the satellites Carl planned to build were important to help communications and deep scan the planet for what resources it had. Without that basic information, the Petes wouldn't know where to go to get the resources needed.

Carl added the communications building and satellites to his build queue. The Petes were almost happy to have direction and something to do. And Carl enjoyed watching the little guys work.

While they were chugging away at building the communications building, Carl was working on the next design. He obviously couldn't expect his army of Petes to travel the planet on their own spidery legs, that would take too long. They needed transport around the planet and the ability to haul the resources they gathered.

He didn't have any roads or railways built up on this rugged planet. It would take more time to do so than Carl wanted to wait for. So he pulled up some plans for hover trucks. They would stick close to the ground but be able to overcome any ground based obstacle.

Carl chuckled a bit at the vision in his head of little spider Petes with a trucker's ball cap on their heads while they drove their trucks on their spider-trucker routes.

Soon enough the Petes finished the communication center and launched a few satellites, that started their scans of the planet. Carl looked over the information as it came in, and started making his plans for mining the resources.

Carl briefly considered using the mining spells he knew from the HP world to go grab a large amount of ore for his army of Petes to process and have material to jump start his progress. After some thought, the only reason he had for why he didn't want to do it that way was to have everything be the accomplishment of his Petes. Doing it all the hard way, they would have something to be proud of.

After realizing that the only reason he had against grabbing a bunch of ore to get started was "because", Carl immediately headed out and spent a few hours pulling up metals with his mining spells for his Petes to process. Transportation was even easier for him. Ever since he became a Sovereign Realm cultivator, he had a pocket dimension that he could store stuff in.

He set the ore down in a convenient place for the Petes to access and process the ore so they could build their hover trucks quickly and get started on their mining operations. While Carl wanted his operation to be self sustaining, he realized that it would have taken the Petes too long to get started initially.

Carl then returned to his self assigned job, adjusting the blue prints in the database and populating a build list for the Petes. Carl planned that his base would eventually be a city, so he needed everything organized properly. He started at the bottom, water and sewage. With the detailed scans from the satellites, he planned out how his city would have water brought in and dispose of its waste.

With the advanced technology Carl had access to, he didn't really need to have power or communication lines run, but he decided to have them laid as a backup to his technology. That was one of the mistakes that the Ancients had made, in Carl's opinion. They relied on only their main advanced technology, instead of a robust system of backups. Carl wanted to make sure what he was building was robust and wouldn't fall apart from just one or two technologies failing or being attacked at a critical point by their enemies.

Carl's whole plan for his future city was that he would build his own estate in the center. It would be the ruler's palace, the center of his organization and empire. He would build it on a grand scale. And as he had more people added to his budding empire, his city would be built based on the basic designs and zoning he decided on. Anytime he gifted or sold parcels of land to any future citizens, they could design their own estates or businesses as they wished. And the basic utilities would be there for them to hook into.

The individuals that most proved their loyalty and ability to him would continue to receive benefits that allowed them to build their own little demesne. They could establish their own families and dynasties.

And he would have a standing army of his own that his citizens could apply to join. They would be the elite troops that could go anywhere and do anything needed.

Obviously his plans were big enough that he couldn't accomplish everything in 10 years. But for the first time, Carl was willing to plan out and act for a long term investment. He was planning for something beyond the original 10 years, something he could come back to.

Carl eventually planned to be in charge of his own destiny and movements, apart from the jump chain. Living with Caiyi for so long had woken something up in Carl, and he was eager to build himself a future, instead of just accumulating powers and waiting to see what happens at the end of the line.

* * *

Once the supply chain was established, the Petes started building with a will. Carl saw his estate start to build up. He had taken a lot of inspiration from Caiyi's palace, but adjusted it to make more sense with the technology and magic he had available.

With the basics handled, Carl turned his attention to building himself a space ship that he could travel around on and visit the motherland.

After Carl once more perused all the designs that the Ancients had in their database, he realized that he didn't like any of them. Not to mention that they were all built to be crewed by thousands, and he was all by himself with only his Petes to help him.

So Carl started his design from scratch. For the outside of his ship, Carl decided to go with a simple puddle jumper sized ship. With his access to space expansion runes and enchantments, Carl decided he would go the route that the Time Lords had. He would have a small ship that was bigger on the inside.

And Carl ran into a bit of a snag in his design work. The software the Ancients had for designing ships had absolutely no data on the magic and profound crafting abilities that Carl had. So how could he design his desired ship properly, and trust in it, if his database had no idea how to utilize his knowledge and skills? Would his ship be a disaster waiting to happen?

"Well, time for another stint in the Time Pearl." Carl commented to Pete 1. "This will take a while that I don't want to spend in outside time."

Carl then gathered his army of Petes and, with his power generator and computer, entered his Heavenly Time Pearl.

The Petes were tasked with building a science and testing facility in the land of the Time Pearl with material from his Farm as well as expanding his computer. He wanted a more robust set up if he was going to be testing and gathering data. One of the first things they built was the device to build and recharge Potentia. He would need power if he was to put in his full effort to study how his Magic, Ki, and Profound Energy interacted with technology, not to mention making things robust enough to not break easily from his extremely enhanced strength.

When the device for recharging Potentia was built, Carl used his all senses to follow along with the device while it recharged the Potentia he had found. Thanks to his abilities, he soon figured out the knack to recharging the Potentia. His practice in mastering the technique for charging Potentia paid off; he soon had stacks of the incredible batteries that drew their power from pocket dimensions.

The weeks started slipping by quickly as Carl started his work. While the Petes worked on building his science facilities, Carl worked on scanning his Library of Magic into the database. Then he worked on entering everything he knew about cultivation, profound tools crafting, medicine, and insights he had gained on the nature of fire, water, wind, lightning, and darkness, from a cultivation perspective.

His Farms provided plenty of materials for the Petes to work with while in the time dilation, so his testing facility, based entirely on the ancient technology, was ready quite quickly. While the facilities were impressive, they were a bit inadequate to handle his abilities. The ancients had made their designs based on the expectations of dealing with baseline, unenhanced humans. They had no access to Ki enhanced individuals, let alone those with Profound Energy. So it wasn't too surprising that Carl had to make many adjustments in his facilities as he accidently broke things.

So Carl spent months and years using the recording technology, and constantly adjusting it and building it up, to study magic and all the uses of it. From the Arithmancy to Ancient Runes. Potions, charms, transfiguration, and alchemy. Even blood magic, rituals, and dark arts.

As Carl began seeing all the data being gathered from a scientific approach to studying magic, he wasn't surprised to note that there were lots of gaps and mistakes in the Wizarding World's Arithmancy. It wasn't that they weren't clever or intelligent enough to get it right, it was just that they didn't have the proper tools available to get accurate information to base their calculations on.

Another problem was that they still worked their calculations on parchment by hand. That had definitely been holding them back. Calculations that took fractions of a second for Carl's computer to accurately finish, would have taken a wizard weeks or months, and that was if they didn't make a mistake somewhere and have to start over.

While technology could never replace the awesomeness of being able to manipulate the world around them by sheer will power and magic, science and technology could make the study and understanding of the forces involved so much better and more efficient. Then he could use that knowledge and technology to maximize the training needed to become proficient in wielding magic.

From his studies of the magical discipline, Carl created better training schedules and study materials. He knew his Luna, Hermione, and Fleur would love the books and information he would bring back to them.

Aside from his own magical abilities, Carl spent quite a lot of time scanning magical materials with his technology. He had all the different magical herbs, plants, and creatures that he could produce from his farms to scan. He scanned every aspect of magic interacting with itself, with different materials, and with his technology.

Carl also performed many experiments with the Runes Schemes that he would be installing in his space ship. What would happen in the case of loss of power? What if an outside attack damaged some of his rune schemes? How could he most efficiently use his magical knowledge and abilities to enhance his technology so it still remained robust?

Carl soon lost track of time as he continued to experiment. He had all the food and materials he needed, he had a massive project, and he was enjoying the hell out of learning so much.

After decades had passed, Carl realized that his experiments with magic were giving him diminishing returns for the amount of time he spent on them. He had done all he could with the knowledge he had, and any further advances would be cutting edge, new discoveries. Carl had already swore to himself that when he reached that point, he would move on to other studies.

While he _could_ spend the entire 10 years of absolute time in the pearl doing more experimenting and expanding his knowledge, he knew that spending 365,000 years alone inside time dilation would not be healthy for him.

So Carl moved on from magic and started his studies into measuring Ki. The body energy that he learned to manipulate in the HSDK world was amazing for being able to take a baseline human, and through only some basic training, allow him to access his body energy and perform amazing feats.

He wanted to understand it and how best to help others grow their Ki. He also included the technique of The Great Way of the Buddha in his studies of Ki. He felt that the Great Way of the Buddha was a method of devouring outside energy to build up the body and increase Ki. And he was soon proven right, as he adjusted his sensors to be able to track the energy while Carl was practicing the technique.

After a few years, Carl realized that he had reached the limits of what he could learn for now with regard to Ki and training it. The next step he would need would be to take some baseline humans and study the effects on their bodies as they developed their Ki, to scan and catalogue the changes from the very beginning of the process.

The other big thing about Ki was that it relied on a person's comprehension ability and sensitivity to feeling the energy to really advance. The Great Way of the Buddha relied heavily on a person's comprehension ability to advance in the technique. So Carl knew he would have to have quite a few test subjects with differing abilities to get a good range of information on the subject of Ki.

Once Carl had moved on from studying Ki, he began his studies on Profound Energy. There was so much information that Carl had gathered, that it took a long time to get through. While Carl had been in the ATG world, with his access to the Royal Family's library, he had made copies of all the information they had. All the various cultivation and combat techniques of an Empire had been available for him to copy.

He had vast amounts of different Cultivation resources available from his Farm. He had new metals and crystals that the Ancients had never even imagined that he needed to scan. There were also the animals and animal parts that were used in everyday cultivation tools, weapons, and armor. And many of those animals and plants needed a long time to grow, even under the fast growth speed of his Farms.

Profound arrays, all the tools Carl could craft, the medical field, and alchemy. The sheer amount of information Carl had on Cultivation took a long time to get through and scan.

And then Carl repeated the experiments he had done for magic and technology, and now focused on profound energy and technology. Carl lost track of time once more as he worked to gather as much data as he could.

After many decades of work, when Carl finally hit the point of diminishing returns, he briefly considered exiting time dilation at that point. But there was one more thing Carl needed to study before he built his space ship and left the pearl. He needed to understand how Magic, Ki, and Profound Energy interacted with each other in his technology.

Besides, while he was in time dilation, he wasn't worried about what was happening outside. It must have been just a short time outside. Carl finally looked at the clock to see how much time had actually passed.

"I've already been in here over three hundred years?!" Carl laughed. "Man, the Time Pearl was definitely the best item purchase I've made. I would have never gotten a fraction of this done in only 10 years without it. Now, time to get started on seeing how Magic, Profound Energy, and Ki interact with each other and technology."

Already from his studies of Profound Energy and Magic, Carl had determined better metals and alloys he could use to build his space ship. The infusing of Profound Energy or Magic into normal materials made them fundamentally stronger. The various abilities of arrays and runes were amazing for micronizing his ships systems. Pocket dimensions and expanded space for the win.

Time passed by and Carl learned a great deal about how his technology, Profound crafting, and Magical crafting worked together. Once he gained enough practical knowledge in how the different forces worked together, Carl decided that it was past time to build his space ship and get out of his time pearl. There were things to do in the outside world, and he was beginning to feel like a shut in.

And while he loved all that he learned and built, he was starting to feel stifled and lonely in his time pearl.

Carl was still all for his idea to build a small ship that could traverse through the gate system, and was bigger on the inside. So he got working designing his ship.

Utilizing all that he learned, he built his fighter sized ship that was bigger on the inside. He thought the basic cylinder shape of a Puddle Jumper was pretty dumb looking, even if it made sense to maximize the ships size while still allowing it to pass through the Stargate.

However, Carl had access to space expansion magic and pocket dimension capabilities, so he wasn't constrained by such considerations. Carl decided to build his ship to be similar in appearance to a Battlecruiser from the Terrans in the game Starcaft. It was a simple matter to have the wings and protrusions collapse into the main body of the ship so that it could pass through the Stargate when he so desired.

When in the mode for Gate travel, Carl's ship was approximately the same dimensions as a Puddle Jumper, 4.7 meters diameter, and 8 meters long. But inside, with expanded space, it was 4 kilometers long and 2.2 km high, with many decks and redundant systems.

Carl's Battlecruiser, which he named the Yamato after the Starcraft Battlecruiser's main weapon, had three engines to move about. An intergalactic hyperdrive, an interstellar hyperdrive, and sublight engines that could get the ship moving right up to the edge of the speed of light.

Carl also added some flight runes to the ship, so that if by some strange occurrence his engines were offline, he could use his own magic to fly the ship, at least for basic maneuvers.

It had shields to protect against energy beams, physical projectiles, and phased missiles. It had a cloaking device, transporter, and the best damn scanners in the galaxy, as well as Communication devices that could connect across whole galaxies and communicate in near real time.

On board the ship he had the best medical bay the Ancients could construct with his entire database of medical knowledge. Life support systems that could provide air, water, and food indefinitely. Living quarters for over a thousand passengers, even though Carl's ship was automated and run by his orders.

He had entertainment and training facilities, dining rooms, and plenty of heads with full shower and bath capabilities.

The Yamato's weapons compliment included a rail gun, a beam cannon, and those phasing missiles that the Ancients loved oh so much. With pocket dimensions as storage cabinets, the Yamato could fire off slugs from its rail gun or a constant stream of missiles for over a week straight before running out.

Aside from the purely technological weapons, he was able to channel his magic and profound energy abilities through his ship at need. So he would hopefully never be without a means of attack.

And every ship system had a main, backup, and tertiary power supply. If one system's power supply went down, the backups for other systems supplies could be diverted in a moment to provide power anywhere needed. The ship was chock full of the upgraded Potentia he had designed.

Carl even added a Room of Requirement that he labeled his holodeck.

Yes, Carl was quite proud of his ship.

Once the Yamato was built and tested, Carl had accomplished everything he wanted to. He gathered his army of Petes and the Yamato and put them in his pocket dimension, and exited his Time Pearl.

It had only been a bit over four days outside his time dilation, while it was over four centuries inside. Doing mad science by himself was fun, but it was definitely slower than having large teams doing the work for him. Something he would have to keep in mind in the future.

Carl pulled the Yamato out of his pocket dimension and took it for a test drive. No matter what, he felt a sense of satisfaction and pride from his incredible creation. It had certainly been a pleasure to build, and it was proving fun to drive too.


	49. Stargate 03

Mordan was rushing away from the planet that held the repository of knowledge that he was supposed to guard as a part of his duties assigned by the council. He was still quite agitated from his meeting with the one known as Carl. He was more than glad to get away from the person who had so easily captured him.

After millennia of not being shackled by anything, he didn't like the feeling of being held prisoner one bit.

'A flesh and blood human that has the power to affect an ascended one.' Mordan nervously worried to himself as he flew back to the metaphysical plane the council had established as council chambers. 'His appearance changes everything. I don't think the plan will be viable now. I just don't know what the council will do about this.' If he had been a flesh and blood human, he would be gnawing on his lip and convulsively rubbing his hands in worry.

Mordan soon arrived at the council chambers. To a human they would appear as nothing more than huge constructs of energy, stable but powerful. To Mordan it appeared to be a towering edifice of brilliant silver, modeled after the high technology that the Alteran people once commanded.

On the metaphysical plane that the council chambers were on, Mordan appeared to be a human like he had been so very long ago. It was an entirely unneeded foible, but the ascended that were once Alterans felt a sort of comfort in appearing in their original forms in their constructed council chambers.

Mordan nervously entered the council chambers. He looked up at the raised dais where the chairs of the seven council members loomed over him. One would almost think it was a psychological ploy by the council members to make them appear to always be sitting in a position of authority and judgment over any who came before them. But of course, the ascended were above such cheap psychological ploys.

The central council figured took charge as soon as Mordan was standing before them. "Report, Mordan. What has got you so riled up this time?"

Mordan swallowed reflexively in nervousness. "I met a human named Carl on the planet I was to guard. He took apart the building with the repository while I was on my rounds, and he's building himself some technology with it. He…he had the power to bind me." Mordan stumbled over his last words.

"Impossible!" One of the figures on the left exclaimed. "There are no flesh and blood humans with the power to affect us! It must have been a trick of some kind."

The central figure raised his hand to command silence among the council, and indicate that they would discuss it in depth after the report was heard. "Continue, Mordan. Tell us everything about your meeting with this Carl."

Mordan shifted his feet nervously where he stood, but obeyed and related his encounter with Carl to the council. After he finished his report, he fell silent, waiting for the council to tell him what to do next.

"Very well, Mordan. Go about your duties. Avoid the planet with this…Carl, on it for the time being. We will discuss and decide what to do with him."

Mordan nodded, relieved that he wasn't expected to do anything more and he could avoid Carl in the future. He hurried out of the council chambers.

The central figure of the council, sat contemplatively for a few moments. "What do you think of this Carl? What should be done with him?"

The figure that had exclaimed earlier about the impossibility of Carl having the powers described, snorted. "Mordan is obviously an idiot. That kind of power isn't possible for a flesh and blood human to possess. If it was, we would have discovered it ages ago. It's obviously some technology. Maybe something Moros, that renegade, was working on. And if he has technology like that, he's a threat. We need to dispose of him." He plainly said.

A female on the other side of the council from him scoffed. "It's always your first answer to attack. Need I remind you of our rules against interfering in the affairs of mortals? You don't have any pieces in place to act as a proxy, so you're obviously just blowing smoke, as usual. We should send someone to guide this Carl so that he's useful for our plan. With a bit of work, we can modify our plan and it will continue as before."

A third figure then spoke in a reasoning tone. "While it is clearly impossible for this person to have such powers, it wouldn't hurt to gather more information before we initiate contact again. We don't know anything about him, so how are we to manipulate him if we don't know what buttons to push? As such, we should gather more information." He finished explaining.

The other three council members didn't appear to have anything to add to what was already spoken, so the Head of the council nodded seriously to indicate he had heard and considered each argument. "I agree with Jerl. We need to know more about this Carl before we act." He addressed the council member named Jerl. "Send your information gatherers to learn more about this man. What makes him tick? What can we do to make him follow our directives? We shall revisit the topic when you have brought us more information. Either he will be of use to the plan, or he will be disposed of." The Head of the council pronounced.

The more combative minded council member snorted in disgust that he wasn't allowed to simply end the threat of Carl immediately. The more moderate council member smiled, complacent. Carl would eventually be used in her plan to help the council rid themselves of the threat of the Ori, so she was satisfied for now.

The council broke apart to continue their duties.

* * *

"Huh, guess they aren't showing up then." Carl muttered to himself when no ascended snot balls showed up for a few days after the date he'd set with Mordan to meet. "Well, it isn't like I cared about them anyway or needed their help. I just wanted to be sure they wouldn't bother or plot against me." Carl shrugged and moved on.

Over the time since he'd met Mordan, Carl had spent his time productively, and his base was shaping up quite nicely. The Petes had their fleet of hover trucks that could deliver them all over the world, and their supply chain was solid.

The Petes had a build queue that would keep them busy for some months. He had entered some plans for the Petes to build planetary defenses to protect against any enemy showing up from space. The basic planetary defenses of shields and anti-spaceship missiles would be finished within another couple of weeks.

The Petes had already built up the security building where the stargate would be housed. With the abilities of the Goa'uld and Jaffa, and the chokepoint that the stargate represented, they would not be able to get more than a few feet inside his world before they were incapacitated. And that was if he even had the Stargate active. When he wasn't using it, it was powered down and physically blocked from forming Wormholes to prevent unauthorized visitors.

Once the space defenses were in place, the Petes would start producing some more Stargates that would be on its own network, separate from the one built and left behind by the ancients. Once Carl had people to populate his planet and his city base was built up enough, he would start adding more worlds to his Empire, and he would have his own dedicated gate network for basic travel and transport around his Empire. The old gate network would be accessible on only a few worlds with a military presence to keep control of trade and traffic with worlds outside his control.

He had quite a few large plots of land dedicated to producing food for his future people. He also had many plots of land set aside to grow the various wizarding world plants that he'd gathered from the HP world, and other plots set aside for producing various plants from the ATG world for cultivation resources.

He hadn't planted the magical or profound based plants yet, since he was waiting for the delegation from the ascended council to show up before he erected his wards. Once his wards were up, the snot balls shouldn't be able to enter his world or even see what was happening there. And he didn't want them to be able to examine his defenses or special materials.

The ascended snot balls had already shown their arrogance and untrustworthiness, in Carl opinion. So he didn't want them getting any ideas of what he was capable of producing.

But now that they hadn't shown up, Carl figured it was time to set up his wards to keep the bodiless spies away. Carl made his way to the ward room he'd set up. He did a final inspection on the giant wards stones that were going to provide world wide wards. There really wasn't enough magic present in the world yet to power the wards, but that's where the Potentia came into play.

An array of seven by seven, a total of 49 Potentia, should ensure that the wards were powerful enough to keep the ascended out of his planet as the ward system got started. And the best thing about the wards Carl designed was that they weren't only defensive in nature. They would nurture the growth of the magic and profound energies on the world.

As the energy was circulated around the world, it would increase the local energy available to enable the magical and profound energy plants and animals to grow. Once the farms were running properly, the ambient magic of the plants and animals would enable a positive spiral of growing energy. The available energy on the planet would continue to grow, and reinforce the wards, ensuring that the initial Potentia powering the wards were never run dry.

Once Carl checked that everything was in place and correct, Carl powered up the massive wardstone. He shivered at the power that radiated out and expanded from the wardstone. Any ascended beings that were hanging about on the planet should have just been kicked off and given quite a headache.

Carl smirked at the thought of it. Arrogant and meddlesome pests that finally encountered something they didn't understand. It was amusing to think of their reactions. Too bad he couldn't get video of their reactions.

Once that was done, Carl made his way to his computer room and double checked via the computer that his Petes were fine and following the build queue. Nodding in satisfaction, he left the expanded original building that he'd built upon arriving on the planet.

Standing in an open space in front of the area where his future palace would be, Carl pulled out the Yamato from his pocket space. Seeing the Starcraft Battlecruiser hovering in the air in front of Carl made him grin hugely.

Back in his original world, he had been a fan of the Starcraft games, so having his own Battlecruiser was very satisfying. He wondered if this reality would have a Blizzard company that released the Starcraft and Warcraft games. It was currently the middle of October 1997, and in his original world Starcraft had been released in March 1998. It was something to check on when he got to Earth.

Carl reached out with his magical senses to the Yamato and remotely activated its teleport system to beam him onto his ship's bridge. He sat down in the command chair, which allowed him to interface with the computer. He went over the status report. All systems were online. The magical wards were active, the profound arrays running just fine. Green lights across the board, so to speak.

The sublight engines activated, bringing the Yamato up into orbit. The view screen in front showed Carl the view of his planet from space. It looked beautiful. It was especially good looking because it was his.

Bringing up the navigation computer, he set course for Earth. The interstellar hyperdrive activated, bringing the Yamato into hyperspace. An hour later, just before arriving in the solar system, Carl activated the stealth systems. They exited hyperspace, and in front of Carl was the Earth.

It had been quite some time since he'd been on his home planet, with the amount of time he's spent in his time pearl back in the ATG world. There was just a nice feeling of coming home that he felt upon arriving back at Earth after so long. No matter how amazing traveling the various realities and worlds felt, there was just something comforting about home.

Shrugging off his momentary nostalgia, Carl had his sensors scanning everything in the solar system, cataloguing the space stations, satellites, and debris in the space around Earth. He launched his own stealth satellites that would keep an eye on Earth and the solar system and send alerts to him if any threats to Earth appeared.

In orbit over Earth, he scanned for any sources of naquadah on the planet. According to the show there should be three or four Goa'uld on the planet at the current time. And chances were, there would be some naquadah sources of technology near the Goa'uld on planet.

A short time later, he looked over the list. In Washington there was a modest concentration of tools and weapons with naquadah. A ring teleportation platform, several Zat'nik'tels, a Kara'kesh, and several staff blasters. There was a Goa'uld inside a host. According to the show, that would be Setesh, who was posing as a cult leader.

He had quite a few people brainwashed with some drugs and was living a decadent life. Carl thought it was quite strange that the Goa'uld Setesh apparently wasn't trying to return to space, or conquer the planet or anything. Maybe he was on vacation?

In Mexico there was a sarcophagus with a Goa'uld in a host inside. That should be Hathor, a Goa'uld queen that had the ability to excrete pheromones that let her control the males around her.

In Egypt there was a Tel'tak buried in the sand under a small pyramid. Inside the pyramid were two stasis jars with Goa'uld inside. One of which was dead, while the other lived. That would be Isis and Osiris. Isis should be the dead one.

There was the Stargate in Colorado, where the Stargate Command was located. The dialing device for the Stargate on the other hand was in a Russian warehouse.

There was the second Stargate in Antarctica, along with the Ancient outpost. The location under Glastonbury Tor that Carl knew had some things left behind by Merlin/Moros wasn't showing up on his scans. Apparently there were some shields in place to prevent the location from being located easily.

There were various other small items and tools around the world, but overall there wasn't a lot of remnants of the Ancients or Goa'uld left on Earth. Carl wasn't that surprised since the Goa'uld had plenty of time while ruling over the planet to gather all the remnants left behind by the Ancients, as well as mine all the naquadah available.

Carl focused his scans over the Antarctic and found the female Alteran that was infected with the plague frozen in the ice.

"Well, what should I do first here?" Carl wondered aloud. "I'm just spoiled for choices, really. Why don't I roll a dice, and decide then?" After a quick roll of the dice Carl had his answer of what to do. "Well, looks like I'm going to be saving the Ancient Lady stuck in the ice. Not quite the Lady of the Lake, but she'll have to do." Carl finished with a grin.

Carl then had the computer lock onto the frozen lady, and beamed her and a chunk of ice up. He wasn't concerned about getting the plague, since he had the Clean Blooded perk from the HP world, he should be immune to diseases. He would be sure to sterilize everything to be sure the plague didn't spread though.

Leaving the bridge, Carl made his way down to Medical, where he had beamed her to. Once he entered medical, he opened his Warehouse portal and levitated the lady and her ice block behind him while going into the medical bay.

"The repository I grabbed didn't have the cure for the plague, unfortunately. The ancients had only created a cure after they left the Milky Way behind, and I don't feel like dealing with Atlantis just yet." Carl started speaking with the frozen lady. Apparently his long time alone with just his technology and Petes for company had affected him more than he realized before then.

"I'm really uncertain how you survived way back then. The ancients supposedly wiped all life from the Milky Way Galaxy to get rid of the plague, so how you survived is a mystery. Come to think of it, did the Nox survive the purge, or did they evolve after? And the ancients would have had to come back at some point to the Milky Way if they made the Four Races Alliance. Hmm, the repository didn't have those answers for me, my dear. It sounds like the snot balls censored the repositories before I got my hands on them. Something to keep in mind, that the repository, while a great deal of information, doesn't have all the answers. It's not some magical panacea."

Carl placed the ice cube on the medbay unit. He scanned her and saw that the program had a plan to thaw and heal the lady of the plague, as well as her long stay in cryogenic stasis. Unfortunately, the medbay unit couldn't help her with any lost or faded memories. It could heal her perfectly, but not help the mind with its memory connections.

"Well, maybe some Occlumency lessons would help you?" Carl wondered aloud. "Something to look into in the future, perhaps."

Carl began the program to heal the lady of the ice, and sat down as he waited for her to be healed up. It took longer than most of the healing sessions Carl had watched. But in only an hour the ancient lady was thawed and healed. She was put into sleep to let her wake up when her body felt like it.

Once he was sure she was healed, Carl cast the strongest cleansing spells he knew everywhere in his Warehouse and the medical room on his ship. He levitated the lady out of his warehouse and settled her in the medical unit of his ship. He had his ship scanning everywhere, and was assured that the plague had no chance to make a comeback.

Carl then settled down to wait for the thawed lady of the ice to wake up. While Carl waited for her to wake up, he pulled out a computer pad and started perusing the information his scans had of Earth. He soon found out that the gaming company Blizzard didn't exist here.

Thinking about how this version of Earth didn't have the same games his did, and remembering an old 80s movie "The Last Starfighter" gave Carl some ideas. He would have to flesh out the ideas a bit, and set up a company here on Earth. It would take some work, but he thought he could set it up pretty quickly.

A gasp from the bed gained Carl's attention. He saw the ancient lady was awake, and looking around. Carl put away his computer pad, and stood up. The moment he moved, the lady's eyes snapped over to Carl's.

Carl smiled, and slowly moved over to her side, keeping up an unthreatening demeanor. "Hello. Do you understand me?" Carl asked her in the Alteran language.

"Yes." She answered simply. "I understand you. Where am I? Who are you?" She continued to ask.

"Well, I'll start with who I am. My name is Carl. You are in the medical unit on my ship, the Yamato. I found you frozen in the ice on the planet below us. You were frozen for many, many years, and you were suffering from a plague." At her gasp of surprise, Carl hastened to reassure her. "It's okay, you're completely healed now of the plague. You'll be fine."

When she finally calmed down, Carl continued to question her. "Do you remember your name?"

She paused in thought, and then started looking a little panicked. "I don't remember!" She exclaimed. She curled up on the medbay unit, hugging herself.

"There, there." Carl moved over and rubbed her back in soothing circles. "You're healthy, free of the ice, and I'm here to help you." He comforted her.

It took some time, but she eventually calmed down.

"I remember some basic things. Small flashes of school, or social events. But beyond that, nothing." She eventually said.

"What do you think about using the name Alice until you remember your own name, or find one you like better?" Carl asked her.

She shrugged. "It's as good a name as any, I suppose." Alice commented.

"So, what would you like to do first, Alice?" Carl asked.

"Some food? I feel like it's been a long time since I've eaten." Alice suggested after some thought.

"Sounds good. Follow me." Carl brought Alice along to the nearest kitchen and soon had some food cooked up for her. One of the spells he'd set up was the ability to pour a mug of Root Beer from his keg in any of the kitchens on board his ship. So he made sure to serve her a mug. If his Root Beer could heal the brain damage studying demonology caused back in the BtVS world, it may help heal her mind and help recover her memories.

After the meal, Alice told Carl that she felt tired again. Carl showed her to a room next to his. He showed her the facilities and explained how to contact him through the computer if she needed anything. With a promise to explain more about what was going on when she had rested, he left her to her recuperative rest.

Carl returned to the bridge and looked over the results of the scans he'd done previously.

"Well, the plague ridden ancient lady is taken care of for now." Carl mused to himself. "So many things become easier with advanced technology. Case in point, taking care of the Goa'uld left behind on Earth." Carl then finished inputting orders to his computer and executing the orders.

The Goa'uld on the planet, aside from the larva one in Teal'c's body, were teleported into tanks on board the Yamato. Setesh, Osiris, and Hathor all got their own tanks. Isis was too far gone to revive, having died when the stasis on her jar failed. She was sent to the recycler, so to speak.

The hosts of Hathor and Setesh were sent to the medical unit on board his ship. The computer kept them in stasis while they were being scanned. After the scans were complete, Carl saw that the host of Hathor was so old that without the constant work of the Goa'uld parasite, the host body would soon die due to organ failure and shock.

Carl frowned at the report, and decided that he would have to do something about that. He sent orders to the ship's VI to set up two cloning units to create new bodies for the former host to be transferred into.

Once that was done, Carl had his ship target all the various devices that Setesh had stashed in his Washington lair where he had been posing as a cult leader and transport them into the Yamato's storage holds. He teleported up the Tel'tak from Egypt, the Sarcophagus from Mexico, and he snatched the dialing device for the Stargate from the Russian warehouse.

Carl checked once more that his guests were doing well and still asleep. With some time on his hands, Carl had the ship focus on one particular hotel in Washington D.C. that was very high end. From his worker VIs, Carl knew that many politicians used the hotel and attached restaurant for their liaisons with their mistresses, political paymasters, and other such under the table dealings.

Carl summoned his profound armor to his body and changed it to a suit appropriate for a rich player in the area. He then focused his magical senses on the hotel, and soon teleported himself to the hotel, just out of sight of anyone.

Casually strolling up to the entrance, Carl saw that his worker VIs recognized him immediately and sent notice to the manager. The manager soon met him in front of the restaurant, and they were soon seated in a private booth, with food ordered for Carl to enjoy.

"I've looked over the records, and you and all the managing VIs have been doing a good job." Carl complimented the VI, and saw some uncharacteristic behavior. The manager actually looked pleased with himself.

'Interesting.' Carl thought to himself. 'They seem to be slowly learning and evolving. When I first met them after the Monopoly Gauntlet, they didn't seem more than automatons. I wonder how long it would take them until they become self aware. And if that happens, will they continue to be bound to my properties, or will I have to find new workers in each world?'

"So just keep doing what you've been doing. Pass along my compliments to the other managers too." Carl commented just as the food arrived. He dismissed the manager to continue his duties and snacked on the food. It had only been a few hours since he ate with Alice, but he could digest food incredibly quickly when he was so inclined.

After his meal was finished, Carl pulled out his phone and called up a local law firm, Dewey, Cheetum, & Howe. It was only 9 in the morning, local time, so with a bit of wrangling, he was able to squeeze an appointment with one of their junior lawyers in one hour.

Carl was somewhat amused at just how grudging the "concession" was to even give him that much, since he was calling out of the blue with no credentials or references. The fact that they pawned him off on some subordinate didn't bother him, as long as the junior member had a good attitude and could accomplish what he wanted done.

Carl had the manager of his Hotel call up a car to drive him to the lawyer's office. While traveling to the office in the car, Carl wrote up a magical contract that he would sign with the lawyer. It basically ensured, backed by Carl's magic which was quite strong by this point, that the lawyer wouldn't betray his confidence and would work for his best interests.

Upon arriving at the lawyer's firm, Carl greeted the receptionist and was ushered to an office to wait. Carl looked around the office and made some small observations about the lawyer he was about to meet. Based on the large stacks of research and case files, his future lawyer was likely used by the other members of the firm to do their research for them, as she struggled to prove herself to the higher ups that she was ready to become a full partner.

Ms. Tera Cole finally arrived for the appointment only seven minutes late. From her slightly rushed appearance and sloppily applied makeup, Carl deduced that she had only been informed of the meeting at the last minute.

"It's nice to meet you, Mr. Edwards. I'm sorry for my tardiness. Traffic slowed down my commute this morning." The tall and statuesque blond greeted Carl the moment she entered his office.

Carl chuckled a bit. "It's no problem. From what I gather when I made the appointment only a short while ago I was lucky to even be given the meeting that I was." Carl noticed Ms. Cole frown slightly at hearing how her morning schedule had been thrown into disarray.

Commanding respect for one's time was a sign of just how strong a lawyer's reputation was. That she was thrown a last minute, low priority meeting told Ms. Cole just how weak her reputation was to her firm. And with all the work she put into being noticed by the higher ups in the hopes of being promoted, she was not at all happy with the evidence that she wasn't respected by her fellows.

Carl smirked a bit inside at this realization. Here was an opportunity to get a lawyer all to his own, to work on his interests, if he offered her the proper incentives.

All this ran through Carl's mind in the time it took Ms. Cole to set her things down and sit behind her desk. Carl sat in the indicated seat across from her as he watched as Ms. Cole compose herself, pull out a pad of paper to make notes, and face Carl seriously. Carl appreciated that even though she wasn't happy with her morning or colleagues, she put up a professional face to work with him.

"And what can Dewey, Cheetum, & Howe do for you, Mr. Edwards?" She inquired of Carl once she was ready.

"I find that I'm in need of a lawyer to represent my local interests here on Earth." Ms. Cole raised an eyebrow at the unusual wording. "And that lawyer needs to be strong willed and firm in representing me. In just the short time I've observed your office and yourself, I believe you have potential Ms. Cole. It would be a full time job, so you would have to pass all your other cases back to your firm, though. Are you interested?"

Ms. Cole sighed a little disappointed at how the meeting was going. Why did she always get the nutters? Was it her good looks that attracted them? She really wanted to rise to the top of her profession, but if it wasn't her bosses insinuations that she would advance more if she did so on her back, it was the clients that thought her retainer got them _services_ she would never provide.

"Look, Mr. Edwards. I'm afraid that-" She began before Carl interrupted her.

"Ms. Cole. I can sense your rejection from here. But before you say the words and lose the opportunity of a lifetime, I believe there is one thing I need to show you that might sway you." Carl stated.

looked at Carl flatly. "And what is that?" The expectation of being sexually harassed clearly evident in her face.

Carl smiled and had the Yamato teleport the two of them and their chairs to the bridge. The flash of light distracted Ms. Cole momentarily.

"Why, that is what you need to see." Carl commented, pointed behind Ms. Cole. She turned around and froze, mouth agape as she took in the scene in front of her.

Carl admitted to himself, he enjoyed the shock that turned to awe when Ms. Cole realized she was on a ship in orbit over Earth. She absently stood up and approached the view screen and just stood there, staring. She was entranced at the scene of her home planet from space.

"I'm newly arrived in the neighborhood." Carl quietly said to Ms. Cole once her shock receded enough for her to pay attention to what he was saying. "I'm not without a substantial amount of resources though."

Carl pulled out a stack of gold bars from his pocket dimension so they were sitting right next to Ms. Cole. Almost in a trance, she reached out and tried to pick up one of the bars of gold, but found it was much heavier than she expected, which confirmed to her that it was real.

"Like I said, I have plenty of resources to retain a lawyer as she oversees my interests here on Earth. And I would expect you to eventually head your own team of lawyers, maybe even your own firm." Carl shrugged. "If that is what you want to work towards, at any rate."

"I-I…" She trailed off, looking at him searchingly. "What could you possibly want with Earth, if you've already got all this?" She waved at the gold, his ship, and the view screen.

Carl chuckled in response. "Let's sit down and discuss things for a bit then, Ms. Cole. A little bit more information should help you make your decision. Anything to drink?" Carl asked her after they sat back down.

"Just water." Ms. Cole croaked. Carl nodded and the ship teleported in a bottle of water for Ms. Cole to sip on.

"Okay, the first thing you need to know, is that we are not alone in the galaxy." Carl chuckled at the "no duh" face Ms. Cole gave him. "Yes, yes. It is obvious but needed to be said. The Milky Way galaxy is currently languishing under the despotic rule of a parasitic species called the Goa'uld."

Carl brought up a little bit of a picture show and tell on the screen to introduce the Goa'uld to Ms. Cole. She was suitably horrified to see the scans of the parasites in the host bodies, and learn that the Goa'uld were the current overlords of the galaxy.

Carl then went on to explain what the Stargates were and how the American military had a gate and were currently running missions through it to other planets to try to find allies and technology to build up their strength to fight against the Goa'uld.

"So, as you can see, the Earth is currently teetering on the edge. The SGC is struggling to stay ahead of the disaster that they created in the first place. If nothing changes, then chances are good that the Goa'uld would come here, kill a large majority of the population and enslave the rest. And at the moment, there isn't a thing the military could do about it."

Ms. Cole had a horrified look on her face for a moment, before she had a thought and looked intensely at Carl. "But, you're planning on doing something about it, aren't you? That's why you're here?"

Carl nodded in affirmation and smiled in appreciation for how quickly Ms. Cole regained her equanimity. "Indeed, yes, Ms. Cole. I've got a number of plans to counter the Goa'uld. But I'm not going to simply hand over my tech to the military to do what they want with it. And I certainly wouldn't trust most of the politicians to make the right decisions for me."

"I plan to raise my own forces that will be loyal to me to work as a sort of peacekeeping organization throughout the galaxy after I depose the Goa'uld. I plan to recruit some people here from Earth, and some from other planets."

"What I need from you, Ms. Cole, is your assistance to build up a global company that will represent me here on Earth. It will work to find worthy people to recruit for my organization while at the same time helping Earth as a whole build up their technology and eventually move into the stars. In the meantime, I'll provide protections for Earth so nothing untoward happens."

Carl watched as Ms. Cole's face showed the feelings and thoughts she cycled through.

"I'm in." She declared a moment later.

"Excellent!" Carl declared. He pulled out the contract he'd written earlier and handed it to Ms. Cole.

She took the contract and read it, frowning. "There's no way I'm signing this." Carl sighed. He needed some assurances that she would not leak his secrets. "Not without serious revision." She finished saying.

"Well, why don't you write out what you think should be there?" Carl was interested to see what she would come up with. "But first, should you not reschedule your workday?" Carl asked, providing a phone for her to call in.

"Oh, yeah. Probably." Ms. Cole smiled gratefully. She was looking forward to telling the bunch of jerks that ran Dewey, Cheetum, & Howe where they could stick it when she turns in her resignation in a couple of days.

After she rescheduled her day's appointment, Carl sat back and worked on his own plans while Ms. Cole worked out a contract on the tablet that Carl had handed her to work out her contract.

After some time, she presented her desired contract to Carl. After reading it, Carl chuckled at her daring. She certainly asked for a lot, including training in all he knew. Since this would be a magical contract that bound Carl to its terms, enforced by his own magic, there was no way he would allow himself to be bound to such ridiculous terms. He would be happy to have a normal employment contract with Ms. Cole to provide some of the benefits she looked for, but he refused to magically bind himself to such terms.

"Ms. Cole-"

"Call me Tera." She interrupted Carl. "If we're going to be working so closely together, then you can call me Tera."

Carl smiled at Tera, he could tell that she was at least somewhat attracted to him, and she was a very shapely blonde, who was quite beautiful too. But he had no intention of starting a relationship so soon.

"Tera." Carl smiled acknowledgment. "You can call me Carl then. I'm afraid I didn't quite clarify what the document I first handed you was. It wasn't the terms of your employment. It is a contract that will be magically enforced to ensure that you won't be able to spill my secrets to anyone without my consent. And yes, magic is real."

Carl brought out a fireball, shaped it into a small tree. Then had a lightning bolt shaped like a bird appear and fly around the tree before landing in its branches. He enjoyed Tera's surprised and awed expression for his little bit of showmanship, before dispelling the display.

"So, while we can negotiate the terms of your employment and what you will receive in recompense, I must insist that we first sign a magically enforced contract to ensure secrecy. If you're not willing to assuage my concerns of confidentiality, then I'm afraid we would be at an impasse."

Tera worried her lip in thought. "And what would be the result of my refusing to sign your confidentiality contract?" She asked with narrowed eyes.

Carl sighed. "Then I'm afraid I would return you unharmed to your office, but without the memories of meeting me, and would search for a different lawyer who would be willing to assuage my worries. I would be saddened to have to take that step, though." Carl admitted. He quite appreciated her boldness.

Tera thought about that for a moment, and realized that she really did have a lot to lose if she didn't sign the confidentiality contract. The idea of not even remembering what she had learned here wasn't a good feeling. Going back to the seemingly small world and horrible conditions of being a junior lawyer at her firm was not appealing in the least.

Tera then made the decision to sign the confidentiality contract. Afterwards, Carl and Tera worked on exactly what her payment would be. Since Tera didn't know what exactly Carl could do, he threw in a few helpful suggestions for benefits that she wouldn't have known to ask for. Some personal protection devices, like an energy shield built with technology a mind protection magical amulet, and some profound armor that Carl crafted.

She would also receive the opening of her of her profound veins as payment. Carl didn't plan to hand out the Heavenly God's Spiritual Veins (opening all the profound entrances) to just anyone. Opening an entrance or two would be rewards for those in his organization who did exemplary work who earned rewards. Tera would also receive some low level cultivation techniques and a certain amount of cultivation resources per year. It wouldn't do for his people to not be able to defend themselves.

Carl found that he wasn't too bothered with introducing profound cultivation, ki, or magic to the worlds he traveled to. There was no way that the people he trained could get more powerful than him in a short 10 years, so he didn't feel much threat. And with a bit of work to ensure loyalty among his people, there really wasn't a whole lot for him to worry about.

Once both sides were satisfied with the terms of employment, Carl returned with Tera to her office. Carl provided an account number that was courtesy of Uncle Pennybags so Tera could pull the needed funds to start establishing his company, buy the facilities, and work on hiring employees.

"Oh, and Tera?" Carl paused before exiting her office once they were done. "If you have any talented or ambitious friends that would like to get in on the ground floor of this company, do give them a call. We can always use more talented people. If you recommend them, I'll seriously consider bringing them in all the way. Who knows, you may even get a bonus for recruitment."

Carl was amused to see the calculating look in Tera's eyes. "Until the weekend then, where we will take care of the time consuming part of your payment." Carl commented before leaving.

On the weekend he planned to induce Tera's profound veins and give her some training. He may also include her close associates, if they were interesting and trustworthy people. He also had plans to include Alice and the two people in his ship who, until recently, were hosts for the Goa'uld if they decided they were interested in joining Carl.

If anyone would appreciate the chance to live free and act as a force to throw down the Goa'uld, Carl imagined it was those who were imprisoned in their own bodies for so long. Just as long as they didn't pick up any habits or proclivities from the Goa'uld. Stockholm syndrome was a thing, and just because they were a victim of the Goa'uld, it didn't automatically make them a good person. So Carl would judge them on a case by case basis.

After taking the car back to his hotel, Carl returned back to the Yamato and checked on his guests. They were still sleeping, recovering their minds and bodies from their ordeals. Carl settled down to wait, continuing his work of making plans, blueprints, and build orders for his army of Petes back on his planet. One of these days he was going to have to designate a name for his new world.


	50. Stargate 04

Carl was distracted from adjusting a blueprint by a beeping alarm. Looking up, Carl saw that the Yamato was alerting him that his guests were stirring from the first normal sleep they'd had in a long time, after being healed from their various ordeals.

Putting aside his paperwork for the time being, Carl got up to go retrieve his guests, Alice the amnesiac Alteran, and two unnamed former hosts to Goa'uld.

Carl arrived outside Alice's room just as she was opening the door to leave. The five and a half foot talk brown haired woman was looking up and down the corridor, wondering where she should go when Carl arrived.

"Hello Alice. How did you sleep?" Carl asked.

"It was refreshing. Food?" Alice almost begged as her stomach rumbled.

"Of course." Carl chuckled. "This way. I've got two more guests to gather who have also just woken up. They also survived a terrible ordeal and may be feeling somewhat scared. Let's bring them along to eat with us and I'll explain what I can about what is happening."

Alice thought about his statement for a bit, before nodding agreement and falling into step with Carl as he walked towards the medical rooms.

Upon arrival, he noticed the two former hosts were talking to each other, babbling really, since they couldn't understand each other.

The host of Hathor had been in stasis in the sarcophagus since the time that Ra was ejected from the planet in the rebellion, so she only spoke the Egyptian dialect she grew up with and some few words of Goa'uld interspersed in. The reddish brown haired woman stood at 5'9" and held herself very firmly, as if she had a military background of some kind.

The host of Setesh was an American that had been taken host several decades ago, so he only spoke English. He stood at 5'11" with dark brown hair and a goatee that Setesh had grown out.

Since neither former host understood the other and there was no one there to explain things to them, they were feeling quite a bit of nervousness, fear, and uncertainty. Carl and Alice appearing caused the two to settle their focus on him.

"Yamato, please translate my words to the two patients, and when they speak, translate their words for each of the other people here." Carl requested aloud in the Alteran language. "Hello, I'm glad to see you two are doing so well." Carl continued in the Egyptian dialect. "Would you like some food and explanations?" Carl finished in English.

"Uh, yeah. That would be great." The former host of Setesh muttered, not sure how to handle what was happening.

"Are you the one that freed me from the evil one?" The former host of Hathor asked.

Carl nodded. "Yes, it was my work. My name is Carl Edwards." He offered.

The former host of Hathor kneeled down and bowed her head. "I thank you for the salvation you granted me, and pledge myself to your service. My name was Suan."

Carl placed his hand on her head. "I would be honored to accept you into my service, Suan." Carl told her in Egyptian. "Now, rise. It is time for food."

Carl's travels through different worlds, especially his time as part of the Royal family in the ATG world had made him aware of certain aspects of treating with others. Especially when they felt they owed a life debt, it would be the height of rudeness and insult for him to say or imply that the favor was nothing. That would sound like he was saying their life was worth nothing.

So when Suan felt she had such a debt that she adopted a more ritualistic or formal attitude and words, it was important for her that Carl match her solemnity with his own formality. It would impress on her that Carl took her and her word seriously, that he was not dismissing her as beneath his notice.

"Yeah, she does have a point. I owe you one. The name is Duncan Jackson." He offered a handshake. Carl shook his hand and looked in his eyes.

"Good to meet you. I'm glad to see you're doing well." Carl offered in English.

Carl had noticed that the former host of Setesh was uncomfortable with the kneeling and pledging her service that Suan had done. Carl wasn't offended at all, since he was also raised American and understood that the informality and straight forwardness wasn't meant as an insult, it was simply how their culture was.

Carl then introduced Suan and Duncan to Alice, and the group of four retired to the dining facilities where a meal was waiting for the group. Carl waited until after dinner before he started talking about their situations and what was happening in the world and galaxy.

Suan was quite ecstatic to learn that the rebellion back in the day had driven the Goa'uld off planet for so many years. Suan also expressed an interest in joining Carl's forces to continue to assault the Goa'uld.

Duncan had been a host for the Goa'uld Setesh for nearly 60 years. He had been taken host a few years before World War 2 started. Knowing that everyone he knew was dead and gone, and how much Earth had changed threw Duncan for a loop. He wasn't quite sure what to do with himself. So he was grateful for the offer of employment and something to do.

Alice only had a few sketchy memories remaining to her, so she didn't really have the full Alteran attitudes towards peace and interfering with less advanced cultures that were instilled in the Alterans with their education while growing up. And seeing the haunted look on the two former hosts made Alice decide that freeing humans from the Goa'uld's depravations was the right thing.

Suan and Duncan were astonished to hear that Alice was an Ancient who had been frozen in the ice for millions of years. The Ancients who had built the gate network were myths and larger than life figures that they had learned about from the Goa'uld that had possessed them. It was astonishing to meet one such figure of myth.

Carl was feeling good about the three people he had saved. It felt right to train them and assign them as leaders in his organization. So Carl started explaining about his short term plans, how they would be trained and what they would learn, if they so desired.

Suan was the first to enthusiastically agree to joining in on the training. She wanted to learn the skills needed to be powerful and never be taken again by the Goa'uld. She wanted to fight them and destroy their empire.

Alice was more than willing to join as well, and work on the science and technology aspects. She was also feeling hopeful about the idea of Occlumency training. Since the Alterans abilities were so close to wizard's magic, Carl thought it might help her recover her memories.

Duncan didn't have anything to go back to, but he wasn't as gung ho to go out and fight. He was willing to settle down into being the administrator for their future forces. Carl stressed to him that he would still need to train and know how to fight, and he was more than willing to do that.

Carl then brought the trio to an entertainment room and showed them how to access Earth's internet, such as it was in 1997, as well as the libraries he had accumulated on his travels in the Yamato's computer storage. They wouldn't enter time dilation for training until the weekend when Tera joined them.

He then put on some movies so they could relax and start getting acclimatized to Earth culture. He didn't plan on having his future Empire's people's being estranged from pop culture references, that would be a horrible fate for him.

* * *

Carl knocked on the apartment door in front of him. He only had to wait a few moments before the door was wrenched open by Tera.

"Carl. You made it. Of course you made it. You set the appointment, why wouldn't you be here?" Tera babbled a bit. Carl chuckled a bit at Tera's excitement.

"Oh, so you're the one that's got Tera all hot and bothered!" A male voice sounded from inside.

"Shut it, Dan! Maria, hit him for me, will you?" Tera yelled at the guy inside her apartment, accompanied by the sound of a hand meeting the back of a head with a whack.

Carl chuckled at their antics. They seemed to be good friends with lots of history. "So, can I come in, then?"

"Yeah, please do." Tera stated and opened the door wide.

As Carl entered he just hoped there were no vampires in this world. He would have to add a warning to all his employees to be wary of that kind of thing. Better safe than sorry.

Tera soon introduced her two friends as Maria Smithe M.D., and Dan Robertson, Detective on the police force.

"I'm not sure what you're looking for as far as personnel, but they are my best friends, they're good people, and I want them to join us." Tera explained her friend's presence with hope in her eyes that Carl would recruit them.

Carl hummed in thought as he focused on Maria and Dan for a bit to get a read on them. They seemed to be good and hardworking people. "Am I to assume by their lack of rings that they don't have any significant others that they would be neglecting?" Carl questioned Tera.

"That's right. The only thing that might hold them back is their jobs and if they'd leave them behind." Tera replied.

Carl looked over Dan and Maria, seeing they were more than a bit confused about just what was going on. "Okay." Carl finally judged. "I'll give them the recruitment speech, and if they choose to join us, they will get a similar hiring package as you did."

"Hey, just what is-" Dan began demanding when the flash of the Yamato teleporting the group onboard interrupted his question. "…going on…?" Dan finished, his question trailing off. He stared around him with bulging eyes as he took in the ship they had been teleported to and especially the view of Earth from the screen.

Tera started bouncing in place, excited to see the view again, but more amused and excited to not be the one receiving the big shock. She was enjoying her friends shock immensely, judging from her smiling face.

"Well, I'll go ahead and give you the same information that I gave Tera a few days ago. We are not alone in the Galaxy…" Carl continued briefing Tera's two friends about the state of affairs in the galaxy and on Earth, and a general idea of what he was planning to do.

Once Carl had finished his briefing, he paused to watch the 6'3" detective and the short 5'3" doctor as they struggled to take in the information Carl had given them. It was definitely wrecking their world view.

"So, why aren't you approaching the military or the government? Isn't this their expertise?" Dan asked after he regained his equanimity.

Carl chuckled a bit at the question. "I don't believe murderous tyrannical aliens out to enslave humanity is anyone on Earth's specialty." Carl pointed out. "And no, I don't trust anyone to be in charge of me or my technology. The people that are the most honest that I would consider working with are the military members, but they are beholden to the politicians who are themselves beholden to their constituency at best, or their corporate paymasters at worst."

"I won't stand by and let anything bad happen to Earth, but I will not put my tech into Earth's hands to be misused. Aside from building my own organization to handle the large threats in the galaxy, I have plans to uplift Earth to the point they will be able to defend themselves soon. But beyond that, anything the different nations on Earth choose to do is their choice. I don't plan to be some kind of dictator over Earth, simply protect it."

Carl paused to let it sink in that he wasn't going to be playing dictator on Earth. Frankly speaking, there were too many different nations and cultures for Carl to want to spend time welding them into one Empire. It would be the headache beyond all headaches to do it peacefully. And attempting to do it forcefully would still be a headache beyond the bounds of what Carl wanted to put up with. He would have to kill too many good men and women to force the rest to capitulate, and Carl had no desire to start his rule by miring the Earth in civil war and terrorist actions for the next century, at least.

"So if you choose to hire on, you will owe your loyalty to me first and foremost. And I'll make sure you get all the training needed to accomplish amazing things, that you never thought possible before." Carl finished his spiel. "Take some time to think about it. If you agree, I'll have you sign a secrecy agreement. If, however you don't wish to join me, I'll return you home, but without memories of meeting us today. You can go back to your normal life."

Carl looked at the three of them, and suddenly came to a realization from looking at Maria and Dan's expressions. "Hmm, or I suppose I could just make it so you can't talk about it to anyone when you go back to your normal lives, but with your memories. Up to you to decide."

"Well, I'll give you some time to think about it." Carl offered and wandered off to give them space.

From looking at Maria and Dan's faces Carl realized that most people wouldn't appreciate being told their memories would be erased if they chose not to join him. He had suddenly realized that it might spawn some conflict or resentment if they felt like it was a choice of join him or lose memories.

After so long with his magical abilities, it felt completely normal to offer to wipe someone's memories if they weren't going to be part of his group. It was only when he'd read the horror in their faces when he so casually told them he would wipe their memories that he'd realized that maybe the way he'd pitched his offer of employment had been a bit on the heavy side for people who were so used to the normal life, especially coming out of the blue like that.

Magical contracts, enforced loyalty, extreme measures to make sure betrayal didn't happen. Those were all things Carl had grown comfortable with over his time in the Jumpchain. Things that would seem crazy or overbearing to normals. Carl warned himself that he'd have to watch out for that kind of thing in the future and adjust his approach depending on the person.

Carl soon joined Alice, Suan, and Duncan in the entertainment room watching The Princess Bride. He'd instructed the Yamato computer to guide Tera, Maria, and Dan to the entertainment center once they had made a decision.

The trio arrived in the middle of the movie, so they sat down and relaxed with the rest of the group after a quick exchange of names. Popcorn and Root Beer was passed around, and Carl could tell that Dan and Maria were finally calming down from their earlier freak out.

Once the movie was over, Carl gave everyone a more in depth introduction. Suan and Duncan gave the three newbies short histories of their time and memories as Goa'uld hosts. The raw emotion, the evilness of the parasites, and realization that their government really couldn't handle the problem worked to change Dan's mind.

While Maria had been convinced from the start to join for the amazing medical knowledge she was sure to learn, Dan as a detective and employee of the government had been leaning towards going back to his own life, and maybe finding a way to alert the authorities. It was where his loyalty had been. But when he heard about the plight of the former hosts, and the Jaffa, he decided he couldn't turn away anymore.

After all, Setesh had been on the earth for thousands of years, never being caught. He'd even spent a lot of time in America. Suddenly learning how unprepared even his own government was to handle the threat gave Dan a change of mind. Here was an opportunity for him to act now, as opposed to simply going back to his normal life and waiting for the hammer to drop.

Dan somewhat understood now why Carl had offered to wipe the knowledge from his mind. The idea of knowing a disaster was coming but being unable to speak about it while going about his normal life would have driven him crazy.

"Okay then. After everyone signs the confidentiality contract, we will start the training." Carl announced once the six recruits indicated that they were willing to join. He pulled out a sheet of parchment for each of them to sign, aside from Tera who had already signed one.

Once that was out of the way, Carl pulled everyone into his Time Pearl with him. The research and training facilities that he had the Petes make in the inner world of the Time Pearl previously was standing in front of the group. Off to the side were the magical and profound farms that he'd established to grow the simple herbs that didn't take too long to mature.

Carl waited for the exclamations of shock and awe to die down before he took them on a tour of the facilities. While showing them around, Carl sent out some orders for the Petes that were still there to build and furnish rooms for everyone as well as classrooms.

Everyone took the rest of the afternoon to settle in. In the evening before bedtime, Carl gathered the group together for Occlumency training. He wasn't sure if everyone could benefit from the magical practice, but some time in meditation couldn't hurt them.

The next morning Carl began their training, starting with basic exercise to work on getting them to the point they could access their Ki. It would be a while before they could feel and manipulate their Ki, but the sooner they started the better.

Throughout the day, they would switch up between exercising and classroom learning. The first thing Carl was teaching the group was the Alteran language. All of the technology and sciences in Carl's database was in that language. It was better that they learn that language rather than having to translate everything to their native language. Not to mention they didn't even have the vocabulary in their native languages for many of the concepts.

Since Alice already knew the Alteran language, she helped Carl by slowly immersing the group into hearing it spoken on a regular basis. When Carl had everyone in a classroom setting, since Alice already knew the Alteran language she used the time as occlumency practice, trying to piece together her mind.

During this time, Carl went full on Torturous Akisame Sensei Mode. He made sure to work his students to the bone in exercising. His medical skills proved a valuable aid in making sure they recovered after every workout.

He made sure to have sensors everywhere to focus on the group and chart their progression as they worked their way up to being Disciple class. This was the baseline knowledge he needed. The transition from normal human to martial artist. Working to build up their Ki reserves and learning to feel the body energy.

Carl suspected that it was his time in the HSDK world learning to feel and manipulate his Ki that made him so easily able to practice the Great Way of the Buddha. Without that foundation, he was sure he wouldn't have mastered the technique so quickly. So Carl stuck to the basic Ki training that he himself had learned before he would consider sharing the Great Way of the Buddha technique.

Carl was impressed that Alice was making great progress in her Occlumency training over the several weeks since they started, and she was soon diving into her mind to find lost or misfiled memories. A few weeks after she began fishing up old memories, she found her old identity as an Alteran. Alice confided in the group after she reviewed her life as an Alteran that she liked being Alice a lot more than she ever liked being Cyla Urbanus, Alteran technician.

Alice explained that she hadn't been given many opportunities to show her worth when she was growing up. Something her parents had done, which she never learned what that was but was supposedly the reason she was orphaned at a young age, caused the Council to view her with the same suspicion as they had for her parents. The Council put her under probation, assuming that the apple wouldn't fall far from the tree.

So all her life as Cyla, she had been struggling under the weight of suspicion from her fellow Alterans. She tried so hard to gain acceptance from her peers, and failed. At the end, when the plague was spreading across the galaxy, they hadn't even warned her they were leaving Earth. They abandoned her on the planet when they left for the Pegasus Galaxy.

She was left behind as an unwanted and unneeded member of their society. She had subsequently caught the plague. In despair that she was abandoned and left to die, she made her way out into the ice of the Antarctic to be frozen to death, so at least her end would be on her own terms, and less painful than dying of the plague.

She had certainly never expected to wake up again. She certainly didn't miss being an outcast from her own people. She loved being Alice, with the acceptance and friendship of the group comforting her greatly.

Carl and the group hastened to assure her she would always be Alice to them. That she was and always would be a valued member of their group. They all vowed to themselves that she would never feel so alienated again.

The recounting of Alice's tale, that made the Ancients seem more human and fallible, changed something in the group dynamics. Especially for Suan and Duncan, they let go of the previous sense of awe that they viewed Alice with for being part of that technologically advanced race. From then on, the group viewed her as one of their own, and grew more closed knit.

Carl was secretly relieved that he wouldn't need to worry that Alice might have some lingering feelings of loyalty to the ascended beings that used to be Alterans. The Alterans had killed her loyalty for them by their own actions.

After the first few months, when they were gaining confidence, Carl introduced his students to the Room of Requirement he had set up. He had loaded the room with memories of the opponents he had fought in his own time as a disciple, to give them challenging opponents to fight.

Carl even let them fight a recreation of himself with the same amount of time and training that they had. While the memory figure of Carl could never be a perfect representation of the real thing, Carl was amused and secretly pleased to find that of his group of six, only Suan and Dan came close to beating the memory of him, even though memory Carl still won in the end.

After the first year and a half, the group was fluent enough in speaking, reading, and writing in Alteran. So Carl switched up the classroom portion to be the general education and sciences that the Alteran's had. Carl made sure to take out the "morality instilling" portions of the education, and only provided the education, not the brainwashing.

His students were already adults and good and decent people. Lecturing them about morality was a waste of time, since they were already good people. Besides, Carl didn't want to try to make them into copies of the Alteran people, who had failed so hard, in Carl's opinion.

Once Alice had mastered Occlumency and regained her memories, she no longer needed the general classes that everyone else was taking. So Carl set her class time to spend learning skills from his magic library. Her abilities to manipulate vacuum energy was similar enough to magic to have some crossover.

After five years of hard training, the group had all reached the Master Class. They were all looking incredibly fit. The confidence and feeling of strength was amazing to them.

While Carl was pleased with their advancement, he wanted to make sure that they didn't get complacent or too arrogant. So he demonstrated some of his power and abilities. He made sure to do so quite a distance from them so they wouldn't get caught up in the destruction.

The infernos of the Golden Crow flames he summoned nearly gave them a sunburn, even from so far away. Then he moved on to ice, summoning devastatingly arctic temperatures and giant ice spears. The raging lightning storm that he created next caused a frizzing in the air that caused their hair to stand up. And the gloomy and depressing danger they felt when he summoned his darkness element made them itch to get away from the darkness. They felt as if the darkness couldn't wait to devour them.

Now that they had an idea how powerful he was, they realized how far they still had to go. Dan especially was affected, realizing only now how ridiculous the idea was of Carl submitting himself to the whims of politicians or military members.

Once Carl had demonstrated the power of the dark side-er, Profound Cultivation, he opened their Profound Veins. He started his group off with 30 open Profound Entrances. With that number open, they would be considered incredibly talented anywhere on the Blue Pole Star back in the ATG world, and it would give him some leeway with gifting them more Profound Entrances in the future.

Each of them found that they had an affinity with a specific element. Dan's element was fire. Suan's was lightning. Duncan's was earth. Alice's was also lightning. Maria's was water. And Tera's was wind. Carl gave them each a high class cultivation technique that was suited to their element. (Dan didn't receive the Golden Crow's techniques because he didn't have any Golden Crow blood.)

Carl also switched up the classes, now that they all had the basic education down. From then on the classroom portion of the day was dedicated to guided self study. They could focus on whatever was of interest to them, while Carl made himself available to them for assistance in learning.

The group continued to grow closer together over the next five years as they cultivated and learned to use their Profound Energy.

They had all just reached the Sky Profound realm, which was a decently good pace. Each year on the anniversary of their opening their profound veins, Carl opened up another two of their Profound Entrances as a reward for their hard work.

Over their time in the Time Pearl, they had grown incredibly strong. They could fly under their own profound energy now that they were in the Sky Profound Realm. Their intelligence and education was head and shoulders above anyone else on Earth.

Suan and Dan had decided on a military focus. Carl would make them in charge of his future military and police forces.

With the entire database available to her, and without the council holding back her access, Alice dove in joyfully to study the advanced sciences. Carl would put her in charge of his science and technology minded people in the future.

Duncan was of a more administrative and organization mind set. He would be in charge of the people that made sure the logistics and administration work gets done.

And Tera would be in charge of the legal situation of the future organization / Empire.

As a final gift before exiting time dilation and their training, Carl had made a ship similar, if not quite as advanced, as his own Yamato that he gifted each one of his students with.

The reason he didn't make an exact duplicate was because none of his students had access to magic. Even Alice's vacuum manipulation abilities were not an exact match for magic. Carl didn't want to have magic be an integral part of their ships since they couldn't do anything to fix or adjust the magic elements of the ship if something went wrong.

But while they wouldn't have most magical functions that Carl's ship had, each of their ships would have a magical ward system to keep any of those nosy ascended snot balls away from his people, tech, and databases.

Other than that, Carl wanted them to be able to adjust their own ships to their own standards and needs. But it would give his six students all the mobility, technological, and computer aided help they would need for their part in building his organization.

They spent the last couple weeks getting used to their ships, running them through their paces, and personalizing them.

Finally, it was time to exit their training and return to the regular world to begin organizing things for Carl's Earth based company, which would be a front for recruiting for his galaxy wide organization / Empire.

* * *

Upon returning to the Yamato, Carl's first act was to pullout each of his student's ships from his pocket space and place them in orbit so they could access them whenever they needed. With that done, Tera got started on making new identities for Carl, Alice, Suan, and Duncan. What would have been a long process for her before, was relatively easy with the advanced computers that could hack into the databases on Earth and create the needed identities, even creating and teleporting the needed paperwork into the files of the appropriate organizations.

For Tera, Dan, and Maria, returning to the regular world after spending 10 years in training and learning was quite a jolt. The normality and mundanity was both familiar and odd after so long away.

Each of the three sent in their resignations to their previous jobs and began to work on establishing Fire Crow Industries. Carl naturally made his bank accounts and resources available for the founding of FCI, until it could make a profit on its own. A large amount of land was bought in Colorado so they could begin construction of their facilities.

The only reason Carl went with Colorado for their headquarters was because it was near the SGC. If there was any foothold situation, or other crises, his people would be on hand nearby to intervene.

Tera, as their legal expert, began setting up their legal team and making sure they wouldn't run afoul any government agents. They all knew about the major players in the government, especially the NID, so they would be on their guard in the case of nosy agents.

Dan and Suan started recruiting and building the security branch of the company that would make sure their intellectual property remained theirs. In other words, they protected against corporate espionage of all kinds.

Duncan began recruiting office type workers to make sure all the paperwork and finances were looked after properly, as well as the supplies of materials to the needed departments was run smoothly.

Alice began recruiting for the science and technology division. Carl was quite amused when he found out a few weeks later that Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay was hired, because he remembered the high strung man from the show.

Dr. McKay was a very brilliant astrophysicist that joined the expedition to Atlantis, and helped to save the day many times, while also causing some issues simply because he didn't have the needed background in Alteran tech to be safe. After his induction and education, Carl didn't think the man would give them too many problems.

Meanwhile, Maria started looking for brilliant minds that would join her in the medical division of their company. They would always need doctors and medics, especially as they started operations against he Goa'uld.

Carl had trust in his student's abilities, so he let them go and start doing the work he hired them on for. Meanwhile, Carl started on his own projects. One of which involved something he had earned several worlds ago, but never used, until now.

He pulled out of storage the World Seed he had won from the SAO world for giving Kayaba Akihiko the ending for his death game that he wanted.

Carl held the world seed in his hand, watching as it continually shifted shapes every few seconds. First it was a sunflower seed, then it was an acorn, then it became an orange seed. And so on. Carl chuckled in amusement while looking at the freaky seed.

Carl then looked at the computer server that he'd built specifically for the World Seed. It was a mix of everything he knew, combining technology, magic, and profound crafting to make it. The users of this particular game would be able to access it anywhere in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Carl pushed the World Seed into the server while thinking of what he wanted the dream/virtual world to be. The seed began glowing and pulsing, which spread to the server. The pulsing sped up, shining a bright white until Carl was forced to cover his eyes. The light abruptly cut off.

Ideally, the people that Carl authorized to enter his virtual world could do so via magical means through their dreams, or they could connect via technology.

But in this jump world nobody had magic, so people could only access the virtual world through the VR helmets that FCI would manufacture and sell. The virtual world would have different partitions. Each partition would be a game world that had a different genre that people could play with full VR immersion. There would eventually be giant robot games, space battles, martial arts and weapons fighting games, civilization building, and many more.

And similar to the movie The Last Starfighter, FCI would monitor the game play of the user base. They would see who had the most skills, as well as judging the players based on the content of their characters and morals. Those players who were the best and of decent character would be offered a chance of recruitment for his Empire. If they accepted, they would receive training, a place in his Empire, and land on his future capital world.

So now that Carl's disciples were all busy building the company, Carl could go and do something that he'd been wanting to do for a while. Infiltrate the SGC in person to see just what those guys were up to.

* * *

In the infirmary lab in the SGC, Dr. Janet Frasier pulls out a freshly taken X-ray of Cassandra's chest. The 12 year old girl that they'd found on the planet Hanka was asleep in the bed in the room nearby.

Captain Samantha Carter and Dr. Daniel Jackson join Janet in looking over the X-ray to evaluate the object they found that was nestled next to Cassandra's heart that was causing her pain and impacting her health.

"The layer of fatty tissue between the two sides of the object is decaying. Very slowly, mind you, but still…" She tapers off, gnawing on her lip in worry.

"What's the significance?" Daniel blankly asked. While he may know languages and ancient civilizations, he was usually lost when it came technology.

"I'm about to do an experiment to find out." Sam explained as she thought out loud the implications. "One side of the object is made up of a combination of iron and potassium; the other side is made up of the element that makes up the Stargate."

"What?" Daniel asked, still not clear on what Sam was saying.

"Uh-hm. I'm assuming it's the Naquadah that was in her blood. Somehow the object is collecting it." Janet explained to Daniel.

"Now, potassium can be one of the most volatile alkaline metals on Earth. Combined with even a small concentration of Naquadah, and…" Sam trailed off, unwilling to voice the possibility of Cassandra blowing up.

"That doesn't sound good." Daniel, with keen talent for understatement, said.

The door to the lab opened, and a janitor pushing a cleaning cart entered while the group of three were focused on a monitor. Janet looked back briefly to see who entered, but when she saw the janitor in his blue coveralls enter, she ignored the man and looked back at the screen.

The janitor pulled out a rag and a spray bottle and began cleaning various surfaces as he wandered around the area, looking around curiously as he perfunctorily cleaned.

"The room you're looking at is in the sub-basement floor of the complex. It's lead sealed. Let's see what happens when we put the two objects together." Samantha said, focused on the screen.

"Where are the samples?" Daniel asked, since all he saw were two robot arms that appeared empty.

"I'm only using a microscopic particle of each." Samantha replied.

On the screen, the two robot arms moved together, and they saw a brief impression of an explosion before the screen turned to static, indicating the video camera was having transmission issues.

"The reading's off the scale. Gamma and particle radiation." Janet commented in a concerned tone of voice as she looked at the readout on a nearby computer.

The Janitor moved over to the room with a little girl lying on the bed. He tut-tutted when he saw her simply lying there. Moving over, he nudged the girl gently on the shoulder for a bit. "Hey, there little girl. You're sleeping during the day. You're gonna be up all night at this rate. Why don't you wake on up and you'll be just fine."

"Are we safe?" The voice of Daniel came from outside the room where the little girl and the janitor were.

"Yeah, but we have a big problem." Samantha answered.

"Well, if two microscopic particles can cause that…" Daniel trailed off in worry.

"Then the object inside Cassandra could cause a nuclear reaction a million times bigger." Samantha concluded.

The little girl, Cassandra, had woken up in time to hear that she could cause a huge explosion, and her eyes widened in alarm.

"Hey, little girl. There's nothing you need to worry about. You'll be just fine." The janitor explained to her in a calm tone of voice.

"Who are you, and why are you in here?" A female voice demanded from the doorway of the room the janitor and Cassandra were in.

The janitor turned around and saw Janet, Samantha, and Daniel glaring at him. He shrugged. "I'm just the janitor. When I saw the little girl was waking up and wasn't feeling good, I just had to reassure her that she'd be fine, don't ya know." He explained calmly. He patted the 12 year old Cassandra on the shoulder one last time. "There, there, you'll be fine little one."

He then picked up his rag and moved toward the door. The three adults didn't move for a bit as they glared at him.

"If you've upset her…" Samantha gritted out.

"No, he's a good guy, Sam." Cassandra unexpectedly piped up from her bed.

"Fine. But you better be on your best behavior." Sam looked at the janitor's name tag. "Carl. Don't think I'll let you off if you're not!" She warned.

"No worries, little lady. I'm always on my best behavior." Carl smiled, attempting to reassure the astrophysicist who was doing a reasonable imitation of a mama bear. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some rounds to make and some cleaning to do."

Once they parted to let Carl pass by, he started whistling a tune as he pushed his cart out of the lab. He smiled as he patted the pocket that he'd stashed the Naquadah ball that he'd pulled out of Cassandra before dissolving and pulling out the iron and magnesium creation of Nirrti.

Nirrti was a Goa'uld who liked to experiment with people, or turn them into bombs. She was definitely on Carl's to hunt list. He wasn't particularly impressed with what Nirrti had done to little Cassandra.

But for now, Carl was happy he'd turned up in time disarm the bomb, pull it out of Cassandra, and heal her up so she wouldn't have any future problems from her time with Nirrti. He didn't want to rely on the possibility that the bomb wouldn't go off if she was far enough away from the Stargate.

Relying on luck for the life of a little 12 year old girl wasn't something he wanted to do.

Carl continued on his way. He wanted to make his way to every corner of the base, except maybe the bathrooms. He was taking the time to plant recording devices so he could monitor everything that happened in the base. He didn't want to let some simple things destroy the world if he could do something about it.

And he was having a ball, wandering around the base, invisible in plain sight as a janitor. It really wasn't his problem if the people of Stargate Command couldn't explain why or how the naquadah bomb was gone from Cassandra. He considered it a welcome gift for the group.


	51. Stargate 05

Now that Carl had personally deployed his spy eyes in the SGC and had backdoor access to their computers and all their reports, he easily gained access to all the addresses they had scheduled for testing and visiting in the future.

With the first parts of his goals complete, Carl made a trip back to his planet, that he would have to name pretty darned soon. "Maybe I'll call it Caladan. The name of the homeworld of Paul Atreides in the novel Dune, Caladan has a nice sound to it. And it's not a sandy piece of drek like Arrakis was. Caladan it is." Carl decided.

Back on Caladan, Carl inspected what the Petes had been building recently. The basic utilities for his city were built, the streets were being laid out, and the different zones were organized. It was looking good. Once it was complete and populated, it would be quite a sight.

Carl then had the Pete's begin building for him a large supply of stealth satellites. It was time for him to go a-traveling and a-surveying. After loading up the Yamato with the satellites, he set out for the planets that the SGC would soon be dialing up.

The first planet he arrived at was Cartago. There was a primitive society there. Their ranged weapons consisted of crossbows, which could be just as deadly as a gun. Which meant they posed no risk to him. Carl didn't even bother doing anything other than dropping off a satellite before moving on.

The planet was the one where, in the show, Teal'c would be put on trial for his actions while he was the First Prime of Apophis. Carl would naturally intervene if it looked like the people there was about to go overboard. The fact that they put Teal'c on trial in the first place, instead of just giving him mob vengeance, spoke well of the people of Cartago. So Carl planned to work on recruiting them sometime later.

Having law abiding people of good character join his empire would set the proper stage for future development. But for now, he was just leaving means to monitor and gather intel.

After moving on to the next addresses, Carl found three empty planets in a row that had no humans present. But they had Stargates, so Carl left a satellite at each one.

The next planet Carl arrived at was the home world of the Tollans. It was currently going through some volcanic crisis that was making the planet uninhabitable. So the Tollans were in the midst of relocating their population to a new planet.

From Carl's memory of the show, he didn't have a lot of good feelings for the Tollans. They were an arrogant people that looked down on the main characters of the show, so he had some negative opinion of them. But he didn't want to see lots of them die to a natural disaster when he could help, so he decided he would do something about it.

Besides, Carl admitted to himself that his opinions of the people that the SG1 team interacted with was influenced heavily by the show being focused on the "main characters". As a result of being aware of this bias, he was trying to not let his previously formed opinions influence him too much.

Carl entered his time dilation pearl, and spent the extra time designing and building an automated ship that he would leave stealthed in orbit over the doomed planet. Carl wasn't going to personally sit around for months to hover over and help the Tolllans at the last moment, so he programmed the ship to act on its own. Anytime any of the Tollans was about to succumb to the poisonous gasses being released by the volcanic activity, or about to die in accident, the ship was to teleport them up to the ship, heal them, and put them in stasis so they couldn't get up to hijinks with his technology.

What was the Tollan's catch phrase? "We can't share technology with less advanced races." Well, Carl felt like applying the same safeguards to the Tollan people, since he didn't know or trust them.

Since the SGC would likely visit the planet before the last of the Tollan could evacuate, he programmed the ship to let the SG1 team save some of the Tollan. Anybody left behind by the SGC personnel would still be teleported up to save their lives. Carl still wanted the SGC to interact with the Tollan, and to see how the NID would act.

Seeing how the NID organization acted, who talked to who, and where the money flowed would all give Carl plenty of information on how to dismantle the organization without needing to personally read a lot of people's minds to get the information.

While Carl had the previously formed opinion that the Tollan were jerks for not hooking up the SGC with tech and what not, now that he had tech himself that he wasn't willing to share willy nilly, he could understand the perspective. Just because a beggar comes asking for handouts doesn't obligate him to give up the shirt on his back, and empty his bank account to ensure the beggar had a good life.

But just because Carl wasn't willing to chop off an arm for some stranger didn't mean he would sit by and watch them die in front of him. There was a huge difference between being a decent human and being a Welcome Mat that anyone could just walk all over and treat horribly.

Heck, even his efforts to uplift the science and tech of Earth was going to be carried out slowly and with plenty of economic benefits for his own side. Giving away free tech was a good way to destabilize and cause more problems.

Carl briefly pondered about what would happen if he could terraform a duplicate Earth for every country, nationality, religion, or political movement that was currently present on Earth. He could kidnap them all separately and drop them off on their very own Earth. No one but their own group in charge of a whole planet. No one to trade with. No one to argue with.

It really would be amusing to see just how they get along without their neighbors.

Carl shook off the crazy idea. That would be a lot of work for just some entertainment. Unless he recorded it and compiled it into a show…

"No, Carl! You've got too many other things to do, and only nine and a half years to do them in. Focus!" Carl slapped his crazy ideas away.

Carl got back to the topic at hand, the Tollan and SGC meeting. Carl felt like it would be good for the SGC and Earth to know the Tollans and vice versa, so Carl didn't mind facilitating the meeting.

Once the Petes in his time dilation finished building the ship, Carl left it hovering over the planet and moved on to the next planet.

Carl kept up a slow and leisurely pace of 5 planets a day. Meanwhile he kept in contact with his disciples who were working on Earth. Occasionally on the weekend they would all board their ships and move off to some of the empty planets that Carl had set up a satellite over in order to play around with their abilities, ships, and other toys. It was a good relaxing time for the group, to be able to go wherever they wanted, do whatever they wanted, and not have to worry about anything for the time being.

When Christmas time rolled around, Carl returned to Earth and joined his disciples in celebrating the holiday. He hadn't spent a lot of time in front of all the employees they had hired for their earth based company, so it was a good time for him to meet them and show that the owner was around and keeping track of their work.

It was amusing to Carl to meet Dr. McKay. That was a man who could talk an ear off. He was definitely excited about the facilities they had built for him to do his work and experiments in.

Carl was pleased with the progress of all the departments. His disciples had hired high quality people. They were busy "developing" the full immersion VR that they would release within the next several months. Carl's time in the SAO world gave them a lot of experience as to what to watch out for when releasing technology like that to a world like Earth.

They were also in talks with many of the cutting edge medical research facilities and the military, who all wanted to get in on the full immersion VR technology. For the military it would be a low cost way to train their troops. In the VR they could use all their ordinance as if it was live, and not worry about accidents, deaths, or budgets. Programming scenarios to allow two units to fight each other would give them valuable experience in fighting tough and smart enemies.

Carl wasn't against the military gaining access to the full immersion VR technology, but they would have to pay a premium for it. He wouldn't be so silly as to just give it away. However he left the negotiations up to the legal team that Tera gathered. It was their job, after all.

After Christmas and the New Year, Carl continued his trip around the galaxy, leaving stealthed and warded satellites above all the world that had Stargates.

In the middle of January Carl arrived at a planet that had a population of Jaffa on it. Based on his scans, he discovered that it was one of the worlds that belonged to the System Lord Moloc. Carl sat up in excitement when he found that out. He sent out the satellites so they could cover the planet.

"Oh, yeah. I've wanted to find this Moloc bastard for a while now." Carl muttered gleefully.

Moloc was a more deranged than usual Goa'uld. He seemed to derive a sick pleasure for torturing and killing those under his rule. And for some reason he decided that he only wanted male Jaffa around. So he ordered his Jaffa to burn to death all the female Jaffa that were born. Only male Jaffa were to be allowed to live and bring him glory, or some such rot.

"I mean, does he want his population of Jaffa to die out?" Carl muttered, amazed by the cruel stupidity displayed by Moloc.

The complication in taking over was that the people of Moloc would be especially unhelpful due to his drawbacks, and the tech of a System Lord would not work for him. So, he would have to dispose of Moloc, and make it apparent that Moloc didn't rule anymore. Maybe once the occupants of the planets were no longer the people of a system lord, then the drawback would cease to be effective.

First, Carl needed to know the addresses of the various worlds that Moloc owned. But he couldn't chance hacking. So he simply teleported down, disillusioned. He found the highest ranked Jaffa, and read his mind.

He soon got all the information he needed. He knew where he could find each of Moloc's planets, and where the High Priestess Ishta was. Carl teleported back up to the Yamato and was about to leave when he was informed by his monitoring program that a few female babies were about to be burnt in offerings.

Carl cursed, and quickly had the ship teleport up the babies, while replacing them with a simple construct. The small flash of light might make the Jaffa suspicious, but he wasn't willing to let some babies die just to avoid some small suspicions.

Looking at the fussing babies laying on the deck where they were teleported to, Carl felt a headache coming on. What did he know about taking care of babies?

"There, there little ones." Carl tried verbally comforting the babies while he levitated them around him. He didn't seem to be able to do anything for the babies that were wailing in the air around him.

Sighing in defeat, Carl had the Yamato configure a nursery for the babies and arranged for them to taken care of. He remembered back to some spells that witches and wizards used to allow their babies to calm down and fall into nap time.

Carl sighed at the blessed quiet, before he jumped into his Time Pearl to have some extra time to have his army of Petes build 15 more stealth ships that would hover over Moloc's planets and replace any baby that was about to be sacrificed.

Once all the stealth ships were built and warded from interference by the snot balls, Carl exited the Time Pearl and pulled out the ships, then sent them out to seek out the planets they were to keep watch over and protect the babies that would otherwise have been burnt to death.

Now that Carl was assured that the babies would be safe, he had plenty of time to enact plans to change how things were done. Carl would love to kill Moloc right away, but he didn't have the forces needed to keep order on Molocs planets, let alone fight off the Goa'uld System Lords at the same time.

Despite his many advantages, he was only one man. And while he could maybe rely on the VIs to help him, he would prefer to give the people of the galaxy the chance to fight for their right to party. To live and be free, that is.

So before he moved to take out any of the System Lords, he needed to build up his forces, and set up plans. Have his people contact the rebel Jaffa and prepare to take control when the time came to exterminate the Goa'uld.

Upon arriving at the planet that Ishta, the High Priestess of Moloc was, Carl beamed down under concealment charms. He wandered around the small settlement.

'It seems that the Goa'uld keep their followers settlements small. They don't want to chance having uprisings.' Carl thought as he saw how the Jaffa and humans lived in primitive conditions.

Normally Carl wouldn't just walk up to a High Priestess who was a follower of a System Lord and start a conversation. That was guaranteed to go bad for his efforts to interact with them or convert them because of his drawback. But he knew that this particular High Priestess had been greatly disillusioned by Moloc's command to kill all the female jaffa babies. So she had been rebelling in secret, trying to save as many of the babies as she could. Which meant that she wasn't a follower of a System Lord, even if she still had the title.

'Loopholes.' Carl chuckled to himself as he made his way to the building the female Jaffa was in.

Carl scanned the inside of the building that Ishta was in. There were two females with her. Looking around and not seeing anyone around to see him appear, Carl shrugged and dispelled his disillusion spell. He couldn't be bothered to wait around until Ishta was alone.

He knocked on the door and stepped back, waiting for them to answer. The door opened, and Carl saw a female Jaffa with short red hair and a sneer on her face the moment she saw a male was at the door.

"And just who are you supposed to be?" Contempt dripped from her voice as she questioned Carl.

"I'm here to speak to Ishta about a matter that will be of great interest to her." Carl neutrally offered.

"Go away. We don't need any-"

"Neith!" A commanding voice came from inside. "Let the visitor in."

The female with a chip on her shoulder scowled even deeper, but grudgingly stood aside to allow Carl to enter.

The room was nice and had a cozy feeling. A low table was placed in front of where Ishta was sitting. The gorgeous blonde Ishta sat upon a diaz, with a large tapestry behind her with a flower design on it.

A dark skinned beauty sat to Ishta's right, while the scowling Neith took her place to Ishta's left.

Carl sat down in an empty seat without invitation across the table from Ishta. His mouth tried twitching into a smile when he saw his action provoke an even more furious scowl from Neith. She seemed to have a chip on her shoulder, which didn't impress Carl. People who hate based on race, or gender, or whatever generally didn't impress Carl. They were too stupid to realize they needed to target their hate at only the people who actually wronged them, not broad swaths of the galaxy in general.

"Hello, Priestess Ishta. My name is Carl Edwards. I don't feel like beating around the bush, so I'll come right out and tell you that I've gained some information about some of your activities in saving the daughters of the Jaffa from your false god's depravity. And I'm here to offer you some desperately needed help."

Carl could have tried being diplomatic and polite, dancing around the subject of why he was there until an hour or two had passed. But he figured the Jaffa, having a warrior culture, would appreciate brevity and straightforwardness.

Carl cast an indifferent glance at Neith when she seemed to be reaching for a weapon when Carl mentioned knowing about their secret actions. Ishta's action to stay the hand of her more ill tempered companion earned Ishta some points in Carl's opinion. Her other companion, the dark skinned one, actually leaned forward and seemed intrigued by Carl's offer of help, rather than confrontational, but let Ishta talk.

"Greetings Carl Edwards. I am Ishta, as you seem to already know." The Jaffa Priestess did a wonderful job keeping her equanimity in such an unusual situation. "These are my advisors and friends. Neith and Mala. Now, what assurances do we have that you are not trying to entrap us? You come out of nowhere and offer help. It seems strange. And what kind of payment are you expecting in return for your aid?"

Carl chuckled at Ishta's equally blunt questions. "I like you. You get straight to the point, and you seem very balanced in an unusual situation." Carl complimented the Jaffa. "As for how I can assure you I don't mean you ill? Well, I can only do some deeds that will show my good will. First, I recently saved a few girls from being burned on another of Moloc's worlds. I will entrust the girls with you as a sign I am willing to help you."

With three small flashes of light, the three babies that Carl saved earlier appeared next to the women in the room, swaddled in blankets and in baby carriers. Carl smirked at the astonishment in their eyes that he could teleport the babies in so effortlessly.

The three ladies immediately went to check over the babies. Neith's expression even softened into compassion as she cooed over the baby girl next to her. When Carl saw the change in demeanor, he pondered how to get Neith to change her attitude permanently. After Neith showed a side of her that wasn't filled with anger and hate, the red head woman didn't seem too bad to Carl anymore.

Maybe she needed a break from the front lines of the fight against Moloc? Or maybe being able to vent her hatred on Moloc would help her? Carl wasn't sure, but he left the options open in his mind. It would all depend on how Neith reacted in the future, as to how much effort he put in helping her regain her balance.

"Those girls have also been healed so they will no longer need to go through the Prim'ta. They will be perfectly healthy without a Goa'uld larva. I can also offer this healing service to all your people." Carl commented, knowing just what a bombshell he was dropping on them.

The astonished looks in their faces was gratifying to him.

Sometime in the past the Goa'uld had genetically engineered the Jaffa from base humans to need a prim'ta pouch, which acted as an incubator for Goa'uld larva. The larva replaced the Jaffa's immune system, so if they ever lost the larva, their bodies wouldn't be able to survive for very long.

Having an underground resistance to the Goa'uld insured that the people under Ishta were lacking Goa'uld larva to keep their people alive. Stealing larva from the Goa'uld would bring down the wrath of the System Lords down on them, since it would be seen as a rebellion. So Carl's offer to make sure they were not reliant on their larva was a huge deal.

"So." Ishta paused to gather herself so she could speak without her voice trembling. "So. What is the price for such aid?" She intently looked at Carl.

"Hmm. To be honest, there isn't a price, per se. I intend to free all Jaffa from Goa'uld rule eventually. But as to when I could get around to doing it? That all depends on how much help I can recruit into my organization. If you and your people joined me and gave me your loyalty, I would offer many benefits that would allow us to help free the Jaffa People much faster."

Ishta had a look on her face of contemplation. Neith was scowling again at Carl, even as she was playing with the child next to her. Mura still had yet to say anything, but she kept shooting looks at Ishta to see which way she was leaning.

"And just what would we be doing in your organization?" Ishta finally asked Carl.

"Well, that all depends on what each person wants to do. If they want to become a warrior, I can make them the best warriors around. If they want to become a farmer? Sure, we need food too. If they want to become a healer? That is great, we always need healers. If they want to learn technology, even better. If they want to learn a trade and live peacefully and to avoid the conflict? There will be a place for them. If they want to join the war against the false gods? They will be most welcome to join us when we cast down the Goa'uld tyrants."

"You talk very big." Neith sarcastically threw out.

"One of the wise men of my people was said to talk softly and carry a big stick. This is actually me talking softly. Imagine how big my stick is." Carl snarked back with a smile meant to indicate he wasn't offended in the least by her words.

Mura off to the side had to stifle a giggle, and Ishta too had a small smile on her face at the innuendo.

"Is there something else you can show us, to help us believe?" Mura asked.

"Indeed." Carl said. And then the seven of them were on the bridge of the Yamato. The babies were doing fine in their carriers, but the three ladies seemed to be quite a bit wary at the sudden change of location. "On the screen in front of us you see the planet we were just on. Watch closely."

Carl then had the ship go to hyperspace, taking them to the world Moloc was on. They arrived in minutes. He then cast disillusion charms on them, and teleported them down to the room Moloc was in. He kept track of them, and especially kept Neith from attacking Moloc at that time.

After waiting a few moments to be sure they knew it was real, Carl teleported them back up to the ship and had the Yamato head back to where they came from.

"You had him right there! I could have killed that monster! Why did you stop me?!" Neith raged against Carl as she paced back and forth once Carl had released her from the bindings and disillusion spell.

Carl cast a wandless calming spell at Neith, to try to calm her raging emotions. He stepped forward and placed his hands on her shoulders, ignoring the way she tensed when he did so.

"I already have ships in place over Moloc's worlds. From this point on, any time a Jaffa's daughter is about to be fed to the flames, my ships will save them. They will replace them with a doll that will convince Moloc everything goes as he ordered it. I set this up so that no more daughters would be killed by that monster." Carl stared hard into Neith's eyes, willing her to listen. To _listen._

"Right now I don't have the people needed to keep order and free the Jaffa after I kill Moloc, let alone the rest of the System Lords. I need people to join my banner. I need some time to build up my forces. When that is done, I will let my armies go and destroy the Goa'uld rule. I will let you personally tear Moloc apart." Carl backed away from Neith, letting his hands drop, but never letting his eyes waver. "Will you join me in throwing down the Goa'uld?"

"Yes!" Neith almost growled, her hands clenching over and over as if imagining she was throttling Moloc. "If you keep your promise to give me Moloc, I'll follow you!"

Carl nodded seriously at Neith, then looked over at Istha and Mura to see their answers.

"I will join you. You've shown us that you have the power to do as you've said." Ishta looked around at the ship. "With this technology in your hands, it's obvious we can actually win."

Mura nodded eagerly. "Finally, some hope for us to win, not just survive!"

Carl smiled at them. "Now, let's get you to medical so we can rid you of the dependence on the Goa'uld larva." Carl beckoned for them to follow. They each picked up one of the babies in their carriers and followed him.

* * *

After healing the three ladies, Carl had dropped them back off on the planet. He had provided them with some shields to keep them safe, as well as a communication device so they could contact him in emergencies.

He arranged for his Petes to build a medical facility on the planet so Ishta could bring any Jaffa that was with her group to be healed so they didn't need the Prim'ta anymore. He also ordered the Petes to build some defenses for their small settlement. And he left a ship in stealth to provide them cover from above.

He promised that within the next month he would set up a training session for them to learn certain things. In the meantime, Ishta should figure out who would be loyal main forces. Carl limited the number of people she could bring to the training to eight, but their armies would need many more people.

After that, Carl continued traveling the galaxy, dropping off satellites as he went so he would have a better intelligence system. Not to mention, being able to travel the galaxy was a fun diversion for him.

While he was traveling around, he learned through his satellites that Teal'c was undergoing his trial by the locals on the planet Cartago. Carl showed up in orbit to make sure the people didn't turn into a mob or try Teal'c in a kangaroo court.

Carl didn't end up needing to intervene to save their lives, since they were able to convince the people that Teal'c was now fighting the good fight and should be let go.

Shaking his head at how the SG-1 team seemed to always get themselves into crazy situations, and barely escape by the skin of their teeth, Carl shook his head and continued journeying around the galaxy with an occasional stop back on Caladan or Earth.

At the end of January the SG-1 team rescued some Tollans from their doomed planet. Carl's ship had saved all the other Tollans and were delivering them to the new Tollan planet.

Carl decided to go watch the show in the SGC.

* * *

General Hammond and the SG-1 team entered the infirmary of the SGC to meet with the Tollans who just woke up.

"Who are you?" The man in the bed asked in an aggressive tone.

"I'm Major General Hammond. This is Colonel O'Neill." The bald and no nonsense General answered.

"Jack." The leader of SG-1 one tried to immediately get on a more informal standing.

"Samantha Carter." Sam followed Jack's lead.

"Uh…Daniel Jackson."

"Where is this place?" the man in the bed demanded answers.

"You're on a planet called Earth. These people saved you." Hammond answered.

"Nothing could be further from the truth." The man in the bed rudely refuted, causing the Americans to look at each other in disbelief. Was the guy delusional?

*munch* *munch*

Jack looked over to where the sounds were coming from and saw it was the janitor eating some popcorn. He reached over and snagged some popcorn when the janitor offered him some.

"Well, unless I missed something, you're…better off here than you were there." Daniel stated.

"There was a transport on the way." The troublesome Tollan rebutted.

"Well, half your people were already dead. I don't think it would have gotten there in time."

Carl chuckled. His ship did a good job putting those fake bodies there. Hammond looked over to see the janitor, but shook his head at the offer of popcorn.

"Perhaps that's more of a problem for you than it was for us." The patient was really trying everyone's patience.

*munch* *munch*

The sounds of popcorn eating disturbed the man in the bed this time, as he looked over briefly and frowned.

"Beg your pardon?" Jack asked once his mouth was empty of popcorn, getting somewhat annoyed at the guys attitude.

"I find it unbelievable that anyone so primitive could have deciphered the Gate system." The patient insulted everyone around him.

"Did you say primitive?" Jack asked back.

"I too am from a world very different from this one. Here life is highly valued." Teal'c interjected.

"Quite a statement for a Jaffa."

Carl chuckled. The Tollan was determined to attack everyone there.

"Sir, I'd like to know who you are and what you know about the Goa'uld." Hammond interrupted when he realized they could gain vital intel from the man.

"I am Omoc. Our world is called Tollan." Omoc bent a little bit.

"And what do you know of the Goa'uld and Jaffa?" Hammond didn't want to let him get away with diversions.

*munch* *munch*

Daniel looked over at the Janitor who was avidly watching the proceedings and absently accepted a handful of popcorn and started munching on it himself.

"We're aware of them; we don't interact with them." Omoc stated arrogantly.

"Well then, we share a common enemy." Hammond suggested.

"Did I mention an enemy?" Omoc rebutted, not willing to give.

"I only meant…it might benefit everyone if your people and ours could be friends." Hammond tried to be a bit diplomatic and step backward. A useful skill for the brass to have.

*munch* *munch*

Sam looked over and saw the janitor really enjoying his popcorn as he watched the drama in front of him. Sam shook her head no when the janitor offered her popcorn.

"I demand you return everything that you have taken from us and allow us to go home." Omoc clammed up, done with answering questions.

"Well, it could take a while for those volcanoes to quiet down. In the meantime, I'm a bit of a culture buff, I'd like to learn about your history and customs." Daniel offered, eager to learn more about the Tollan people.

"I've said enough. I'll say no more." Omoc leaned back refused to talk anymore.

The SGC personnel left the room. Carl adjusted the notice-me-not once more just as he ate some more popcorn.

*munch* *munch*

Omoc glared at Carl, refusing the offer of popcorn. Carl smirked at Omoc and held his gaze as he continued to eat his popcorn. Eventually Omoc blinked and went back to brooding, forgetting about Carl standing there.

Carl exited the room, chuckling at how much fun this was. Especially when the Tollan personnel didn't have any defense against Legilimancy or telepathy. The so called advanced race was just as susceptible to being mind whammied as anyone else in the SGC.

While Omoc came across as a really abrasive person who was a bit of an ass, Carl could tell he really did care about his own people and was determined to do anything he could to see them home safe.

Carl could understand his point of view too. They were being held by a foreign military. They didn't know the rules, laws, or culture of the people who held them. They had no advocates who they could be sure had their best interests in mind. They had no idea what the U.S. Military would do. And they really had no bargaining power, because the only thing they had, knowledge, had long since proven dangerous to give people who couldn't use it responsibly. Besides the danger of being imprisoned and mined for technology.

Over the next couple of days Carl floated around the base, watching the drama unfold. The SGC tried desperately to gain some trust among the Tollan people. The Tollans, especially Omoc worked hard to gain some leeway so they could escape.

When Carl had watched the show, the interactions between Sam and the Tollan named Narime had flirted quite a bit and acted like they might have some attraction between them. But when Carl watched their interactions, he realized that while there may be some physical attraction between the two, there was a lot more going on underneath.

Narim was trying to get Sam's sympathies so she would help him find ways to escape. Sam was a pretty savvy lady, so she assumed that he was trying to play her, but she went along with it because she genuinely didn't want the Tollan people to end up in NID custody and was hoping to help them find a way to escape, despite ostensibly going against her own people.

Meanwhile the NID were working the politics to get the go ahead to imprison the Tollans because of the hint and promise of advanced tech that they drooled over. So while the NID was planning how to exploit the Tollans, SG1 helped them get a message to the Nox peoples so they could help them out.

Carl was currently waiting in the gate room with his popcorn to see a show and meet a Nox.

"Attention, all personnel. Off world activation. Unknown source." The announcement went out over the PA system.

Carl watched as the stargate chevrons started activating. The iris that would normally cover the opening refused to close. The Tollan, Teal'c, and Daniel entered the room and waited at the bottom of the ramp.

*munch* *munch*

Carl offered some popcorn to Teal'c, who took a handful in a dignified manner with a gracious nod.

"Doctor Jackson, this is Colonel Maybourne. What you're doing is a court martialable offence." The voice came over the speakers.

Daniel placed his hand over his ear with a confused look, as if he couldn't quite make out what Maybourne was saying.

"I'll have you removed from this program for ever if you do this." Maybourne threatened a moment later, desperate to halt what was happening.

The gate activated and a wormhole was established. Carl chuckled. He could feel the tension in the air!

Lya the Nox then walked through the stargate and stood at the top of the ramp. As she smiled, the wormhole behind her closed.

*munch* *munch*

Lya started and looked over at Carl in surprise. He walked up the ramp and offered her some popcorn. Carl felt a mind probe from her as she stared at him curiously.

[Hey there. My name is Carl Edwards. And you are? Are you sure you don't want some popcorn? The buttery goodness is so tasty.] Carl mentally sent to Lya with an impression of the taste of popcorn. He can feel surprise from her. She reaches out and snags some popcorn though.

[I am Lya of the Nox. It's a pleasure to meet you. What are you doing here, though, Carl Edwards? If we knew you could have saved the Tollans, we would not have needed to make the trip.]

Carl shrugged. [Nah, I didn't have the patience to interact with them directly. I'm sure you've got me beat in being a more patient person.] Carl complimented her. [I just wanted to watch some drama. I wouldn't have let them come to harm, but I really didn't want to deal with their arrogance.]

[Hmm. Indeed. The young are often brash.] Lya offered neutrally.

Carl smiled at her diplomacy. That's why the Nox were so nice, always willing to be polite. [Well, I'll leave this to you then, beautiful lady.]

Lya gave Carl a smile for the compliment, and then turned to the group arrayed in front of her.

Carl then stood by as he watched Lya open up the Stargate and usher the Tollan people in while Maybourne went crazy and tried to order the troops to open fire on fleeing unarmed civilians.

Carl frowned at Maybourne. He vaguely remembered the show trying to paint him in a somewhat decent light later on. Like the show tried to portray him as someone just doing his "patriotic duty" by whatever means necessary. Even though his methods were dirty, he was doing it for a cause.

But even though this wasn't Carl's original world, he didn't want to have a United States where those kinds of war crimes were not punished and even rewarded. Shooting civilians in the back as they tried to escape?

'No, I don't think so Maybourne. It's definitely time to take out the NID and the corrupt businessmen that are paying for that kind of thing.' Carl thought while tagging Maybourne with a tracking charm.

He sent orders to the Yamato to track Maybourne and everyone he contacted, record every conversation, and find everyone involved in the NID. While the organization wasn't very dangerous to Carl, he didn't want the despicable organization around to continue mucking up things.

* * *

In the middle of February the SG-1 team went to a planet they labeled as P3X-989. There was a facility that was the final remnant of a civilization that died out 11,000 year ago. There was a single person remaining in the facility, Harlan.

The surface of the planet had become uninhabitable, so some of the population had gone through the Stargate to another planet. Some of the people had transferred their consciousness to a robot body that was powered by the broadcast power generator in the facility. But over the years, more and more of the "survivors" couldn't take the long years of imprisonment in the facility. When they couldn't stand it anymore, they left the facility and walked away from the broadcast power, letting their robot bodies shut down.

So when the SG-1 team showed up, Harlan saw it as an opportunity to gain some more friends to help him while away the years. He stunned the SG-1 team and made copies of their consciousness, putting them in the robot bodies.

Carl watched on the screens in the Yamato in orbit as the robot versions of Jack, Sam, Daniel, and Teal'c went back through the Stargate and found out they were no longer human. When their battery was running down, they had to return back to the facility on the planet once known as Altair.

Carl watched as SG-1 came to the realization that they were stuck in their robot bodies for life. Teal'c was having problems with the consciousness of the Goa'uld larva trying to take over, so Carl beamed him up and resolved the issue for him. He put the Goa'uld consciousness in a Teal'c robot body and sent him down so the encounter would play out without his interference. The switch took such a short time, no one on the planet noticed it.

While he watched the drama play out, Carl made sure that the Goa'uld bot wouldn't win in the confrontation and was disintegrated.

The three remaining robot SG-1 members found out they were copies and came to the realization they couldn't return back to Earth as they were. So they met and talked with their human counterparts. The robot versions of SG-1 promised to bury their gate, but Carl knew they wouldn't be satisfied to sit there in the facility until they went mad.

So after the human SG-1 team went through the stargate and the robot SG-1 team shut down the gate, Carl beamed up the four robots to his ship, at the same time waking up the Teal'c robot.

"Hey, guys." Carl greeted the five robots.

"What?!" Jack exclaimed, not sure if he could handle any more craziness. "Teal'c? I thought you were…you know?"

Teal'c raised an eyebrow in question.

"He means you fought with Jack and were disintegrated by Harlan." Daniel offered.

"Indeed?" Teal'c asked disbelievingly.

"Well, that was my doing, really." Carl interjected.

"And just who are you?" Jack exclaimed, interrupting Carl.

"My name is Carl Edwards. And you are Robot Jack, Robot Sam, Robot Daniel, Robot Teal'c, and Robot Harlan."

"You must send us back to the facility! We must be near the power source or we will shut down!" Harlan pleaded.

"Don't worry about it. I've got you feeding on a power source up here in my ship." Carl reassured Harlan.

"Your ship?" Sam asked, looking around hungrily at the tech.

"I'm sorry, but you said that it was your fault that Teal'c attacked Jack?" Daniel asked.

"Yeah, and how is Teal'c alive after getting disintegrated? Not that I'm not happy you're alive, big guy. But…how?" Jack looked over at Carl in his usual sarcastic manner.

Carl chuckled to see the interaction among the group.

"Well, I'm sure it'll take another few days to go over everything since some people can't keep their mouths shut through an explanation, huh, Jack?" Carl snarked at the team lead for SG-1.

"He's got you pegged there, sir." Carter got her own digs in.

"Thanks, Carter." Jack sourly stated.

"You're welcome, sir."

"So, back on topic." Carl stated. "Teal'c was having problems because the Goa'uld larva consciousness was copied along with his, and it was about to gain control over Teal'c. So I split you two apart, and put the Goa'uld's consciousness in a Teal'c replica bot down there while keeping you up here Teal'c."

"Why?" The stoic Jaffa warrior asked.

"Because I wanted the situation to play out as if I hadn't interfered until your human counterparts were back on their way to Earth." Carl answered.

"And just what did you get out of playing around with us?" Robot Jack asked angrily.

"Playing around with you?" Carl asked, acting like he didn't understand where Jack was coming from.

"Well, obviously if you were around to do all this, you could have stopped Harlan from copying us in the first place! But you let him do it. Why are you messing about with us?"

Carl saw the whole group was interested in the answer, and starting to feel some anger too that Jack was feeling.

"Well, Jack. Just because you're angry at your situation is no reason to take it out on me. I'm not your keeper. I can't be everywhere at once." Carl smiled at the group. "You knew the kind of dangers you were accepting when you starting doing missions through the Stargate. And this is one of those dangers you accepted as a soldier."

"Indeed." Teal'c commented. "But you have another reason for bringing us here. I would hear what it is."

"Very astute, Teal'c. I have an offer for all of you. I can clone you a body and put your consciousness in it. It will be exactly as your body was, except for you Teal'c. I think you would enjoy not having a Goa'uld in your gut. And your new body will be just fine without it. Sorry Harlan, I can't make a clone of your body. 11,000 years is a long time. But I could make you a body that's a brother to Jack though, if you're interested."

"Comtraya!" Harlan exclaimed while almost clapping his hands together in front of his face, causing Jack to pinch his nose. Harlan seemed to be joking, getting back a bit at Jack for his heavy handedness a bit ago.

"So, you're offering to clone us bodies, out of, what? The goodness of your heart?" Jack sarcastically asked.

"Sir…" Carter started to caution Jack that it might not be a good idea to piss off the guy who could get them their bodies back. Not to mention had a ship and teleporting tech. But Jack backed her down with a look, since they were still operating under their chain of command.

"Hmm, yes. Ideally I could convince you five to come work for me after you get new bodies. I'm building an organization that is going to take down the Goa'uld when I've got enough personnel to manage the aftermath."

"You say that like it's so easy." Jack said.

"Yep. It is that easy." Carl shrugged. "I mean, I could do it right now, but then there would be all kinds of chaos and war and death as a result of the power vacuum."

"So, what, you want to rule in the Goa'uld's place? Set yourself up as a god, maybe?"

Carl chuckled, amused at the snark coming from Jack. "While I admit I could easily do so, I see no reason to pretend to a divinity I don't have."

'A divinity I don't have yet.' Carl smirked inside.

"Besides, I don't have any use for the energy that comes from being worshipped. I'm not like the snot balls that fancy themselves gods out there. I'm sure you'll find out about them later." Carl commented about the Ori.

"So, what would we be doing in your organization?" Sam asked. "And why would we want to work for you instead of going back to Earth once we're in a regular body?"

"Good questions. As for what you'd be doing? That's entirely up to you. I've got fantastic tech. I've got lots of science knowledge. I'll need military and police forces. You could even spend your time building a University or traveling around learning about modern or ancient cultures once we've taken care of the Goa'uld and freed the Jaffa."

"As for why you'd want to work for me? There are definitely benefits that you can find nowhere else. Follow me for a demonstration." Carl said, and led them off the bridge and down to the holodeck.

After pacing in front of the holodeck three times, the door opened to show a large grassy field with numerous heavy weights lying in a row, going from light to extremely heavy.

"You have a holodeck?!" Sam exclaimed.

"Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?" Carl laughed. "Okay, a demonstration. Would each of you find the maximum weight you can lift, please?" Carl asked.

After the four SG-1 members looked at each other for a moment, they started picking up the weights that were clearly labeled. Harlan on the other hand simply sat off to the side. Each of the robotic SG1 members were clearly surprised at their increased strength in their robotic bodies.

Once the SG-1 members had figured out their maximum lifting capacity, Carl went over and juggled heavier weights in his hands like they weighed nothing. He then started moving quickly around the field, pausing every so often so their eyes could somewhat track his movements. He then moved so fast he disappeared from their view and was hovering above them, upside down, looking down at them.

"Up here!" When he called out, they all looked up and saw him flying there. Carl then flew slowly so they could watch as he flew circles around them before landing in front of them.

"You could eventually be able to do that. You'd have to go through the basic training program though, to get you up to snuff in your knowledge and physical capabilities. But I promise you. When you're done with the basic program, you'll be powerful, intelligent, knowledgeable, and gosh darn it, people will like you!"

"Well, maybe that last one is an exaggeration. I can't really force anyone to like you, Jack." Carl said, amused by their slack jawed staring.

"Gee, thanks."

"Now, the catch is of course that I won't train you only to let you go back to Earth and rejoin your former organization. Besides, they would want to imprison you for studying and autopsying you. If you agree to join me for my training, you're stuck with me for the forseeable future."

"But no matter what you decide, I'll give you a flesh and blood body if you want. If you choose not to hire on, I'll have to do one of two things. Either erase you memories of me, or put a geas on you so you can't talk or communicate any information about me to any who don't know. I personally think it would be more torturous to know something but be unable to tell anyone than to have the memories blocked, but that's just me."

"Take your time to decide." Carl offered as he led the group out of the Room of Requirement and over to a lounge for them to talk and relax at.

"Oh, and Teal'c. Just so you know, I've already started recruiting some Jaffa to the cause. Many of the Jaffa have become disillusioned with the System Lord Moloc because he decreed that all female Jaffa would be burned alive." He nodded at the growls of rage from the group. "Yeah, I know, right? So I've got a bunch of ships in orbit that are switching out the daughters of the Jaffa with dolls so they don't know what's happening until it's time to strike back. Just so you know that I'm already working on some problems on behalf of the Jaffa."

"Any questions before I leave you to talk about it?" Carl finished.

"Let me see if I've got this straight." Jack began. "You'll give us flesh and blood bodies no matter what we decide. But if we don't hire on, we either get our minds wiped or won't be able to talk about you. And if we do hire on, we get tech, knowledge, and get to be supermen?"

"And a Superwoman." Carl nodded in agreement to Jack's summary while nodding at Sam.

"Okay. That's…something all right." Jack collapsed onto a couch. "Yeah, we're gonna need some time to think about this."

"Alrighty then. Just call out when you've made a decision." Carl said as he was leaving the room. "The ship will let me know."

Carl walked out, leaving the group of five to discuss the curveballs they had just received.


	52. Stargate 06

Jack collapsed on the ground where he had just finished the run. He was still tied at the waist to the tire with a robot wielding a whip sitting on said tire to encourage Jack to run. He had been forced to drag said tire for over 10 kilometers at a near sprint.

He looked over at Teal'c, who had been dragging an even bigger tire than Jack and was also collapsed on the ground, gasping for breath. Sam and Daniel then dragged themselves and their own tires that carried robots into the yard, before collapsing to the ground. There were various other Earthlings and Jaffa scattered around the yard or trickling in. Every single one of them dragging a tire with a robot wielding a whip to encourage them to run faster.

"I can't imagine why Harlan didn't want to join in on these fun and games." Jack finally gasped out.

"Indeed." Teal'c replied stoically.

"I'd imagine it had to do with just how long he'd been stuck in that facility. After 11,000 years he must not feel comfortable away from that facility anymore. He's made it his entire world." Daniel gasped, still out of breath.

"I was being sarcastic!" Jack exasperatedly interrupted, not wanting to listen to long and boring theories or explanations.

Daniel propped himself up on one arm and looked over at the look on Jack's face. "Oh, you were trying to make a joke." He commented wryly before dropping down on his back again. "It's hard to tell when you're joking when I'm so tired."

"Don't worry, I've got more fun and games planned." Carl interrupted with a chuckle from where he was distributing water bottles with recovery water, as well as adding a few pokes with Ki energy on the pressure points of his collapsed students to help speed up their recovery. He continued to drift through the gathering of heroes. "In my considered opinion, they just get better and better." He smirked at the groans he was getting, even from Teal'c as he moved on to helping Ishta, Mala, and Neith who were collapsed nearby.

"Yeah, this is a must visit place. A real resort." Jack sarcastically complained.

"You've got to admit though, sir, the things we've already been learning and doing are amazing." Sam tried her best to be upbeat and divert Jack's focus away from complaining. "The overview Alice gave us on what we'll be learning is so great, I can't wait!" Evidently her attempt to divert Jack's attention didn't work if the sour look on Jack's face was any indication.

Carl chuckled some more at the plight of the duplicate SG-1 team he'd brought to time dilation training. Duplicating people was a complicated process. Simply copying a person's memories over wouldn't gain them their own soul. But the process that Harlan's people had come up with had been more like splitting a bit of consciousness off. Splitting off a little piece of soul from the original to grow into its own individual.

It wasn't anything disgustingly unnatural like making a horcrux. It was more like making a baby and nurturing the budding soul so it could grow into an individual. In the case of Harlan, the little bit of soul from the original had been stuck doing the same thing for so long that he had lost all desire to continue to grow and experience anything new or unusual. Harlan found comfort in his shell, so he returned there.

In the case of the duplicate SG1 team, Carl was making sure to supply plenty of energy and experiences to the team so their itty bitty souls would grow strong. It was also fun to "torture" them. Carl really realized just how much control Akisame Sensei had to have had not to bust out laughing at him and Kenichi back in the day when he was torture training the two of them.

After handing out specially enhanced water, Carl used a few Ki enhanced pokes and prods on the exhausted group, and they were set to recover nicely. He then moved on to Ishta, Mara, and Neith.

Neith's attitude had changed greatly ever since Carl offered his support and training to her. She had previously been very bitter against any male, because of what she saw as the male Jaffa's cowardice and unwillingness to more openly oppose the killing of Jaffa daughters by Moloc's orders. But with Carl's willingness to give her what she needed to save those she so desperately wanted to protect, her bitterness was redirected into action as she threw herself into training with a single minded intensity that not many could understand.

His first six disciples were moving among the large crowd a bit further away, assisting each of the new disciples in their recovery. There were 36 new members being inducted into their group and going through the 10 years of training. Carl had each of his original 6 disciples in charge of a group of 6 themselves, while Carl floated around and provided an extra hand here and there.

Carl was using the opportunity to have Alice, Dan, Duncan, Maria, Suan, and Tera learn how to teach what they had already learned, while Carl supported them and filled in the gaps.

Carl would spend evenings while the new recruits were asleep helping his first 6 disciples figure out how to go about training their recruits the next day, as well as making sure they got some advanced training of their own so they would continue to grow.

With his Dragon's God bloodline's ability to keep Carl's powers growing even without actively cultivating. He didn't have any worries about his people growing stronger than he was and supplanting him, since he knew the quality of the characters of the people he recruited. Add in magical contracts and perks that ensured his people would remain loyal, and he could focus on teaching all his martial disciples without worrying about extraneous things.

After the current batch of 36 students passed through the training, Carl would have them search out 6 students each for the next round of training in a few months time. The next batch of 252 students that passed through would be the last for at least a year while they recruit more people into his budding Empire, and consolidate their hold on everything.

Carl's plan was to have each of these students that he trained in time dilation be the administrators of sections of his empire's forces, whether military, police, science, logistics, or whatever. He would have personally trained forces, that were loyal to him, that were in charge of his empire's forces, making sure that everything ran smoothly and no one started causing a ruckus just because they got a big head and wanted to be in charge. And his personally trained people would have the power and knowledge needed to keep everyone in line.

* * *

It was the beginning of the third year of training, and the spectators seats were filled in the dojo. Teal'c was poised in front of a younger Carl simulacrum that had the same amount of Ki training as Teal'c did. It was something Carl had created from his memories and magic so that his students could test themselves against how Carl did at the same point in his training.

Carl moved first, sending some low kicks that Teal'c effortlessly dodged aside from, lashing out to block the follow punches that Carl sent his way. Teal'c stayed on the defensive, blocking and dodging the flurry of attacks.

Teal'c adjusted minutely, sending the signal that he was preparing a counter strike. Carl instantly reacted, preparing to counter Teal'c counter. But the expected attack from Teal'c didn't materialize from where Carl expected. The feint had worked, and Teal'c took advantage of it.

A series of blows came from the unexpected side, and Teal'c managed to break through Carl's hasty block, slightly stunning Carl and allowing Teal'c the opportunity to close in and strike a series of devastating blows that knocked the Carl simulacrum out of the ring.

Cheers arose from the spectators at Teal'c's win. Teal'c had evened up the win-loss record he had with Carl's simulacrum.

The real Carl sitting in the stands also cheered for Teal'c's win. He wasn't too bothered at all by Teal'c's win against his simulacrum. He was instead pleased at his student's progress.

At the time period Carl had made the memory, he only had three years of training and practice in martial arts. To have an even record with Teal'c, who at the current time had been training his whole life plus an additional three years of training from Carl, meant that even back then, when Carl only had three years of training, he was already gifted in his skills in combat.

"Nice one Teal'c!" Daniel congratulated the large Jaffa.

"That was impressive, Teal'c." Ishta said while handing a bottle of water to Teal'c.

Teal'c gave a nod at the group's praise, while still keeping an impassive face. Despite being one of the few students that could win half the time against Carl's simulacrum, Teal'c didn't let that go to his head. He realized that the Carl from back then was a far cry from the current Carl's skills, and knew he had a long way to go.

Carl wandered up to the group, smiling at Teal'c. "Good job, there Teal'c. I would have loved to have you as an opponent back then. You would have pushed me to greater achievements, and then I could push you even higher too." Carl genuinely congratulated the larger man.

"Indeed, Carl. You are a formidable opponent." Teal'c said with the equivalent of a smile for him.

"Yeah, but it would be more impressive if it wasn't a 15 year old that you can only win half the time against, there, buddy." Jack sarcastically added.

"You still haven't won against that 15 year old yourself, there Jack." Sam poked at Jack's waist. Jack simply gave a look back at her, with a hint of a smile. Ever since they had left their previous military structured superior/subordinate relationship, Sam had been getting more and more casual with the man, and willing to really deflate the man's ego, whenever she had the chance. And from what Carl could see, the man actually enjoyed the way that Sam dealt with his sarcastic comments.

Carl still wasn't sure if it was sexual tension between the two, or if they were more like siblings squabbling. In any case, it was up to them to solve their issues themselves. He wasn't going to get involved.

"So, who is up next?" Carl asked.

"Let me go, my lord." Neith asked/demanded. She was determined to win this time. She was one of the few who had also scored some wins against Carl's simulacrum, although not nearly as many as Teal'c. But her drive to succeed gave her plenty of motivation to improve.

"Okay, then. You're up Neith." Carl nodded in agreement. "So, bets on who will come out ahead?" Carl commented to the rest of the group while Neith faced off against the memory of Carl who served as the high standard among the group of disciples. The fact that some of them could defeat Carl's past self gave them encouragement to train even harder, which is what Carl had been hoping for.

Seeing the comparison from how skilled and powerful Carl was then to how strong he currently was gave them all encouragement that they too could get even more powerful.

* * *

*munch* *munch*

Carl was enjoying some popcorn as he watched the nearly daily drama play out. A female hand reached across and grabbed a handful of popcorn from his tub as she settled in a seat next to him.

"Why do they even talk to each other if they can't get along?" Alice asked Carl as she watched the shouting match between Samantha Carter and Rodney McKay.

"As far as I can tell, Rodney is convinced that Sam likes him. He thinks they have an unresolved sexual attraction." Carl shrugged. "So he keeps seeking her out, despite her efforts to avoid him."

"Like a peacock that wants to strut his stuff, he tries to impress her with his understanding of the science he understands. But she has just as good of an understanding of the science, and she has a slightly different approach to it. So, she can't stand his smug mistakes in what she knows is her best field. Thus, daily drama." Carl finished.

"Well, as long as she doesn't eventually kill him." Alice chuckled.

"Yeah. Remind me to keep an eye on McKay when we get out of the training though." Carl told Alice. "He's bound to find out at some point that this Carter is a clone, and the original won't be anywhere as advanced in science. He'll probably think he can get in that Carter's pants by impressing her, which really will drive this Sam to kill him to protect her sister. So we should prevent that from happening."

"Yeah, that would be a shame." Alice snorted. "What?" She replied to Carl's stern look. "I'm just saying that Rodney has quite a few rough edges, and being temporarily killed might smooth some of those edges out."

Carl couldn't hold his look anymore and started laughing, causing Alice to join in as the two continued watching the drama. Jack finally made his appearance and caused Rodney to back down and depart the area. Carl was amused to see that Jack and Sam seemed to be getting even better, if the shared looks and shoulder touches were anything to go by.

There was a betting pool among the group, minus Rodney, as to when the two would finally get together.

* * *

By the fifth year all of Carl's students reached the Master Class. He threw a big celebratory feast and party with everyone to celebrate their graduation of the basic Ki part of training.

The next morning he had each student join him in the medical facility as he channeled his profound energy through them, inducing the growth of their profound veins. He made sure each student started out with 30 profound entrances open to get them started.

Carl also inspected their physiques and elemental affinities to give them appropriate cultivation techniques.

With all the pills and advanced medical help he had available, they would all reach the Sky Profound Realm by the time the 10 years was up. His original six disciples would probably be somewhere close to the Tyrant Profound realm by then.

Carl knew that some of his students would never properly focus on their Ki practices or cultivation of their Profound Energy after the basic training he had them go through. Their whole personalities were based around their intellect and studies. They would continue to be caught up in the science and technology database that they now had available to them.

But Carl saw no reason his science, medical, and admin people should not be inducted into the Ki and Profound Energy practices, even if they never focused on it. Through the energies that upgraded their bodies, their brains would also benefit and improve. They would also have the ability to protect themselves from threats while carrying out their duties.

And if they did want to advance their combat abilities, Carl already had one of the world partitions in his Virtual Reality World Seed set up and running to imitate the Against the Gods world of the Blue Pole Star. They could go and experience what a cultivation world was like, if they so desired.

Then when they compared the power, battle hunger, and danger of a world of cultivation, they would realize how pitiful the Goa'uld were in comparison with their new abilities and tech.

And so they would have better battle skills and supreme confidence that the snakes wouldn't win in the end.

* * *

The next five years of training went pretty smoothly, with Carl's students taking to their training well. Now that many of the scientists finally had access to profound energy, Carl had to ensure they didn't get lost in studying the database but continued to train.

They would have plenty of time in the future to study and learn and _do science_. But for now, they needed to train.

A particular drama finally had its conclusion in the seventh year of training, when Jack and Samantha finally got together officially. Teal'c won the betting pool with a faint smile of victory on his face.

Rodney finally got the message that Sam wasn't interested in him and backed off from annoying her with his clumsy attempts to pursuit her. The two brilliant scientists finally settled into a competitive cooperation in working on the sciences. Which meant they did their own thing and sent emails and memos to each other about what they learned, and rarely worked together.

It was progress.

* * *

"And to commemorate passing your basic training." Carl paused to smile at the groans and good natured joking of the 36 disciples. "I've got a final gift for you. Your very own space ship!"

Carl basked in the oohs and aahs, enjoying the reactions of his students. Giving out space ships to his disciples might seem somewhat reckless, but he had good relationships and trust with everyone there. If he didn't trust them, he shouldn't have trained them in the first place. And he trusted that after so much time with the group, they would stay true and not be reckless.

The next couple weeks were spent with everyone getting used to their ships and customizing it for their personal use, and assigning their place and duties in the organization. The former SG-1 members were very grateful for the new identities they had so they could still enjoy their lives on Earth, even if they couldn't go back to their previous lives.

Carl went back to his previous work of traveling around the various planets and dropping off satellites to keep track of what was going on in the Galaxy. Carl decided he would let the 42 disciples that he'd trained up till now decide who they would pick for their 6 disciples in the next training session.

He continued to monitor and guide everyone's overall actions, but Carl believed that if he was going to have subordinates take care of things, then he would trust them to know how to get things done. He was not a micromanager, so he wasn't constantly hovering over everyone.

One of the amusements that Carl had was spending time with Jack, Sam, Daniel, and Teal'c as they went over SG-1's past missions. There were plenty of things that the group would have loved to have changed if they had the power to do so. One example was the Argosian people, who the Goa'uld Pelops had been experimenting on.

Pelops had used nanites to artificially shorten the growth cycle so the Argosians only lived 100 days. The former SG-1 team had hated that they hadn't been able to follow up to provide more support for the people after they had broken the nanites hold on them and returned their normal lifespan to them.

But they had been beholden to the U.S. Military, who were beholden to politicians that _really_ wanted more technology. They cared more for the technology than they did about helping a group of people, despite being responsible for wrecking those people's society.

So Carl traveled with Sam, Jack, Daniel, and Teal'c to set up a decent support system for the Argosian people. They set up planetary defenses, a security building to protect them from Stargate travel, and helped set up a food distribution and education system.

After the basic infrastructure was built, Carl put the responsibility of guiding and educating the Argosian people in Jack's hands. He was a leader, after all, and he had a kid by one of the women there, so he had the most investment there. Carl knew that the Argosian people would be part of his Empire going forward, even if it took them some time before they would be ready to take an active role in the Empire.

Meanwhile Sam had joined the science division so she could continue working on her first love: science. Carter and McKay had finally figured out their relationship after Carter beat the ever living snot out of Mckay and finally impressed on him that she wasn't interested in him, and that his big brain didn't impress her either.

After Rodney had healed up, he'd taken on a much more professional attitude when talking science with her, and they finally started getting along like colleagues, even if they would never exactly be friends.

Daniel, with Carl's blessing, worked on forming a diplomatic corps. He loved learning about cultures and meeting new people. So he was perfect for contacting different groups as he roamed the galaxy too. Carl gave him some heads up and warnings about some of the dangerous groups out there, like the Aschen.

The Aschen were a despicable group of humans who conquered other worlds by "gentle" means. They convinced the people of the world they were there to help with their advanced technology and health care. Then they sneakily sterilized over 90% of the population and let the natives die out, turning their worlds into farms and production bases for themselves.

Now that Carl reminded himself of those people, he decided to do something about them. He took the Yamato out and sought out the Aschen. They had a total of 8 worlds that they had taken over.

Carl didn't feel like messing about with politics and talking with the lying bastards, so he simply took away their Stargates. He set up satellites and ships in orbit of their worlds. The VIs would hack every record they kept and keep track of the people who made decisions, and catalogue who was guilty of what, while the ships kept them from making space ships to escape.

After Carl's empire took care of the Goa'uld and stabilized everything, his people would come back and sift through the accumulated evidence to decide what to do with the Aschen people.

He certainly didn't want to bring a two faced backstabbing peoples into his empire if there was no chance of them reforming and eventually biting the hand that fed it. But if they could be redeemed, then he also didn't want to casually kill off so many people.

* * *

After temporarily taking care of the Aschen, making sure they wouldn't be bigger nuisances later, Carl grabbed the former SGC members and made their way over to Cimmeria to fix what they had broken there: the Asgard defenses against the Goa'uld.

When SG-1 had previously visited the planet Cimmeria, they had discovered a defense put in place by the Asgard called the Hammer of Thor. The item would scan all incoming visitors to determine if they had a Goa'uld in them. If a Goa'uld or Jaffa with larva in his gut was detected, they would be teleported to a maze to keep them from harming the people of Cimmeria.

Eventually, while wandering the maze, they would come across a device that would separate the host from the Goa'uld. The former host would be free to leave, while the Goa'uld would be dealt with.

The problem was that if a Jaffa lost his Goa'uld larva, he would soon begin to weaken and die, since Jaffa couldn't survive without a larva in their pouches. In order to save Teal'c, whose health relied on the Goa'ul larva, the team had broken Thor's Hammer, which left the population of the planet unprotected from future Goa'uld attacks.

When the group arrived on Cimmeria, they found some Jaffa poking around the Stargate area, having discovered that Thor's Hammer wasn't working. The former SG1 members weren't sure if that was the first group of Jaffa to discover the planet defenseless, so they had to get to work.

Carl let the four former SG-1 team deal with disabling the squad of Jaffa while he fixed up the Hammer of Thor, which was overkill, really. But they had fun with it.

Carl had plans to meet up with the Asgard soon and help the little greys with their problems. They had always been good people in the show, and he didn't want them to go extinct. But that would be taken care of in the future, after his Empire was more established.

After making sure that the former SGC member had taken care of their previous mess on the planet Cimmeria, Daniel was left behind to talk with the Cimmerians about recruitment for Carl's budding empire.

Sam and Jack returned to Earth, while Carl took Teal'c on a trip to Chulak for Teal'c's benefit.

"So, one of the things that I think would give you peace of mind, Teal'c, is to reconnect you with your family. What do you think about bringing your wife Drey'auc and son Rya'c to Earth, getting rid of their Goa'uld larva, and including them on the next training session? Maybe even get old Bra'tac involved. I'm sure a warrior of his renown could do a lot with a rejuvenation of health and the skills he would acquire."

"I find myself in agreement with your proposal, Carl Edwards. But what about the original Teal'c?"

"Well, I've been thinking about it, and wondering about what your reaction would be if we simply kidnapped him one night and offered him the same basic deal as you? You could both spend time with your family on Earth. He could stay on with SG-1 if he wants to act in cases of great danger and keep the team alive, which I know you're still worried about. As long as he agrees not to share any advanced tech with the team. Think he would go for it?"

Teal'c paused to think over the question seriously. "I would have agreed to the deal, so I believe he would as well. Considering that you're currently building up forces and enacting plans to depose the Goa'uld, I believe he would be content for the time being to continue working with the SGC. At least until the Goa'uld are cast down. Then he would likely wish to move on to helping the Jaffa, likely as part of your organization."

"Good to know." Carl replied. "I'm also considering offering the same service to the other members of SG-1, because I do like them, and some of them are taking it a bit harder than others of their loss of their former lives. If I let the originals in on the information they could maybe be a peripheral part of their old lives. I'd just need to get them to agree not to leak any of my technology to the military that they didn't genuinely acquire in the field. Do you think it would help or hurt them?"

Teal'c paused in thought for some time. "I don't know that the original Jack O'Neill could handle the dual role. His allegiance right now would always be to the United States Military. Samantha Carter would have a hard time holding back information and technology when she _knows_ how to solve a problem. Daniel Jackson too would have problems holding back. He is very moral and helpful, and if he knew he had the answers, but couldn't share them, he too would be frustrated. The only reason I can see that you could recruit Jack O'Neill and Samantha Carter as easily as you did, is that their lives were already over, being mechanical non-humans. I don't think the original Jack O'Neill and Samantha Carter would agree to be loyal to you first. Daniel Jackson would likely have trouble splitting his loyalty."

"Hmm, you bring up a good point. But you feel that you could play that kind of dual role?" Carl asked the stoic Jaffa warrior.

"Indeed, Carl Edwards. My first allegiance was to free the Jaffa from Goa'uld rule. Jack O'Neill and the United States military offered me the best hope I had seen in a long time. And I was heart sick at the idea of continuing to play my role as the First Prime of Apophis. I jumped at the chance to escape that life. But now, I owe you my allegiance for what you have given me, what you have accomplished, and all you plan to do for the Jaffa in the future. I would have no problems filling the role if I could keep my friends safe while they are on their missions. And I believe my counterpart would have a similar reaction."

"Hmm, that sounds good, then. Let's plan on making your counterparts life a bit better within the next couple of months, once we've got a goodly number of recruits for a basic training. For now, let's go pick up your wife and son."

And Carl was blessed with a sight not too many people have seen, that of Teal'c grinning in anticipation.

* * *

Above the planet Caladan, a ship exited hyperspace and swiftly moved into orbit. Carl looked over his sensors readings, satisfied that everything was in its proper place, the planetary defenses were up and running properly.

There were a few of his disciples from the last batch on the planet, working on designing the homes they would build on their land, adding to the city, or doing research. Carl approved of how the city was shaping up, it was beginning to look good.

Carl teleported down to his palace before making his way to where a number of Petes had finished building a dozen of the asteroid mining ships that Carl had added to their build queue. He wrapped the Petes and the ships up in his profound energy and dropped them into his pocket dimension, and then teleported back up to the Yamato.

He set course for the asteroid belt on the outskirts of the solar system using his sublight engines. Several minutes later, he arrived at the location he'd determined had a good amount of metal deposits needed to continue building.

Carl first released the small space station that would be the basis that the Petes would build up into a large hub of mining. The onboard computer immediately made scans, determined where it was, and operated its engine to keep it in place.

He then released the Petes and their ships into space and watched as they first connected with the space station, then scanned for the nearest deposits of metals among the asteroids, before flying off to begin work.

As they mined the asteroid, they would continue to enlarge the space station and build more Petes and mining ships until they had built up their quota of worker Petes. Then the operation would start in earnest. This mining operation would be the backbone of his Empire's long term advancement.

Carl had made sure that certain defenses for the solar system would take priority in the build queue. In the show that this world was based on, Carl remembered that the SG-1 team had planned out and set up a trap for Apophis, and with the help of the Tok'ra, they had blown up a sun in order to destroy Apophis' fleet.

Carl had no desire to allow anyone to blow up Caladan's sun, so active defenses would have to be built to protect against such an attack.

He was also in the midst of designing a ward system that he could set up to keep those ascended snot balls out of an entire solar system. If the upgraded ward system worked properly, without being an energy hog or destabilizing anything, then he would have a method to truly start protecting his empire from their manipulations and spying.

He still hadn't forgotten how the council blew him off. They obviously didn't want to cooperate, so Carl couldn't trust them to mind their own business. It was only right that he work on ways to thwart them before they could set up any schemes against him.

One of the ways he was protecting his people and interests was that every ship and space station would have the anti-ascended wards to keep them from interfering. The Ascended Council claimed they weren't allowed to interfere with the lower life forms, but Carl knew that was a load of bollocks. They interfered whenever it suited their purposes. His wards would just keep them honest, at least in regards to his people and territory.

Satisfied that the Petes were working fine, and that his expanded supply line was being built to support future expansion, Carl set course back for Earth. He had just gotten word that the original Daniel Jackson had made a trip to a parallel Earth through a Quantum Mirror, and had come back with news that Apophis was likely planning an attack on Earth.

And with the Earth having no defenses (that they knew about), the SGC was scrambling to come up with some way to stop the invasion before it began.

* * *

Carl arrived back at the SGC in his janitor persona. It really amused him that he barely needed to use notice me not spells when he wandered the halls of the SGC. The personnel there didn't even remember the fact that they didn't employ any janitors. Since it was a military operation, they had lower level enlisted doing all the cleaning like on any other base.

But something about seeing a janitor already on base and cleaning up made them assume he'd been checked through security. There were enough civilian scientists involved in the program that it wasn't necessarily a bad assumption, and it did benefit Carl, if only by being amused at how easily accepted his disguise was.

Carl took his time as he wandered around, cleaning the occasional dusty spot, as he listened to the various conversations going on around base.

He paid special attention to Senator Kinsey, a paid politician of the Committee. The Committee was a cabal of rich businessmen who saw the Stargate as a means to vast wealth from appropriating, ie stealing, alien tech.

The Committee was currently worming their way into the National Intelligence Department, or NID's ranks. They were determined to gain control of the Stargate and work on raiding planets for tech, with no concern for how many problems they would bring back to Earth with their short sighted policies that would make them enemies of everyone.

Carl was currently having his satellites track Colonel Maybourne in order to learn just who he had contact with, and learn just who was accepting the pay of the Committee.

Wheeling his cleaning cart along outside the conference room where Senator Kinsey was being briefed about the various aspects of the Stargate program, Carl reached out with his mental powers and riffled through Kinsey's mind for some answers.

Kinsey was incredibly bored, even if he hid it well behind his acting. He didn't really care about how good the program was being run, or what they'd already learned. He was here with a job to do. He was tasked by the Committee with shutting down the program so the Committee could gain control of the Stargate and start running the program the way they wanted

Carl snorted in disgust at the greed of the man that masqueraded his intentions behind the idea of "Earth First". Kinsey and the Committee were a bunch of short sighted morons.

The idea that the politicians would look after their own country and people's interests first wasn't bad, in and of itself. It was what they were hired for. The idea that politicians or business men should be considerate about anything other than their assigned duties was silly. It would be like hiring a lawyer, only to find out later that the lawyer hired was working for the other side as much as for the person who hired him. That kind of treachery was despicable.

But the short sighted, illegal, and rapacious way that the Committee wanted to go about reaving and stealing tech would eventually bring many enemies to their doorsteps. Ignore for a moment the fact that the galaxy was a freaking huge place, and they would be better off making allies than enemies everywhere. There were peoples and races that were much more technologically advanced out there, and getting on their bad side would spell doom for their world if they gained the wrong sort of attention.

Carl soon learned the identities of the businessmen who were members of the Committee from Kinsey's mind, and what they had been up to with Kinsey. He was sure they had many more skeletons in the closet. He connected with his satellites and added the identities of the businessmen to the list of people to gather information on.

Meanwhile, Carl was mopping the floor outside the conference room. Several minutes later, Kinsey arrogantly strode out of the room after berating the SGC personnel and threatening to shut them down.

"Ahhh!" Kinsey yelled as he stepped on the soap slippery floor and his feet slipped out from in front of him, causing him to fall on his ass.

"Whoa, you okay there?" Carl "solicitously" asked as he reached out to "help" the Senator to his feet, but ended up destabilizing Kinsey's attempts to get to his feet. Unbalanced, Kinsey ended up on his face this time.

"Whoa, man. Take it slow. Here, let me help you up." Carl said in "concern".

Once more Kinsey was almost to his feet when his feet slipped out in front of him and he fell once more on his ass.

"Stop helping me!" Kinsey shouted out in frustration, glaring daggers at the janitor that was making the situation worse.

Carl backed off with both hands held up on a calm down gesture. "Okay, man. If you say so."

Kinsey finally, laboriously got to his feet, glaring at Carl and the SGC personnel that were snickering behind their hands.

"I'll make sure you're fired and can never find work again." Kinsey hissed in anger at Carl as he gingerly walked away, wary of slipping again.

It was really petty of Carl to have so much fun at Kinsey's expense, but he was thoroughly enjoying himself, as was the SGC personnel. It was a public service, really. Kinsey's final threat of having Carl's job did nothing more than add to Carl's mirth. As Kinsey finally strode off, Carl activated his notice me not charm and faded into the background once more.

* * *

A single figure in blue janitor coveralls was standing in a large room many floors beneath the ground, staring at a nearly 7 meter tall ring while lost in thought.

Carl was rubbing his chin absently while staring at the Stargate. He was currently debating with himself just how he should proceed. After riffling through Kinsey's mind, Carl had come to the realization that solving the issue of the Committee could be simple or complicated, depending on his decision.

He had the identities of all the Committee members. He already knew a lot of the corruption, bribes, murder, and blackmailing that they were getting up to. And he could easily find all the rest of the skeletons in their closet with his technology and magic to aide him.

The simplest method was to have them killed. Assassination. They would be dead and unable to continue their evil ways. It was a method he'd used in the past, when he was desperately outgunned against some of the big enemies in the BtVS world that posed a threat to his people. Or in the Pokemon world when that Lysandre villain had threatened everyone he cared about. Or when he was taking out an unrepentant murderer like Voldemort with a ritual.

But in this instance, the aftermath would be messy. The men represented many economic concerns, and so many assassinations at once was sure to cause a furor, unless he disguised them as accidents.

'Hmm, not necessarily a bad idea.' Carl thought about arranging "accidents".

But simply killing the men at the top wouldn't change much. Their organizations were made up of similarly villainous people. The next set of leaders that stepped up to take the place of the targets would probably not have learned the proper lesson when they stepped into the power vacuum. They would most likely continue in the same vein that the current leaders of the Committee were acting.

Carl wanted to make sure that things actually changed, and that he wouldn't have to come along every six months to do some cleaning up.

Another option was to do like Caiyi had done and enslave the targets and have them run things the way it should be. Society and the economy would not suffer huge disruptions. They would continue to keep the economy and society running, but they would no longer be practicing their rapacious and traitorous ways. They would be under Carl's direction and a way for him to gain more influence with Earth's affairs.

Another option was to take all the evidence of their many wrongdoings and present it to the President. Go to the top and have him force his police force act to end the criminal ways of the targets.

Carl was pretty sure that some of them would be made an example of, but that others would make plea bargains and escape punishment. And while there would still be social disruption in the wake of the trials, it wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue compared to what would happen if he had them assassinated. Their public trials would have some small deterring effect on the rest of the business world's criminals.

And all of these considerations about what he would do with the Committee situation was getting Carl away from the main point of what he was pondering. He had started building his organization / future empire, but more and more he was focusing on and being too concerned for Earth, rather than his organization.

He was spending too much time focusing on babysitting Earth, and especially the SGC, instead of building up his own organization.

He had only realized that he was doing that recently. He wasn't putting all his efforts into building his empire, he was spending too much time focusing on SG-1 and their doings because of the show. Because he felt connected to the characters, the people from the show, he somewhat wanted to fix all their problems and make it better.

Instead of propping up the institutions of Earth and cleaning up their messes, he should be focusing on building up his organization. And one of his original purposes on Earth was to recruit people into his organization. There were so many people that would jump at the opportunities available from leaving Earth behind in order to work for him. And at this particular time, he needed a workforce.

Carl was also debating about the benefits of only the American Government having access to the Stargate, instead of leaking the information to the world and letting them build a joint task force.

It really was irresponsible of the American government to go out and find a bunch of enemies to fight and not invite everyone else to the rumble. Especially when corrupt businessmen were determined to make way more enemies for the world than they needed to.

And there was the question of who did Carl want to deal with in the future? One single government that didn't really represent the planet, or a coalition of all the governments? What would be best for Carl's own people?

That was really the question Carl needed to start asking himself while making plans, now that he was the leader everyone was looking to for direction. What was best for his people? And how far would he go to ensure that his people were prosperous and a general peace was achieved?

Because some of the future enemies that might be coming their way really required a strong and united front in order to fight effectively. The sooner he could achieve that, the sooner they could be ready to win the upcoming fights.

An alarm sounding in the base jolted Carl from his thoughts. He looked up and saw that the Stargate was activating and dialing. Looking up behind him, Carl saw the four figures of the SG-1 team gathered in the control room. Inside the gate room a M.A.L.P. was wheeled out and guided through the open wormhole.

The Mobile Analytic Laboratory Probe was sent ahead to unknown destinations to send back video and atmospheric readings to determine if it was safe to travel to a location. Carl watched as Carter checked the readings from the M.A.L.P. they had sent through the gate.

A short time later, four armed figures ran into the gate room.

Jack O'Neill, Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, and Teal'c were armed and ready for a reconnaissance of the gate address Apophis was staging his invasion from.

Carl had originally been waiting for the four members of SG-1 to show up so he could travel with them to Apophis' ship and watch their adventure in foiling Apophis, while making sure that the group was safe while doing so.

But after the realizations that Carl had just had about what he should be focusing on, he changed his mind about what he was going to do. He decided he had better things to do than go along and babysit the team as they bumbled around the galaxy.

He also had better things to do than go around dropping off satellites on planets that the different SG teams would be visiting in the next few years. And he certainly had better things to do than sitting around waiting for things to happen like they did in the show so he could jump in at the last moment to save the day.

So Carl waved his hand and deactivated the Stargate before SG-1 could enter the wormhole. He sent some orders to his subordinates, and then watched as the Jack O'Neill, Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, and Teal'c were taken into custody before he silently apparated away.

Carl arrived floating in the air outside, looking down at a convoy of cars that were headed for the airport. Their passenger's destination was Washington D.C. where a certain Senator would continue his plans to take over the Stargate program for his rich and corrupt corporate conspirators.

"I've got a few people to visit to manage their outlooks on life." Carl grinned to himself as he looked down at the car Senator Kinsey was in, decision made on how he would proceed. "Those who live by the blade should be prepared to die by the blade. Those who practice illegal and immoral acts shouldn't be surprised when such things are turned around and used on them, should they, Senator Kinsey?" Carl muttered before he swooped down to intercept the convoy. He had some work to do.


	53. Stargate 07

Five horizontal rings dropped from the ceiling one at a time to hover a set distance from each other. With a flash of light the figure of a man appeared in the middle of the rings. A moment later the rings raised back up into the ceiling where they were stored when the teleportation device was not in use.

The figure looked over the scene of the Jaffa that were bowing down before him. He caused his eyes to flash, to signify to his servants that he was their god. He then looked over to the Jaffa that had a gold tattoo of his symbol on his forehead.

"Report." Apophis, System Lord of the Goa'uld, barked at his first prime.

"My Lord! The Death Gliders and Al'kesh are fully armed and loaded in yours and Lord Klorel's Ha'taks. The Jaffa troops are all on board and ready for the invasion. Lord Klorel has reported he is ready to depart. We await your orders, My Lord." Apophis' First Prime remained in his bowed position, waiting for orders.

A cruel smirk appeared on Lord Apophis' face at the thought of how he would soon have the Tauri kneeling and groveling at his feet, especially that traitor of a former First Prime. They dared rebel against their gods! It wouldn't even take much effort. He had seen what level of technology they had, and they were ripe for the plucking.

Apophis then began the trek from the transport room to the Pel'tak of his own Ha'tak to oversee giving orders to his slaves. As he was moving along the corridors, he was pleased to see all the Jaffa they passed immediately pause what they were doing and bowed to their god, as was proper.

He arrived at the Pel'tak, and paused for a moment to savor the feeling of imminent victory. Apophis turned to give the order to depart, when he was surprised by a flash of light directly in front of him. Scowling at the object that appeared with the teleportation flash, his eyes widened in shock at the sight of the gas being released from the device.

Apophis spun about, holding his breath and trying to run to the nearest teleport point, but the fast spreading gas seeped into his bloodstream through his mucus membranes and he soon blacked out, collapsing to the floor. All of the Jaffa that were on the bridge with Apophis also passed out almost as soon as the gas hit them.

What Apophis had no way of knowing, was that the scene repeated itself throughout the two Ha'taks that were in orbit over the planet. Soon enough all the Jaffa, Goa'uld, and Tok'ra that were on the two Ha'taks were knocked out by the fast acting gas.

Flashes of teleportation light brought several figures to the Pel'taks, or bridge, of the Ha'taks. The one in the lead looked around at the scene in front of him and laughed, nudging the unconscious body of Apophis.

"Couldn't happen to a more deserving snake." Jack O'Neill commented while looking down at the body that lay at his feet. "This was almost too easy."

A larger figure had immediately moved to the controls of the Ha'tak upon arriving. "Indeed." Teal'c worked on the controls and soon had the Ha'tak in lockdown mode. "Nobody will be setting off the self destruct now, Jack O'Neill. We should get started confining all the prisoners."

"I hear ya, buddy." He turned to the rest of the Jaffa who came along on the op. "Let's get started."

There were quite a few Jaffa that they had recruited to join their ranks that hadn't been through the basic training that Jack and Teal'c had. They were part of the numbers making up the force for this operation. Even with as quick as Jack and Teal'c were now, after Carl's training hell, they wouldn't be able to strip and detain every Jaffa on board the two invasion Ha'taks in a reasonable time without damaging the prisoners.

At the moment, Dan and Suan were on the other Ha'tak guiding their own forces in taking over that Ha'tak, while the rest of Carl's forces were securing the planet surface.

The two forces on Apophis' and Klorel's Ha'tak began clearing the Ha'taks, cuffing and teleporting the Jaffa to the hastily organized mass brigs on their own ships. Meanwhile any Goa'uld or Tok'ra they ran across were put separately in their own confinement. The Goa'uld were too dangerous to house with the Jaffa, and they didn't want the Tokra to commit suicide when they learned they were prisoners in order to keep from being interrogated. It was better to use them as messengers to propose alliances with the Tok'ra.

While those teams of Carl's disciples were gathering the invasion forces, the cloned Daniel Jackson was teleporting down to the planet below from his own ship. In a flash of light, he appeared in front of the Goa'uld known as Amaunet, who was possessing his wife Sha're. Without letting the Goa'uld talk, he stunned her. Picking her up gently, he had his ship teleport him to the medical station on his own ship.

It was time to get rid of that damned Goa'uld and reunite with his wife.

* * *

The afternoon after Senator Kinsey's flight arrived in Washington D.C., his security detail drove him to a particular high class hotel. He stepped out of his car and strode straight for the elevators, already knowing what conference room he was heading for.

Upon stepping into the conference room, leaving his security at the door, he smiled at the group of high level business men that were gathered around the table.

"It was a success. The program is shut down for now. After my meeting with the President and the Senate Appropriations Committee tomorrow, we will own the Stargate." Kinsey announced with a triumphant grin on his face, soon matched by the group of men of the Committtee.

But inside his mind, Kinsey was screaming bloody murder. He was unable to go against the orders of his new "Lord". Ever since that bloody man had stepped up alongside him at the airport, he had found himself unable to do anything other than follow the man's orders, a passenger in his own body.

He couldn't scream for help. He couldn't order his security detail to shoot the intruder. He was helpless in his own mind, watching as his body followed the orders he was given, as he set the foundation to destroy all of his and the Committee's work.

Kinsey watched helplessly as his body continued talking with the Committee members, telling them everything they wanted to hear. A red light shone brightly, encompassing everyone in the room, and Kinsey fell into darkness, no longer aware of what was happening.

* * *

Carl looked down at the gaggle of unconscious businessmen with a grim smile. "Well, it is your unlucky day, gentlemen. Unfortunately for you, I'm taking a page out of my dear wife's playbook. In order to do the best I can for my own people. I'm afraid I'll have to go ahead and do something repugnant to me. I'm afraid the rest of your lives will be spent toiling for the sake of my organization."

The various bodies that he had stunned were levitated over to one corner of the room, where they were laid gently face down. With a quick switching spell, their jackets and shirts were swapped with air and left laid off to the side.

Carl pulled out the materials he would need to inscribe the needed arrays on the bare backs of each of them.

"While slavery is such a nasty thing, you people have already earned a death penalty by the laws of your own country for your various despicable deeds over the years." Carl conversationally spoke to the unconscious men, unconcerned that they wouldn't learn any lesson from what he was saying.

"And while I could go the route of informing the leaders of your country about your crimes and working within the system, that would just give you plenty of chances to bribe and coerce people to ignore your many wrongdoings. I find myself inclined to instead make use of your talents, connections, and resources to further my plans."

After arranging the special inks and herbs, Carl began inscribing the slave seals on the first person in line. He had already put the seals on Kinsey while they were on the plane. Carl focused on making sure the seals were perfect.

"Well, at least this way your families will not suffer too much from your evil deeds, like what would have happened if I chose a different route." Carl continued talking to himself after he finished with the first man. "I mean, imagine how much your family would suffer if you were dragged through court. They would be infamous in their social circles for something you did; shunned by their social peers. Maybe even become the targets of vindictive payback from those you wronged."

Carl began inking in the seals on the next man's back. Slavery as an institution was still just as repugnant to Carl. The idea of generations of human beings born in slavery, suffering injustice and horrendous conditions still filled him with righteous anger. It was a huge reason why he was building his empire, so it could overthrow the Goa'uld who were the biggest slave owners in the galaxy.

But these men were criminals. They had destroyed many lives in order to get rich. Carl was under no illusion that all people that became rich were corrupt. But these men had no bottom line. Destroying an opponent's business and life? Killing in order to hide secrets? Bribery, blackmail, treason? All done in order to fight and bite and claw their way to where they were.

So Carl didn't feel especially bad about using such extreme methods as slavery seals on individuals that earned their fate.

Carl finished the second man's seals and moved on to the next.

"And it's not like I can simply chastise you and expect you to learn your lesson. Or kill you and expect the next man to step into your place to magically have better morals than you." Carl conversationally said to the unconscious men. "So I made a hard decision. I'll use despicable means to make use of despicable men."

Carl finished the third man's back and began on the fourth.

"Am I right in how I interpret a leader's burden and responsibility?" Carl mused to himself. "As a leader, I understand I have to make hard choices. And that the responsibility falls on my shoulders. But is this decision, to enslave six corrupt men in order to do what I believe to be necessary, a correct decision? Will it come back to haunt me later? Will I regret it later?"

Carl finished with the fourth man's slavery seal and began on the fifth.

"I really don't know the answer. I fear and suspect that I'm taking the easy route to hell. That I'm sliding down that slippery slope." Carl confessed to a room of people who couldn't hear him. He didn't worry about anyone outside of the room entering, with the spells he'd set up to keep from being interrupted.

Carl finished up putting the slavery seal on the last man of the Committee.

"Will doing this one despicable act save many people down the line? Most assuredly it will. But could I achieve the same thing using less morally grey, or morally black, methods?" Carl sighed. "I don't really know. I mean, I watched how Caiyi handled it. And it seemed to work for her. It kept her Empire stable while she was able to train up replacements for the traitors."

"And there is a certain amount of poetic justice that such corrupt business men and a politician would, for once, be forced to work for the good of the people that you have so betrayed. Especially you, Kinsey. You were elected to safeguard the rights and lives of the American people. And so far all you've done is work to enrich yourself at your constituency's expense. Talk about a betrayal. So now you'll be forced to carry out the duties you were elected for. The duties you voluntarily assumed and never fulfilled."

Carl looked over the five men of the Committee lying unconscious. With a few applications of profound energy, he activated the slave seals on them. The seals glowed for a few seconds before seeping into their skins. Their bare backs were once more ink free.

With a few applications of will, their clothes were once more on their backs.

"Well, before you wake up, I just wanted to say that while I can't exactly regret what I'm doing to evil men like you. I do regret the manner in which I'm doing it. I know that would mean less than nothing to you, if you were to hear me say it. Which is one reason I'm being so verbose while you all are unconscious." Carl brushed his hands together, as if to indicate a job being complete. "Well, we've got some planning to do. I imagine I'll be busy for a while, making sure that you put some choke collars on the people in your corrupt organization, to make sure they don't go overboard."

Carl levitated the men back to their seats and took a seat himself, facing the six men arrayed in front of him.

"It's just a good thing I didn't wait a few more years for you to buildup your rat's warren even more. Who knows what you would have gotten up to with more advanced technology to play with?" Carl mused before he snapped and the men in front of him woke up.

On awakening, the six men got out of their chairs and took one knee in front of Carl. "What is thy bidding, my Master." The six men called out to Carl.

Carl smirked on the inside at Darth Vader's line that he programmed them to say. If he was going to be doing this slave thing, at least he could lighten his mood while doing it.

"Rise and sit down. We've got a lot of things to accomplish in the next week." Carl regally stated from his seat.

* * *

Senator Kinsey was sitting at ease in a chair of the White House as he waited for his appointment with the President. His single aide was nervously shifting about, unused to being the target of the stares of so many trained military personnel.

"Senator Kinsey, the President will see you now." The business suited staff member announced from the doorway after Kinsey had waited for more than 20 minutes.

Kinsey rose smoothly to his feet, while glancing at his nervous aide. He sniffed at the man's lack of a backbone, before the two men followed the staff member through the corridors into a study.

"Senator Kinsey, so good of you to come by personally to brief me on this matter." The president greeted Kinsey with a personable grin, reaching out to shake his hand.

"It was good of you to make the time, Mr. President." Kinsey greeted back with barest hint of a smile.

"Well, come in, sit down. Would you care for anything to drink?"

"No thank you." Kinsey declined while sitting in the indicated seat while his aide stood behind him.

A few of the President's close advisors were sitting to the side, there to give the President their take on the information Kinsey would be presenting him. Kinsey gestured for his aide to hand out the information packet they had prepared.

The President took his packet, but put it to the side for the time being. "I'll go over your report in more detail later. Why don't you give me the broad strokes now, Senator Kinsey?"

Kinsey spent a moment to look the President in the eyes, judging the man's stance before he began. Kinsey had his orders from his master, but that didn't stop him from adjusting his presentation to best effect. And didn't that just make Kinsey rage inside his mind. He had to do the best he could to effect the changes that he would never have agreed to on his own.

"The broad strokes of the matter, Mr. President, is that the Stargate program as it is being currently run is unsustainable. The energy cost alone is eating up the budget at a rate that is ruinous. The costs of running the program is almost impossible to hide from the public. It just plain costs too much to pay for it from taxpayer dollars and keep it hidden."

"The idea and promise when the program was started was that we would find alien tech out there to bring back home. That with the patents that would come from it, the program would pay for itself. After over eight months of running, we have nothing to show for it, except for making some enemies."

"Thirteen personnel have died, another 24 have been injured so badly they are no longer on active duty. We've met at least three groups of people that are more advanced than us. One is so pacifistic that they don't get involved. One is so arrogant they won't help any "lesser" peoples. And the third would like nothing more than to kill or enslave us if we really gain their attention."

"We now know there are a lot of these Goa'uld out there, and if we continue to poke them without care, we will just be bringing more and more attention to ourselves. They will eventually get the idea that they should do something about us."

"So the proposal is a three step approach to getting the Earth ready for stepping out into the galaxy."

"The first step is preparation. We need to stop explorations for the time being. Blindly jumping out into the unknown is bound to bring us more danger than we can handle. At least until we've prepared properly."

"The next step is bound to be controversial, but getting at least some of our international allies in on the project is an important next step." The President looked like he was about to object, so Kinsey expounded on the idea. "As it is, we're poking a hornet's nest by going out there in the greater galaxy. It's unjust and disloyal to our allies to be poking a hornets nest and bringing them back home for everyone to have to deal with while keeping them in the dark. Also, what would be other nation's response if we came to them in five years and told them we need their help to work together to fight an enemy that we've made for the whole planet. Something we've done under their noses all this time."

The President actually gulped at the amount of political concessions he would have to make in order to get the other nations to work with them. It would be ruinous to his pocket and his political capital.

"But if we inform our allies, that information is bound to get out to the whole world soon, and that would just hasten the situation you're talking about." The President objected.

Kinsey shrugged. "It's only a matter of time before that situation happens. Would you rather do it now, when we're working from a position of strength? Or do it later when we're behind the eight ball and are facing a crisis that could see our entire nation wiped out? Which would give us better negotiating power?"

Kinsey could see that the President got his well made point, even if he didn't like the idea. Kinsey continued his urgings.

"If we work to bring our allies in early, we're in a better negotiating position. And the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of resources, both materials and brain trust wise, that we don't have access to because we're working in secret right now. Even the logistics of supplying the base cost three times what they should because we have to cloak everything in under the radar spy B.S."

"And some of the most brilliant scientists are members of other nations," Kinsey continued passionately, which pissed him off inside to hear himself sound so naïve and trusting in the human spirit, "and so we can't bring them in to work on getting our technology up to snuff because of the secrecy requirements. With everyone working together, a lot more can be accomplished than if we go it alone."

Kinsey paused for a bit to see if the President was buying the manure he was shoveling. To his utter disgust, the man seemed to be on board with it. Kinsey couldn't do anything but rage as he pedaled a syrupy sweet ideal that would lose him not just the possible money from the future technology, but also the power and supremacy that could be gained by solely controlling the Stargate.

"Along with the second step, we need to build a truly secure facility for the Stargate Program. The repurposed facility that we have now just doesn't cut it. What about vehicles specifically for gate travel? How far can our people really explore on these worlds if they are on foot? What about backup for our small teams if they get in any kind of a jam?"

The damned deluded President was nodding along cheerfully to Kinsey's spiel. Kinsey was hating every moment.

"What about instances of aliens invading us through our gate? The facility right now has a really poor method of defending against such a thing. It would be too easy for an enemy to establish a foothold on Earth, with our own facility providing them defensive structures. All that needs to be reworked."

"And the final step, once we are fully prepared here on Earth, is to finally move out slowly and make allies. To explore strange new worlds and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no man has gone before."

"I never would have thought you to be a fan of Star Trek, there, Senator." The President laughed in amusement while Kinsey was thinking 'What the hell is Star Trek?'

Now that he was finished with his spiel, Kinsey sat quietly for several minutes as the President thought about what he'd said. The President then asked some questions, getting clarification on several matters in relation to the Stargate Program.

After a good 45 minutes, the meeting ended, and Kinsey made his way out. Inside his mind, he was snorting in disgust at the idea of sharing the information, responsibility, and most importantly profit with any other nation. He privately thought there was no way the President or any of his people should go for the proposal. But he'd been shackled and had no say in the matter.

But what Kinsey didn't know about was the subtle compulsion spells on the documents that he'd passed to the President and his people that gently persuaded the President to accept the proposal as the best plan for the future.

Carl sat back in his chair. He had been monitoring the meeting between the President and Kinsey. He was well pleased with the way the meeting had gone.

Carl had decided that if he was going to stop babysitting the SGC and focus on his Empire, he would feel much better if the people of Earth just stayed home and didn't get into trouble by blindly going through the Stargate. Keeping them in negotiations with other nations for the next few years while Carl got to work should work out just fine. Otherwise, Carl knew that the SG-1 team, at the very least, would initiate all kinds of chaotic shenanigans that Carl would have to clean up. And he didn't have time for that.

If all else failed and they continued to try to explore, he could just steal their Stargate to keep them from bumbling about the galaxy and making his operations more difficult. It wasn't like they had FTL ships to get away from the home planet just yet.

* * *

Jack O'Neill was pacing the confines of the room he was restricted to while awaiting his court martial. The fact that he wasn't in the brig while waiting didn't really make him feel any better.

It had been his screw up that got them in the mess. Sure, he let Daniel talk him into going against orders and trying to go through the Stargate to prevent the invasion, but he was all for it too. He had just been considering the odds while Daniel was laying out his case, which made it look like he had been convinced by Daniels arguments.

Jack had believed the fantastic story Daniel brought back about an invasion by Apophis, no matter how much he had vocally scoffed. He'd seen the same shell shocked look in some of his soldiers after their first time participating in an op that had gone so wrong they were surprised to be alive. Jack knew that for Daniel to gain that look meant that he'd seen something completely horrifying on the other side of the mirror.

If only Daniel had brought something back to show evidence to the brass. Some video footage of the invasion, something!

But Jack knew that with so little evidence and with Kinsey in charge of things, they would be in serious trouble if they decided to go through the gate. But he'd hoped they would be coming back with some solid intel on the invasion that would help protect them from the results of massively going against orders. Something that would get the brass to back them up and protect them from the consequences of their actions.

But they hadn't even gotten to go through the gate, so all the evidence they had was them breaking orders and attempting to go AWOL. Now his team was in trouble and it was all his fault.

So Jack continued pacing angrily, wishing that he had some way to change the fate of his team.

A few moments later, he heard the sounds of boots striding down the hallway towards his cell. Jack stopped his pacing and stood facing the door, stoically waiting for whatever was coming his way.

"Step away from the door, Colonel O'Neill." Came the stern voice from outside the door.

"Okay. I'm away." Jack answered, matching actions to words.

The door opened and a military lawyer type looked in and saw that Jack was standing away from the door. He nodded to the guard and entered the room, the door shutting firmly behind him.

"Colonel Jack O'Neill. It's good to meet you." He held a hand out to shake Jack's hand, and Jack shook it, waiting to see what the man wanted. "I am Major John Smith." John smiled a little at Jack's snort of amusement at the man's name. "Yes, I get that a lot. I don't know what my parents were thinking naming me that most clichéd of ordinary names."

Major Smith gestured to the seats at the small table, and both he and Jack sat down.

"So what brought you by, Major, to see little old me?" Jack asked in an idle tone of voice, as if he was simply hanging about his retirement home.

A brief smile crossed Major Smith's face. "Well, Colonel, I came by to provide some information and a choice to you, and your team. You see, I've been briefed in on what your team has done so far during the period that the Stargate program was active. I must say, the number of…unusual…situations your team found themselves in was most impressive in such a short time. And the manner in which you extricated yourselves from said situations were good examples of ingenuity and application of force and intelligence."

"Okay, quit buttering me up, Major. Just lay out what you've got on the table." Jack interrupted impatiently.

"Very well then, Colonel. The long and short of the matter is that you and Captain Carter, being with the military, will face court martial, and most probably lose at least one rank, suffer from confinement on the base, and quite possibly lose some of your security clearance. Which means neither one of you will work on any sensitive projects in the future. If you decide to remain in the military, both of you will likely be shuffled off to do office work." Major Smith baldly stated.

Jack scowled at that information. Not so much for his own likely fate, he had already retired once, and he only came back for the special circumstances. If office work was his fate, he would just retire. No, Jack scowled at the likely future of Carter. A brilliant mind and talent like her, relegated to office work? Dying by inches in the bureaucratic nightmare? She didn't deserve that fate.

"And Daniel Jackson and Teal'c?" Jack asked in a quiet tone of voice that anyone that knew him would have been wary of.

Major Smith nodded at Jack with a serious look on his face. "Well, since Daniel Jackson is not military, the best he'll come away with is being slapped with so many NDAs and restrictions that he won't even be able to publish an Egyptian travel guide, let alone talk about Egyptian history that he had previously been working with. No one will want to touch someone who was sanctioned so hard by the government."

Jack struggled, gritting his teeth in anger, reminding himself that this Major Smith was just the messenger. Strangling him wouldn't help them.

"And Teal'c is a unique case. His first hand knowledge of the Goa'uld would prove advantageous. He will be retained as an expert advisor for future interactions."

"You mean he'll be imprisoned and interrogated." Jack snarled.

Major Smith merely shrugged unconcernedly at the accusation and the tone of Jack's rebuttal. "I couldn't possibly comment."

"So, that's the stick. Now what's the carrot?" Jack cynically asked after calming down a bit.

Major Smith smiled a bit in appreciation of Jack understanding his situation.

"Well, the carrot, as you put it, is that there is an alternate option. You and Captain Carter would leave the military, but all four of you as a team would be able to remain together, doing similar work to what you have been doing so far, working with a different group that will be in charge of the Stargate."

"It is understood that Teal'c defected from his previous position as First Prime of Apophis because of what you offered him, a chance to end the tyranny of the Goa'uld and free his people. If you choose this path, you would be able to follow through on that promise to him, even if it wasn't exactly in the manner you expected."

"Samantha Carter and Daniel Jackson, two brilliant minds and talented individuals, would in turn be able to continue working in their chosen fields, not be shut out and relegated to a life of mediocrity." Major Smith continued.

"What's the catch? What bunch of sleazy types are we selling out to?" Jack sarcastically asked, not buying for a moment the rosy picture being painted for him.

Major Smith chuckled a bit, briefly. "Jack, I'll be frank here with you for a moment. The situation you find yourself in is a result of your own actions. We didn't engineer your current dilemma, even though we are taking advantage of it." Major Smith explained, which was slightly untrue. If someone hadn't shut down the Stargate before SG1 could enter, they wouldn't be on Earth at the moment, suffering confinement as they were.

"The longer the invasion takes to manifest, if it ever comes at all, the worse your bargaining position becomes. It just doesn't look good for you four that you were swayed by some nebulous vision and broke all the rules reacting to an imaginary invasion."

Jack gritted his teeth in anger. He still believed that Daniel had seen what he'd seen. There had to be a reason that the invasion hadn't come. But they were stuck here and couldn't do anything about it.

Major Smith stood up and smiled down at Jack. "Well, do think about it. I've been instructed to allow you to consult with your team about the offer. And a final something to think about Colonel. I know you're upset and angry about what's happening. But don't transfer that anger to the people who are offering you a way out of your predicament. We're not your enemy, and we have similar goals, keeping people safe. It's up to you and your people if you want to take the offer or not, but I guarantee you'll regret the missed opportunity further down the line. And if you need any further proof of our sincerity after talking to your team, do let me know. I'll be back in a few days to see what your answer is."

With that, Major Smith got up and exited the room, leaving Jack to his thoughts for the time being. Fifteen minutes later, though, Jack was ushered out of his room by the guards as they escorted him to a conference room where Carter, Jackson, and Teal'c were already waiting for him.

Jack felt the pressure as he looked at the worried faces of his team. Thinking about the offer and what it would mean for his team's future, Jack swallowed his pride. If those people really could get them out of the predicament they were in, for the sake of his team, he would seriously consider their employment.

"Hey guys. So this Major Smith came and visited me, and laid out a proposition…" Jack began explaining what he had learned from the meeting. Hopefully the offer was genuine and they wouldn't be dropping themselves in a deeper mess.

* * *

After leaving the detention area where the SG-1 team had been detained, Major Smith hopped in his car and drove off to the local building that Fire Crow Industries had purchased for doing business in Colorado.

Once he had parked, he made his way to the elevator, pressing the button for the top floor. Upon arrival, he entered the CEO's office. Seeing Tera and Alice sitting together, Smith smiled and his form shifted back to that of Carl.

"So, how did your little pet project to "hire on" the other SG-1 team go?" Tera asked in an amused voice.

Carl chuckled. "It went decently well, we'll see what they choose when I meet them again in three days." He walked up and gave a greeting kiss to each of them before collapsing on the couch between them and wrapping an arm around each of his girls. "This Jack is a bit on the angry side that he let his team down, but it seems like he'll do what's best for them."

By the end of the first training session, Tera and Alice had made it abundantly clear to Carl that they desired to be in a relationship with him. Despite missing each of the women he had gotten to know in previous worlds, Carl had long become used to his strange luck with women, so he wasn't averse to adding to his family.

Among his original six disciples, Suan and Dan had gravitated to each other and become a couple around the 6th year of their first training session. Maria and Duncan had also worked together long enough that they grew on each other and finally got together after their 2nd year of the second training session.

"So, how is the reeducation and integration of Apophis's captured Jaffa going?" Carl asked.

"Suan, Dan, Jack, and Teal'c are working hard on that. They said only 7% of the captured Jaffa were so fanatical that it would take some mind wipes to do anything with them. They put the stubborn fools in the detention facility for now." Tera informed Carl.

"Sounds good. If they still can't change after the Goa'uld are fully overthrown and remain fanatics, they can either stay there for the rest of their lives or choose to end it to join their gods in death." Carl casually stated. He wasn't about to just let fanatics go so they could plot terror campaigns because they couldn't handle the way the world was. His empire didn't need that kind of instability.

"Maria and Duncan have the education facilities working full time now. The Human and Jaffa civilians going through are able to manipulate the basic technology available in only a few weeks. They are spreading around the planet Caladan and following the plans for industries we've outlined." Alice added on.

Alice, with her Alteran memories, had been a big help for Maria and Duncan in designing a safe device for downloading the basic education over a period of weeks to the civilians in their sleep. It allowed for a swiftly growing civilian population of workers and entrepreneurs who desired to build their own industries.

"So, Daniel is doing a good job of recruiting people to join us?" Carl asked.

Tera pulled out a datapad with the numbers on it. "Yup, he's really getting around. Many of those from Cimmeria for example seem to love the idea of being Star Warriors, and getting to go around and fight. Other planets like Abydos jumped at the idea of finding more fertile lands to grow food on, as well as joining the fight against the false gods. It seems that Jack and Daniels time there sowed some good seeds."

"Sounds like things are going good. Training seems to be speedy. I like the reports of integration among the various cultures." Carl commented as he read the reports from the four in charge of the army. Suan, Dan, Jack, and Teal'c were working wonders with the men they gathered. "Looks like it will be only a matter of weeks before we're ready to take over Molocs territory, judging by how swiftly the army is coming together."

"They are more than eager to start the conquest of the false gods." Alice cheekily commented. "Once those Jaffa have their belief system of the Goa'uld overturned in front of their faces and accept that the Goa'uld are not gods, they seem to be the most fervent in their desire to attack and throw down the Goa'uld." She finished thoughtfully.

"Hmm, it does seem to be the nature of realizing you've been a dupe and a slave all your life. It doesn't lend itself to warm and fuzzy feelings." Carl agreed with her.

"Oh, there was something that needed your approval. When Daniel reunited with Sha're and shared with her what has happened and how she was freed, after she was suitably grateful, she demanded to be cloned too. Apparently while she was happy to reunite with her husband after her ordeal, the idea that there was a Daniel out there who didn't have a Sha're with him seemed to offend her…" Tera trailed off because Carl was laughing too hard.

"I think that a woman that knows exactly what she wants like that should be rewarded. Definitely have her twinned." Carl finally gasped out after getting himself under control. "Daniel here on Earth and the rest of his team should be more than willing to join up when I give them the show and tell later."

Carl paused as he had a thought. "Wait, so if that was Sha're's reaction to finding out there were more than one Daniels out there, what was Drey'auc's reaction to hearing that there were two Teal'cs?"

The two girls started giggling on either side of him. "Apparently, she got a big grin on her face at the idea that she would have two Teal'cs to herself, and refused to share with anyone else, even another version of herself."

Carl couldn't help but to start chuckling along with his girls. That was too funny! Apparently Teal'c was a warrior on more than just the battlefield!

* * *

A week later, Major Smith was escorting the former SG-1 team from where they had been in detention. After Colonel O'Neill had talked it over with his team, they had decided to take the offer of employment. Otherwise, they were looking at some bleak futures.

They piled in the SUV with Major Smith indicated was their ride. As they were driving away from their jail, they kept throwing questions at Major Smith.

"So, where are we going?" Jack asked as they drove out the gates of the base around the Cheyenne Mountain complex. "And are we there yet?"

Smith chuckled a bit. "Are you going to keep asking that until we get there?"

"Ooh, that sounds like a good idea!" Jack exclaimed to groans from Sam and Daniel.

"Well, it won't bother me. I'll just keep driving in circles until you stop. But you have to deal with the other people in the car." Carl disguised as Smith promised with a smile that promised he would enjoy the other passengers punishing Jack.

"Okay, okay. I'll behave." Jack promised when he saw the looks on everyone's faces.

"We're going to the main Colorado branch of the Fire Crow Industries." Carl offered once he saw he had won in the verbal spar.

"Really?!" Sam exclaimed. "They've been doing amazing things lately! Full Immersion Virtual Reality! The modeling technology in virtual reality is absolutely amazing and producing results you can't find in normal labs! It's absolutely amazing! I didn't know we'd be working with them, or I would have been more enthused about making the decision to join!"

Jack laughed a bit at Sam's exuberance, which prompted Sam to ask just what he was laughing at. His facile answer of "nothing, just thinking of all the amazing things" earned him a glare that shut him up.

"And we have a lot of brilliant brains working for us. I'm sure you'll recognize some of them." Carl threw in while laughing inside at their antics. He was amusing himself thinking of how they would react to seeing the duplicates of themselves.

Carl pulled into the parking lot at FCI. He soon ushered the four new employees inside.

"I'd first like to introduce you to some of your fellow employees." Carl in his Major Smith outfit said with an anticipatory look. He opened the conference room door and ushered the four inside.

They came to an abrupt stop as they saw their duplicates sitting at the conference table.

"What's going on here!?" The Jack that just entered yelled.

"Daniel!" One of the two Sha'res exclaimed, while the other was cuddling with the Daniel sitting down.

"Sha're?" The two were reunited and no longer paying attention to anyone else as they showed how much they had missed each other.

"Teal'c. It's good to see you again." Drey'auc said with a suggestive smile.

"Father." Both Rya'c and Samantha Carter said, looking at their respective fathers.

"Drey'auc. Rya'c." Teal'c kept his calm, but his eyebrow was raised at the sight of his duplicate sitting with his family.

"What are you doing here? And how is my robot duplicate here too?" Samantha Carter asked as she joined her father and new sister at the table.

"So. I'm sure you've got questions." Carl interrupted while chuckling at their reactions, bringing all their attention to him. "So, you know that Harlan guy?"

"Komtraya robot guy? These are the robots?" Jack exclaimed, still not letting down his guard after entering the room and seeing his duplicate.

"We _were_ robots. Not any longer. Our boss man Carl here made like Pinocchio and made us real boys and girls." The formerly robotic Jack snarked.

"Who's Carl?" Jack asked.

"Yo." Carl answered and then let his appearance change back to his regular form from the Major Smith appearance he'd been wearing, stunning the four new recruits. "I figured you all would probably prefer to be out and about doing and learning things, instead of jail, so I pulled some strings and got you hired. Your basic training will start in two days, after you get a chance to reunite with your loved ones here and get settled in."

"Basic Training?! I've already gone through that!" New Jack exclaimed, annoyed that he was being treated like a raw recruit.

"Not like this, you haven't." The Jack that had already gone through Carl's training snorted. "You'll see what it's like soon enough. Now get in here and sit down. We've got some stuff to cover."

Jack scowled at himself, not at all pleased to be ordered around by his formerly robotic self. And if the formerly robotic Jack was looking forward to taking some of his frustrations out on the Jack that got to go home while leaving him stranded with Harlan, well, who could blame him?

"I've got a short video introduction to play for you all, saves me from having to give the speech over and over again." Carl mentioned while going to the head of the table and seating himself. "And I've got to tell you, the things you'll be learning and doing soon will blow your mind."

"Okay…Impress me." Jack sarcastically said as he sat down, far away from his formerly robot duplicate.

The chuckles from Carl's disciples who had been through his training didn't inspire a lot of confidence in Jack. But his other team mates were too busy sitting with their duplicates and families to pay attention to him.

Carl then started the orientation.


	54. Stargate 08

The banquet hall was packed with people filling the hall with sounds of conversation and laughter. Carl stood at the front of the hall, enjoying the scene as all of his students were enjoying their final party. This was the end of the third time dilation training that he had held to train up some people to help him manage the expanding empire he was building. It had been quite successful, and his students had learned a lot from being forced to teach what they had previously learned.

Most of the time he still referred to his organization as the Fire Crow Organization, since many of the Americans would likely object to building an Empire. But whether he called it a company, an organization, or a school, he was building an organization that would be in charge of the galaxy at some point in the future.

In his first time dilation, he had only had 6 students to teach, in the second he had 36. Each of his disciples had been in charge of 6 students each. And while Carl would like to have continued that trend, he felt that having 252 students at once would be too much for him to supervise properly. So he limited the numbers to only 2 new students for each teacher, which still had the numbers of new students up to 84.

But his students turned teachers had performed admirably and worked hard to bring everyone up to their own standards when they themselves had graduated.

Carl had been especially amused by the Jacks. It was always good for a laugh to see the perpetually snarky men focus their snark on each other.

Teal'c and his family, along with all the other Jaffa, seemed to feel a great sense of loyalty to Carl for the removal of the need for the Goa'uld larva in their gut. And just like the first Teal'c, the second one took to the training like a duck to water.

The Sams had found that they loved having a sister with just as brilliant of a mind as the other to work with. The first time McKay had tried to hit on the "younger" one, he was taught a lesson he wouldn't likely forget by the older one. Sam _really _didn't appreciate McKay's "charms".

The doubled couple of Daniels and Sha'res worked wonderful together. All four would be working with the diplomatic group, as well as working on recruiting more people into their organization.

Eventually the banquet came to an end and Carl retired for the evening with Alice and Tera. The next day they would be departing time dilation and resuming their work in the galaxy.

* * *

Robert Kinsey hated his life. He hated it with a passion.

This morning was a perfect example. He had gotten up early, too early. He then spent a half hour on the treadmill, jogging to keep his health up. He'd always meant to start exercising, but he was too busy to do it before. But now that he was practically a passenger in his body, he couldn't even decide what to do on his own, and it was torture.

Sure, it was good that he was exercising, but having no say in what he did was horrible. The fact that his current situation was basically karmic justice never occurred to the Senator.

After a healthy and foul tasting breakfast, he made the commute to work.

Today he was once more advising the President on how negotiations were going in the Senate. And he could only report that they were going excellently.

Which was a complete and utter lie! They were going horrible! There were at least 37 ways that Kinsey counted where he could pad the proposals but was unable to. It was just the smart thing to do to send some kickbacks to people that had backed him to show how much their continued support meant. But now he wasn't allowed to do it whatsoever. It was infuriating! This wasn't how business was done!

But Kinsey was forced to sit in his mind as his mouth praised the horrible negotiations and proposals. He couldn't even warn anyone about how bad of an idea it was to reach out to other governments to work together on this. Even just making the proposal had hurt his reputation and support amongst his party members.

Besides, it was totally against the plan he and the Committee had made to get rich while benefitting America. Everything should be owned and benefit the Committee, and America. But he and his fellow Committee members had been caught by a devil that enslaved them. It was torture how that devil planned to ruin them and America by inviting in foreigners!

He was even more aghast when his traitorous mouth reported to the President that the negotiations and preparations with the various factions in America would take another 6 months to 2 years, depending on how the negotiations continued until they were prepared to approach other nations. Negotiation and compromise weren't how things were done! If you wanted something done, you had to find some blackmail and hold them over the fire! Maybe threaten their family!

That was the most effective methods. If that wasn't possible, then you bribed the right people and your agendas were fast tracked. If you didn't at least do that your efforts would be dead in the water! This was such stupid doe eyed idealism at work that it made him want to vomit!

Even though he was firmly against whatever that devil was up to, he hated how incompetent that devil was making him look among his peers. He had years of experience doing things the right way among the political elite, and the methods he was now forced to utilize was making him look like a rank amateur. It was sheer torture!

Kinsey wondered just when this nightmare would end. It couldn't be soon enough for him.

* * *

After Carl pulled all his people out of the time dilation, he didn't need to direct them as to what they were to do. They had already had many meetings and briefings about what their duties were, so they got to it.

Caladan was starting to look like a very busy place as they brought their new citizens from former Goa'uld territories to populate it. Carl had already had many of the Petes establish large farms throughout the land to make sure his people would have enough food. But there would be new citizens to take over the farms from the Petes once they learned the basic rules of the FCO.

The deadline he had given his people for when they would start their operations against the Goa'uld was three months. In three months time they would attack Moloc's planets and take over.

Three months for his military students to take the various people they had recruited and forge them into a cohesive fighting unit. They had three main groups of recruits. The first group was actually the most diverse. It was any ex military member from Earth that they managed to recruit.

There were many military members from all over the Earth that were medically discharged, but if not for their physical disabilities would have remained in the military of their countries because that was the life they wanted. Quite a few of them were too beholden to their country of origin to sign up with a foreign military organization, but there were quite a few others that were happy to receive healing and training if they could go back to being active military.

The next group was the Jaffa. There were some Jaffa that were identified by Teal'c or Bra'tac that were already a part of the underground Jaffa rebellion against the Goa'uld. Others were Jaffa that were captured on Apophis' invasion Ha'taks that were persuaded to turn their loyalty to their new superiors.

About 30% of Apophis' Jaffa were fanatics that were devoted to their "god" and refused to consider joining up. Carl refused to let those fanatics go and make more trouble for him, so for the time being they were imprisoned. Carl decided to give them one chance. While his campaign against the Goa'uld was ongoing, the fanatics would have access to reports on how their gods were falling. After Carl's forces had disposed of the Goa'uld, if they were still fanatics for their gods, they would be executed.

Their previous actions and refusal to change would just lead to them becoming terrorists against his empire. Carl wouldn't allow them the chance to kill innocent people because they couldn't handle reality without trying to murder people. And he certainly wouldn't allow them to raise children and bring up a new generation of fanatics that would plague his organization.

Most of the rest of the Jaffa were simply living the life they knew. As such, it didn't matter to them who their leader was. Since Carl's forces took them captive, as far as they were concerned their new leader was Carl.

Carl did a quick character check and mind scan of each one to insure they didn't join Carl's army with ideas of sabotaging him from within. Which is how Carl found his first member of the Tok'ra, hiding among the Jaffa.

When Carl found the member of the subversive Tok'ra, who were trying to fight against the Goa'uld tyranny despite being parasite snakes themselves, he realized he had found his opportunity to send a message to the Tok'ra and offer them a place in his organization.

The story behind the Tok'ra was that their progenitor and Queen, Egeria, had been stuck on the planet of the Nox for some time while interacting with the Nox. After many years of not interacting with the arrogant and despotic Goa'uld, or having her mentality twisted by the Sarcophagus, Egeria became clear minded and came to have some amount of respect for other life forms. She believed that the tyranny and slavery of the Goa'uld was wrong. And the young Goa'uld she spawned which became the Tok'ra didn't have the arrogance and disregard for life that the regular Goa'uld did.

Her children took on the name of Tok'ra to indicate they were against Ra, who was the Supreme System Lord at the time. And they continued to fight in the shadows, seeking to topple the Goa'uld rule.

With the opportunity before him, Carl had met with the Tok'ra agent and convinced him to act as a messenger to the Tok'ra council about allying with Carl. At the very least, Carl wanted to be appraised of what missions the Tok'ra were running so his forces wouldn't accidentally be caught in their sabotage against the Goa'uld.

With such an idea, he detailed one of his students to follow the Tok'ra back to his people in his ship. Once there, he placed some stealth satellites to keep an eye on the Tok'ra and make sure their own operations didn't suffer from the actions of the Tok'ra. If the Tok'ra didn't want to ally with Carl now, at least he could avoid friendly fire incidents.

The last group of recruits was the warrior people of Cimmeria. They had a primitive and rough culture, but they loved to fight. The problem was they knew practically nothing about technology beyond blacksmithing and carpentry.

Carl's people were aware of the issues facing integrating such disparate groups with varying culture and tech knowledge into one fighting force. Even the Jaffa didn't have a very good education, despite having worked with advanced technology before. The Goa'uld Slave Lords didn't want their disposable troops to have any ideas above their station, so they never educated them beyond "push this button to do this".

While in the time dilation, Carl's science and tech people devised a device that would, over a period of a few weeks, allow everyone in Carl's army to quickly gain the language and education needed to work together. A common language and basic education would be necessary if the military was to become a unified fighting force.

The learning device was based on the idea of the how the Alteran repositories worked. But instead of forcefully downloading an entire database of information into someone's head, they created a much gentler device that would download information in digestible chunks each night in their sleep. Then, during the day, they would practice what they had learned in the night and make sure the information was available and usable.

They would even be able to enter the virtual reality game world that Carl had set up from the World Seed so they could practice with the various lethal hardware without the risk of death.

The basic plan was to spend the first three weeks making sure everyone spoke the Alteran language and had a basic education on how to use the technology they had designed for the army.

The following two months would be training as a unit to make sure they were ready for battle. Since the first group of people already had some kind of military background, they should be able to pick everything up quickly with the enhanced learning devices.

For the time being Carl's forces would solely consist of an infantry that was modeled after the Earth forces tactics. Carl's military minded students, led by the Jacks and Teal'cs, had spent their free time in time dilation designing energy based equivalents of the Special Forces equipment. They also had designed personal shields, anti-aircraft weapons, and armored hovercraft support for fast movement and taking down well defended positions.

Carl had decided to leave them to their work. Despite his many years of fighting experience, he wasn't a particularly military minded person, and decided to leave it to those who made it their lives to do it the right way. As long as they gave him good advice and results, he was satisfied to let them fix the details the way they thought it should be.

The need to quickly train up their military personnel that led to the creation of the education device. But the use of the quick learning device was also very much needed for the regular citizens. The people they had recruited for the logistics and admin side had a large amount of knowledge they needed to learn in a hurry if they were to support the army. A hungry army wasn't going to march very far, to put it in simple terms. And they needed to learn everything needed to keep the Army well supplied in more than just food.

Even just the new citizens that chose to be simple farmers would need at least the language pack, learning on how to use communications and transportation technology, and how to use the technology to help them manage much larger farms than they were used to.

The citizens that went into the administration offices would need the language pack, computer skills, a basic education, and learning on how their organization would run at the very least.

So while the Army was being organized and trained, the rest of the new citizens were being organized and educated. The Petes that had been looking over the farms were shipped away as the new citizens took over the work. The Petes were much more needed in asteroid mining, new planet defense construction, and ship building to waste them on planting food, no matter how needed food was.

As the three month deadline approached, Carl was pleased to see from reports that everything was coming together, and they were on schedule to take over control of Moloc's planets.

* * *

Carl was sitting on the bridge of the Yamato, idly listening to the chatter of his disciples as they communicated with each other, coordinating their offensive. His ship was in orbit over the planet that Moloc was currently on. He was inspecting one of Moloc's Naquadah mining operations.

It seemed like the Goa'uld didn't particularly care about making their territory better. As long as they were able to torture some humans, it seemed to keep them happy. Here they were, posturing against other Goa'uld with their spaceships, while relying on humans to mine the metal they needed by hand. Their organization and mining was so inefficient, it was amazing they had any space ships around, really.

Carl received the final notice that everyone was ready and in position to commence the operation. Every one of Carl's students were participating in the first official operation against the Goa'uld. Even if they wouldn't be leading the military they had built, they would be in charge of some aspect of the plan, and available as back up.

Once the signal was given, the first thing they did on each of Moloc's 15 planets was to teleport the Stargate away from the planet surface, and lock them out so that a wormhole wouldn't form in them while the operation was underway.

Carl, Istha, Neith, and Mara teleported down to the area Moloc and his guards were at. While the former Priestess of Moloc and her advisors wrecked the surrounding Jaffa guards that were fanatically loyal to Moloc, Carl performed a little switcheroo on Moloc himself.

He removed Moloc from the host, sent the host up to be put in stasis so they could be evaluated later, and implanted Moloc in a blank clone, one with no mind or consciousness. While Carl held Moloc frozen with a petrificus, he placed a little helmet device on the clone body's head to scan and download all of Moloc's memories.

Once he had all that Moloc knew, he then held the pitiful Goa'uld in place and turned to see how the three ladies were handling things with the Goa'uld's guards.

Once Carl saw what they were doing, he realized the three ladies really had a lot of anger to work out of their system. Even after a couple decades away from the desperate situation they had been put in while trying to protect the young Jaffa girls from Moloc, they still had a burning hatred in them for Moloc and anyone who did his bidding.

Carl watched as the girls were literally punching holes in the Jaffa guards, yanking off limbs and heads, and generally running amok while covered in blood. The last Jaffa fell to the blood covered ground with a squelching whimper.

"Well, as promised ladies. He's all yours." Carl gestured at the Goa'uld that was still demanding they bow down before their god until Carl petrified his mouth. He unpetrified the Goa'uld and threw him to the nonexistent mercy of the ladies.

'I think there really is something wrong with the Goa'uld's heads.' Carl thought to himself as he watched the ladies start torturing Moloc by burning parts of him. 'I mean, even after seeing what they could do, he still tried to dominate them and tell them to worship him as a god. What an idiot. They are obviously so much stronger than him, and he still is lost in his delusion that he's their god. Is it a result of the mind warping effects of the sarcophagus?'

While the girls were having fun torturing the megalomaniac, Carl started checking over the progress report of the operation. No deaths of his own troops, thanks in great part to the personal shields each of their troops was issued with, as well as their well coordinated and trained skills.

Every Ha'tak that Moloc owned were disabled early on, and Carl's troops were finishing up the operation to capture any Jaffa on board. With that problem mostly taken care of, the commanders of his army started sending troops down to the planet surfaces to take control of the various settlements on the planets that Moloc used to own, but that were now a part of the Fire Crow Organization.

'Huh, maybe I should rename it to be the Fire Nation? Just to see if someone calling himself the Avatar would pop up at some point to oppose me?" Carl jokingly thought.

After some time of reading the reports, Carl realized that silence had fallen in his vicinity. He looked up and saw the three ladies sharing a very bloody group hug.

'Yeah, I guess ending the tyrant that you grew up with would make for an emotional moment.' Carl thought. He waved his hand in the girl's direction, using spells to clean up the blood and bodies in the vicinity, before returning to his reports.

One of the reports in particular really interested Carl. It seems his people were able to use the System Lord's technology. Which meant that his drawback of being unable to use the System Lord's technology meant it only applied to him, not all the people underneath him.

"I can work with this." Carl muttered, before issuing some commands to the Yamato to start manufacturing a Human Form Robot that would look like Moloc. It would mimic and project the sensations that the other Goa'uld felt when they were near their own kind, which was really a feeling of the resonance of the Naquadah in the blood. Carl sent up the download of Moloc's knowledge so that they could include it in the programming of the HFR.

He would have the Moloc HFR, with a posse of human "slave" HFRs and Jaffa Guard HFRs for cover to make it look to the rest of the System Lords like all was business as usual. The Moloc HFR would continue to interact with the System Lords and feed them false information while gathering what intel it could from the System Lords in preparation for taking them over.

Since Carl had Apophis in custody, he also made orders to make an Apophis HFR so they could replace the Apophis clone that had popped up shortly after Carl had captured the original.

Carl's people were limited in number and they couldn't move too fast in taking everything over without risking destabilizing all the planets out there. So he would proceed with the conquest a step at a time, stabilizing and integrating the new planets before moving on to the next territory.

'Hmm, should I set up a time dilation training to get all these people of Moloc's reeducated? It wouldn't need to be the full disciple training that I've been doing, just a technological training for a year or two. Maybe find the next batch of disciples through that. But it won't have to be just the Jaffa or human slaves in on the short education trip. I can also add many people from Earth that would love to have a large plot of their own land to work.'

Carl made some notes to remind himself to figure out the logistics after consulting his students to get their opinions. It would greatly increase the speed at which the territory was integrated.

"Thank you, Lord Carl." Carl looked up from his data pad at the sound of Ishta, Neith, and Mara thanking him in unison.

"You're welcome. I'm glad to see that monster meet his end." Carl smiled at his three students. "So, I've got some ideas on how to smoothen out taking over the territories. Tell me what you think of these ideas…" Carl went on to explain his idea for making use of HFRs and short time dilation training for some of the citizens to speed up integration.

The three ladies who were much more familiar with Jaffa and Goa'uld society gave Carl some useful ideas for how to fine tune the plan, to increase the likelihood of success, which Carl added to the plans.

"Thanks, ladies. Your input, as always, is wonderful. Now, I see reports that the fighting is all but over by now. Would you be so kind as to supervise the railroad construction and administration take over?" Carl asked, and they agreed to, but not before each of them gave Carl a big thank you kiss before running off, giggling. "Good thing Tera and Alice aren't the jealous types." Carl muttered to himself, shaking his head the girls' antics.

The railroad project that Carl had come up with and had been refined by his engineering students was basically a series of Stargates that were on their own network, separate from the network that the Ancients left behind, that would provide a means of transportation of goods and people among the planets in Carl's Empire. There were many security protocols so only authorized Stargates could access the gates.

Carl viewed the old Stargate network as a security risk, where just anyone could dial up an address and arrive in his territory. So he had designed several measures to ensure the safety of his people. First would be that only certain planets in his territory would still have a Stargate on the old network. And those would be located in a heavily armed and well defended facility.

Those old network Stargates would be where his Fire Crow Organization's people could interact with the galaxy that wasn't under his control. They could use it for trade, intel gathering, infiltration, recruitment, and other such things.

One of the big things that Carl had noticed about the Stargate Network was that they were a very fast means of travel from planet to planet, but they didn't seem to be utilized to their full potential. They were only used for foot traffic by the humans and Goa'uld of the Milky Way.

Carl knew that over in the Pegasus galaxy there were ancient shuttles that could traverse the Stargates. And there were also the Wraith that had ships that could use the Stargates to go on human capturing raids.

So as a result of the poor transportation system set up, Carl and his students had designed a rail road type system to transport large amounts of people and goods through the Stargates from planet to planet. The antigravity train cars would be circular to fit through the Stargate, and run along lines from city to city on his planets, and through the Stargates to different planets.

Rune Schemes and Profound Arrays would ensure that the trains had plenty of room inside to hold passengers and bulk goods, making them an even better method of transportation around his Organization.

There would even be railways that transferred to the asteroid fields through the Stargates to where the Petes were mining the ore needed to build everything to keep his Empire growing. It was a lot easier and quicker to run the ore through a Stargate by railroad than to have a fleet of ships transport it through space.

Carl finished looking over the after battle reports and saw that things were going well. Since he wasn't needed anywhere to help his people with their jobs, he began setting up the ward schemes that would protect his new planets from the interference of the snot balls. It would take him a bit of time to set them up on each of his 15 new planets.

'Hell, even with the land that only 15 new planets give me, I bet I could grab tens, or even hundreds of millions of willing people from Earth. So many people jam packed into cities with no chance of advancing or gaining their own land. So many people would be eager to get away from the fate of being sardines in a can.' Carl put the thought in the back of his mind; he wasn't planning on plundering the Earth's population to populate his Organization just yet.

Carl had noticed that Alice was busy setting up the planetary defenses to protect against attack from space, and Tera was organizing the re-education of Molocs priests. Carl didn't have his hopes too high for those brainwashed people. But if they could handle the change in regime, they would prove useful.

After the initial efforts by all of Carl's students to conquer and stabilize their new planets, dozens of them left to go back to Earth to keep their projects running smoothly. There was something about Earth that was special in the Milky Way galaxy that attracted a lot of their effort.

The way the Earth had been able to spend thousands of years of development, isolated away from the Goa'uld influence. It had grown many different cultures and nations. And despite the many wars and infighting over the years, the current situation between nations was mostly stable. So many people had leisure time to spend on recreation and creative endeavors. As a result, there was a very rich culture and variety of entertainment available.

In addition to those reasons, many of Carl's students were from Earth originally. They had a special place in their hearts for their home planet. When someone finds something good, they like to share it with their loved ones. In the face of a wild and brutal environment in the galaxy at large, many of them cherished their home planet even more. And now that they had found something so good in the Fire Crow Organization, they had a desire to bring their home peoples in to the good thing.

It was obvious though that it would be some time before the Earth could possibly be integrated into the FCO. With the possibility of eventually joining up and benefitting from the advances and resources that Carl's organization could bring to them, Carl's students wanted to start preparing the people of Earth to accept their place in the FCO.

Carl had set down some standards and rules of how much they could interfere and aid Earth, so some of his students had taken it upon themselves to try to social engineer the attitudes of the people of Earth so they would be receptive to subordinating themselves to Carl's empire in the future.

Carl had no idea just how long that would take to adjust attitudes. It may only bear fruit the next time Carl came back to the world, because 10 years was kind of a short time to see those changes in attitude in such a large and diverse society as was prevalent on Earth.

A week after Moloc was taken down, Carl received a reply message from the Tok'ra, indicating their interest in becoming allies. Since Carl was spying on the group of freedom fighters, he knew that at this time the Tok'ra were more interested in gaining access to his technology than they were in really becoming true allies. But that was okay, they could work on their relationship slowly. Carl sent back a message with some suggested times they could meet up and talk about it.

Over the next couple of months, Carl kept an eye on Apophis' doings while his people built up and educated his new citizens. Everything didn't always go completely smoothly, since there were plenty of Jaffa that didn't like the new rule and tried to make trouble. Some of them were put in jails, while some of their crimes were such that they earned themselves the death penalty.

Tera's efforts to help build up the administration part of the government was shifted over to building up the Judicial part of the government, while Dan and Suan worked on the police and peacekeeping inside their territory.

The Jacks and Teal'cs were working hard with their people to keep recruiting for the army and keep them trained and out of trouble in preparation for the next operation against a System Lord.

Meanwhile Carl had several groups of his people traveling from planet to planet, dropping off stealth satellites to add to their basic knowledge of what was happening in their galaxy.

It was in the middle of September that Carl received a report that his students had found the planet Pangar.

Carl wrapped up what he was doing and made his way to the planet on the Yamato. According to his memories of the show, that was the planet that the Tok'ra Queen Egeria had been imprisoned on by Ra as punishment for rebelling against him.

Years later the people of Pangar had found Egeria imprisoned in a canopic jar. While experimenting on Egeria, they found that they could use any offspring that she produced to manufacture a drug they called Tretonin. The drug they created would basically do the same thing for the people what a larval Goa'uld would inside the Jaffa pouch. It would replace the person's immune system, healing any illness and preventing them from getting sick.

So while the drug was amazing in that it could cure nearly any sickness or disease, there was a downside. Once someone used the drug, similar to a Goa'uld larva in a Jaffa, it replaced their own immune system and they would forever be dependent on the drug. If they ever stopped taking the drug their immune system wouldn't start back up again, and they would be completely open any diseases. They would soon catch any sickness or disease they were exposed to and would die from having no defense against it.

Carl arrived in orbit over Pangar. It was a decently technologically advanced planet, somewhat similar to Earth's development. Which meant that it wasn't long before the Yamato's computer was able to breach all the fire walls and find the information on Egeria.

After reading the reports, Carl found that they had only discovered Egeria a couple years ago. While they had begun experimenting on her, they had not gotten so far as to start manufacturing the drug Tretonin for mass consumption yet. Carl was relieved that the mess wasn't too big yet.

If it was a few years later, then nearly all the population of Pangar would have been hooked on the Tretonin drug before they found out the side effects. If that had happened, Carl would have had to work harder to clean up the mess.

Carl didn't want to bother with negotiations with the people of Pangar to convince them to give him the Tok'ra queen, so he simply beamed up Egeria and any spawn she had created. He then made sure that there were no records in the paper files or computers about the "experiments" the scientists had done on Egeria.

While Carl had enjoyed the Star Trek shows, he thought the Prime Directive they followed was bullshit. The idea that they shouldn't interfere with a developing society for fear that they would negatively impact them was an elitist idea that showed how little they respected the decision making and agency of those people.

Besides which, they lived in a galaxy where they were in danger from the Goa'uld finding them and enslaving them. So Carl didn't have any issues with interfering with their stupid torture of Egeria disguised as science.

Once Egeria was on board, he had her inserted into a blank clone body and made sure to heal her up to perfect health once more while keeping her unconscious until the treatment was complete.

He then moved her to the medical bay on board his ship, and woke her up. Carl wasn't too surprised when she woke with a violent start, since the last thing she remembered was being without a host and being tortured by the Pangar scientists.

"Hello there. Are you doing okay now? Not feeling any pains?" Carl asked.

The new blond body of Egeria sat up and focused on Carl for a moment, her eyes glowing. She looked down at hers new body, perplexed. "How do I have a host again? But it doesn't have a consciousness. Strange." She muttered so low that if Carl's hearing weren't as good as it was, he would not have heard her.

"Well, I used a clone body so you wouldn't have to share with another person. Not too many people want to share space with someone else in their own body." Carl commented, bringing her attention back to him.

"Who are you? Why am I here? Am I a prisoner?" She asked, almost demanded answers.

"I'm Carl Edwards. Who are you?" Carl replied in a polite tone.

"What do you want from me?" She demanded.

Carl didn't answer this time and simply stared levelly at her while waiting for her to answer him. If she wasn't going to exchange answers, then Carl wasn't going to answer either. She started getting frustrated that Carl wasn't answering her questions.

"Answer me!" She demanded.

"Hmm, that's not how this is going to work." Carl mildly stated. "I answered one of your questions. I'm Carl Edwards. Now, you answer one of my questions. We'll take turns, see? Now, how about answering my question. Who are you?"

She scowled at him, but eventually gave in. "I am Egeria." She proudly stated. "Now, what do you want with me?" She immediately asked.

Carl smiled at her in amusement. "I don't really want anything from you. I've got some offers for you, but that's up to you whether to accept them or not. So, how are you feeling, Egeria? Any pains, or not feeling fully linked up with your clone body?"

She scowled at him. "That's more than one question. I'm feeling fine. Where are we?"

"Fine, fine. Rules Lawyer." Carl chuckled. "We're in my space ship in orbit over the planet Pangar. Now, how's your new body?"

"It is…good. No problems. Am I not a prisoner here? You are not acting like a jailor."

"You got me. You're not a prisoner. I found you where those scientists were torturing you. I've heard of Egeria of the Tok'ra, and felt that being tortured or imprisoned wasn't a fate you deserved. So, I got you out. Did you want anything to eat or drink? Or some time to relax and come to grips with being free?

"Some food would be nice." Egeria was a bit confused. In her experience, no one except the Nox had ever treated her with kindness. She kept expecting a trap of some sorts.

Carl picked up on that thought, and realized that she probably hadn't even known much peace in her time. It would take some effort to get her to trust him.

"Okay, follow me to the mess hall. We'll soon have some delicious grub ready for you." Carl said as he led the way along the hall. He knew it would probably take some time to build some trust. He wouldn't mind offering the Tok'ra a place in his organization. And with his technology he could offer them either a host body, or transfer of their consciousness to a body so they won't be a parasite anymore. It should be a very attractive offer for the Tok'ra, especially with the return of their Queen as a show of good will on his part.

* * *

Over the next couple of weeks, Carl introduced Egeria to his students so she could get to know his people and what they were doing. After the first bit of awkwardness, she soon came to realize that Carl and his students were incredibly strong people. They could probably pose as Gods like the Goa'uld did, but do a better job than the Goa'uld ever did. They had much better technology as well as personal strength and abilities.

Egeria found it inspiring that instead of posing as gods, they were working to build a decent society with as much freedom for each civilian as they could. Even though Egeria wasn't a human, the phrase "it restored her belief in humanity" applied in the situation.

Carl had set up a computer for Egeria to learn some of the history of the Galaxy that happened while she was imprisoned. He also made sure she had access to the movies and T.V. shows that Carl had in his database. He wanted to make sure she could relax and not always have to work or study. Carl thought it might help her come down from the high stress life she had always lived.

All of Carl's recorded movies, T.V. shows, games, and data had been uploaded to his organization's computer for "study". And by this point Carl had replaced all the original computers he had in his warehouse with the more advanced tech they had developed in conjunction with magic and profound energy.

Even with the space expansion charms he had previously used on the various storage units and computers, they had still taken a lot of room in his Warehouse. But now with the incredibly advanced technology he had gained from the database, Carl had replaced all the equipment. There was now a lot more room available in his warehouse because of the upgrades.

All his data and records were transferred over to a computer that only took up the space of a closet. He had recreated the Pokemon management computer storage to ensure that it was as advanced as it could be. Some of his students that studied biology were very intrigued by the records and readings he had of the pokemon, and they were nearly as sad as he was that he couldn't release them from their Pokeballs.

Meanwhile all his storage units for the various items that his Farms produced had been replaced by containers that were a combination of technology, space expansion charms, and spatial rings. As a result, the storage boxes that were stacked on the shelves took up very little room while maximizing the storage space.

As a result of introducing Egeria around and letting her get to know his people, when Carl finally got word back from the Tok'ra about when they could meet him, Carl knew that his biggest proponent would be Egeria herself. Which mean that the Tok'ra were likely to join his Empire.

From the intelligence that Carl had gathered on the Tok'ra, they didn't have the capability to build their own space ships. They were hunted by the Goa'uld and could only rely on the Gate System and stealing what little they could from the Goa'uld. They were in a tight spot where they couldn't even regularly find hosts for their members because of their policy that any host had to be willing.

And trustworthy humans that wouldn't sell them out and be willing to share space in their body were few and far between.

Carl arrived at the meeting place with Egeria, the two Daniels, and Tera to begin talks with the Tok'ra.

Carl just sat back and let his students do their job of talking with and negotiating what kind of relationship they would have with the Tok'ra. It was their specialty and it wouldn't let them shine if Carl always preempted them.

At first the Tok'ra were quite arrogant and demanding, which amused Carl since they really had nothing much that Carl wanted. He was mostly offering them a place since he recognized they had been trying to work hard against the Goa'uld, and he wanted to reward them. And also because he wanted their efforts directed in a more constructive avenue than blowing up assets that Carl was going to take over some time in the future.

And while the Daniel Jacksons always seemed more concerned with learning about what the people they were negotiating with were like and what they needed, Carl didn't think it was a bad way to be. The only way to create a rock solid relationship was if both sides benefitted and were helped by the alliance. So having Daniel showing concern for the other side could only engender good feelings.

If Carl brought someone to the negotiations that had a character like Kinsey, who would only take and not reciprocally give any benefits, then their relationship would be short and volatile. Which was not what Carl wanted.

As the meeting progressed Carl enjoyed watching the arrogance drain from the Tok'ra when they found out that the blonde woman was their Queen, Egeria. The return of their long lost Queen was a huge shock to them. The negotiations were immediately put on hold so they could throw a celebration, which was enjoyable. It was good seeing family reunited after so many years.

The next day when things settled down, Egeria told them about what she had learned of Carl and his work on Moloc's planets, the FCOs goals, and what they offered the Tok'ra. Carl didn't feel very guilty about spying on their private meeting, although he did wonder if he was starting to gain voyeur like tendencies. It did kind of feel like he was watching a drama…

Where was his popcorn again?

After a week of talks, and Carl's people proving they had the technology to back up their offers, the Tok'ra agreed to join Carl's Empire.

Somewhat of a surprise to Carl was that all the Tok'ra present desired to have their consciousness transferred into their own human body. Carl expected at least a few to choose to stay as they were, since they were used to it. But apparently the psychological effect of having a conscience and being too similar to the evil Goa'uld was a bigger weight on them than Carl thought.

In addition to all the Tok'ra at their base joining Carl on the Yamato, he sent the Daniels out in their ships with some Tok'ra guides to extract all their deep cover agents around the galaxy, since they could do it sneakily and safely with Carl's ships.

Over the next week as the various Tok'ra were waking up as genuine humans for the first time, and Carl saw their joy over no longer being monsters, he decided that he would include most of them in the next Time Dilation Basic Training. Most of them would make good additions to the intelligence, military, and science divisions with their long lives and rich life experiences.

* * *

In other news, a huge storm was happening on Earth.

When Fire Crow Industries first announced their release of a virtual reality simulation game, there was a little bit of excitement only in small circles of the industry. No one really believed that there could be much of an advancement in the tech in such a short time.

So while some enthusiasts were excited at the news of someone trying to improve the technology, most people thought it was all just hype and generally ignored it.

They were able to ignore it for several weeks, until the actual unveiling and release of the technology. That's when they saw just how perfect and immersive the technology was. Diving into the virtual reality felt like being transported to a whole new world. If they didn't have their HUD in front of their eyes, they wouldn't have believed they were in a video game.

The game that FCI released was a simple Hack and Slash game, very similar to the Sword Art Online game that was released in another world in a different time.

Once the reality and ability of the technology was known, there was a huge commotion as everyone and their dog tried to get a hold of a copy. Even people who usually had no interest in video games found their interest peaked.

After only a few weeks, FCI subsequently released a few more game packs. Instead of having separate games, they made the virtual world into a single galaxy that the users could explore. Each planet would have a different game or theme.

Some planets would be magic based worlds. Some would be technology based worlds. Some would be hack and slash games. Some would be strategy games. The possibilities seemed even more boundless than the real world.

FCI already knew how crazy some people would get over the game world, so they built in restrictions to limit how many hours someone could remain online in a day. This feature brought a lot of criticism from the game enthusiasts who were furious their gaming time was curtailed, but FCI held to their decision.

The introduction of such an advanced virtual reality system was already going to be disruptive to Earth's society as it was. There was no sense in letting people stay in the game until their real bodies died and invite more criticism.

As a result of the virtual reality game galaxy becoming the main mode of entertainment in a few short months, Carl's people were able to gather plenty of information about various skilled people that they wanted to recruit.

Those with the highest skills and that seemed like decent people were soon approached and recruited to FCI. After a trial period those skilled personnel were introduced to the real galaxy situation and transferred over to the FCO, the parent organization of the FCI.

While the virtual reality games had excited them, the existence in real life of the tech they saw in the game, as well as the magical abilities, excited them beyond all reason. They had no reason to reject the recruitment offers.

As a result of the storm of excitement for the virtual reality tech, FCI had its pick of the cream of the crop of the people on Earth. Carl's Organization was growing and expanding, getting stronger day by day.


	55. Stargate 09

Carl was sitting on the bridge of the Yamato, looking at the view screen that was showing a view of the planet Heliopolis. This was the planet where the Alliance of Four Great Races had a little building as a memorial for where they ratified their treaty.

The Alterans, the Asgard, the Nox, and the Furlings many years ago had created an alliance that would have each race help the others keep the peace in their home galaxies. If a problem occurred that one race alone couldn't fix, the others would step in and help.

Now that Carl had the repository of knowledge of the Alterans, he knew that the Furlings were an avian humanoid species who had gone missing years ago. Carl hadn't found any traces of them in the Milky Way galaxy. But that didn't mean they weren't still out there somewhere. And maybe the Furlings took a page out of the ancient Alteran's playbook and escaped from their original galaxy to set up shop in a new galaxy somewhere far away.

But today Carl wasn't here at Heliopolis for the Furlings. He reached out with his magic and had the Yamato's computer send a message to the Asgard, who he wanted to meet today.

Only 20 minutes passed before a ship of the Asgard arrived near where the Yamato was in orbit. Carl saw he was being hailed, so he opened up communications. He saw one of the grey genderless aliens that were what the Asgard had devolved to because of their cloning problems.

"Greetings. I am Thor, Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet." The grey alien greeted Carl in his atonal voice.

"Greetings, Thor. I am Carl Edwards, Leader of the Fire Crow Organization." Carl introduced himself back.

"You used the frequency of the Alterans. But you are not in an Alteran ship. What relation do you have with them?" Thor inquired.

"Nope, I'm not Alteran. My organization is a mix of Human, Jaffa, former Tok'ra, and me." Carl began.

"What do you mean by former Tok'ra?" Thor interrupted. "How are they no longer Tok'ra?"

"Oh, they chose to transfer their consciousness to cloned human bodies, so they are no longer the parasitic cousins of the Goa'uld." Carl answered with a grin, knowing that Thor would be interested in his answer because of his own people's problems with their cloning technology.

"I see." Thor was good at the poker face, Carl noticed. He also didn't immediately jump at asking Carl about the cloning issue, which said that he had good will power and control over himself.

"I called today to meet you and begin talks about allying, or at least opening up friendly relations between my growing organization and your people Thor." Carl jumped right in to why he was contacting the Asgard. He saw no real reason to beat around the bush with Thor.

"I'm afraid we cannot offer much aid in this Galaxy. We have a treaty with the System Lords limiting what each of us can do in regards to the protected systems. And we do have certain issues that we are preoccupied with dealing with ourselves." Thor stated clearly.

Carl smiled to himself at the bluntness and honesty of Thor. He liked the guy already. "Yeah, I know of two of those problems. The Replicators and your cloning problem." Carl decided that if Thor was going to be blunt and honest, he would too. "I think I can help your people with those problems. You see, I found a repository database left behind by the Alterans, and managed to download the thing safely. I wouldn't mind putting some of my people together with your people to figure out how to fix your cloning problem. And I believe I can do something about your replicator problem soon. From the information I have gathered, the replicators were a left over Alteran technology that someone messed around with the base code, causing them to become what they are now. I've already got some ideas of how to take care of them."

Thor blinked, speechless for a few moments. Thor was used to all the other species asking them for help, not offering help. But the feelings of hope bubbling up were a welcome sensation. He hoped this Carl Edwards could deliver on his words.

"We would be in your debt, Carl Edwards." Thor finally offered.

Carl nodded. "Well, you're good people, and would make good friends, from what I've gathered. It would be my honor to aid you. I'll send you some coordinates to our facility if you want to send a couple scientists there to work with my people on the cloning issue while we work on getting rid of the Replicators."

"That would be agreeable." Thor said. "Would you like to join me so we can talk while we travel back to the Ida Galaxy?"

Carl nodded. "That sounds good. Go ahead and beam me over." Carl had his computer allow the beam over. Soon enough Thor had sent out his messages to his people, and they were underway to Thor's home Galaxy, which only took a couple hours to make the long distance trip between galaxies.

"Speedy ship you've got here, Thor." Carl commented. The Yamato was hanging out nearby in stealth, in case of emergency. Of course, he could always survive the vacuum of space for a time, or use his Profound Ark, even if it wasn't anywhere near as quick as the Yamato.

"Indeed. It is a top of the line Bilskirnir Class." Thor mentioned.

They continued chatting about various things on the trip to the Asgard home world, Othala. Upon arrival, Carl noticed that there were a few Ascended beings hanging around the home world of the Asgard. Carl frowned to himself in disgust at seeing the snot balls there.

The fact that Ascended were there meant that they knew about the various problems that the Asgard were facing, like the Replicators. They _knew_ that the technology they had left behind had been perverted and was a great danger to the Asgard and all life in the nearby galaxies.

The Asgard was one of the Alteran's friends and allies by treaty. In Carl's mind, that treaty between the species didn't suddenly become null and void just because some of the Alterans ascended to higher plane. They were still alive, so the agreement was still in place.

But the snot balls didn't care enough to get off their asses and fix the problems they had left behind for their allies to deal with. This showed Carl their poor moral character, that the moment they gained a bit of power they suddenly didn't care about the problems of "lesser" beings.

It was the same attitude they displayed about the Asurans over in the Pegasus galaxy. The Asurans were Human Form Robots made from nanotechnology that were programmed to feel the emotion hate, so that they would apparently have motivation to fight the Wraith.

The old Alterans had built the Asurans to fight the Wraith, since the Alterans were proving incapable of defeating the Wraith. After building the Asurans, the Alterans eventually decided to scrap the program and half heartedly destroyed the Asurans. And yet the Alterans failed to destroy or reprogram all of the Asurans, allowing one to go free and rebuild their race that could only feel the emotion of hate.

And they were able to grow as a robotic species, with more than half of them completely gripped by the hatred programmed into them. Carl just thought it was incredibly dangerous to build a species that could only feel hate. Even if they had succeeded in destroying the Wraith, they would have been a constant danger to everything around them. And the Alterans were the ones who didn't clean up the mess they left behind.

The Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy was another danger that the Alterans left behind when ascending. They were a species of humanoid-bug vampires that fed on human's life force. As a result of the Alterans not being decisive while dealing with the danger, the Wraith had a chance to use the Alteran's own technology to clone themselves into a giant problem that was a threat to the entire Pegasus Galaxy, even driving the Alterans to the point of destruction.

According to the show, at least some of the Asurans had made the decision that in order to follow the hatred programmed into them, they would kill off the Wraith's food supply. This meant they were all set to unleash genocide on the population of humans in the Pegasus galaxy.

That was a horrible example of just what kind of problems the ascended Alterans were ignoring with their policy to not interfere in the affairs of those they considered lesser beings.

Those were just a couple problems that the Alterans had created and then ignored when they ascended. They showed that they weren't willing to fix it now that they had the power to do so after ascending.

That kind of attitude just pissed Carl off something fierce. He wasn't going to let them go around manipulating things while not actually helping out. Carl reached out with his magic and trapped the three Ascended beings that were present on the planet. He made sure to layer the spells so that they wouldn't be able to struggle free anytime soon.

He then grabbed one of them and pulled it to him, making it visible to Thor.

Carl could feel the strain of holding three of the snot balls in place. While his magic had grown greatly over the years, holding three of the ascended at once was very difficult. Carl sent some instructions mentally to his ship. The Yamato boosted the power of Carl's spell matrix, making sure that the three snot balls were well and truly trapped.

Meanwhile Thor was wondering just what was going on, and if it was a mistake to bring Carl back to his planet as he watched Carl's actions. He was unsure just what the glowing ball that Carl pulled out was, but he knew that it took a lot of energy for Carl to do what he had done. His ship's telemetry had provided Thor with data of just how much power was used.

Carl then pulled out of his pocket dimension a special trunk that he had been working on. He had created a rune scheme that would act as a jail for the ascended beings. He activated it and the two ascended being that he wasn't about to interrogate were sucked up like it was a Ghostbusters trap. Carl smirked at the ghost trap / jail cell that was powered by an array of 100 Potentia. Those snot balls weren't going anywhere.

"What is that, Carl Edwards?" Thor finally inquired when Carl was finished with his actions. Thor was looking at the glowing thing that Carl was holding.

"This, my friend." Carl began with a feral smile as he shook the ascended being. "Is what is known as an Ascended. There were a number of Alteran people that were able to shed their mortal body and become beings of pure energy that ascended to a higher dimension. They sit up there watching and manipulating events, but not really helping the people down here." Carl explained to a frowning Thor.

Thor was obviously quick to pick up on the implications of there being Alterans present on their planet but unwilling to help the Asgard with a problem left behind by the Alterans technology. But Carl decided to lay it out for Thor anyway.

"The way I see it, since they were Alterans and they were in a treaty with your people, they should have come forward to help you deal with the Replicators, since the Replicators was a remnant of their own technology. As higher dimensional energy beings, they certainly have the ability to help your people. Instead I find them hanging about here doing nothing to help you while you fight a losing battle. They were just sitting there, watching and spying. So you can see why I don't have a high opinion of them." Carl concluded.

Thor then turned to the ball of light that Carl was holding. Carl allowed the ball of energy to assume a human form to make it easier to communicate.

"Is this true? Are you of the Alteran race?" Thor inquired. Most people wouldn't have heard the undercurrent of intense anger in Thor's voice. Carl wasn't most people.

The ascended being, now looking like a brown haired short man with a weak chin, flinched under Thor's intense gaze. He too knew all about the Asgard and how they didn't show overt emotions. But for those who could understand, the hidden anger was actually a scarier than if Thor were to rant and rave.

"You have to understand. There are rules! There are Laws that prevent us from interfering with the lower plain." The ascended being almost whined while trying to justify his people's inaction. "We can't interfere with undeveloped peoples, we'll be punished. You must let me go!" The being then turned on Carl. "Or else the council will punish you!"

"Ah, there we go. What an interesting statement. How can the council punish me if they really follow the rules of not interfering?" Carl's question seemed to stump the ascended being for a bit. "Won't really help out the lower beings, but don't have any problem interfering if it suits your purpose, huh?"

Thor frowned at the being, and then looked at Carl. "What will you do with the being, Carl Edwards?"

"I thought I'd stuff it in this little jail cell for a while. Why, did you have something in mind, Thor?"

"Perhaps. But it is something we should discuss later, after the threat of the Replicators is addressed. Then we can address how the Alteran people have abandoned their responsibilities under the treaty, and what to do about it."

Carl nodded in agreement. "Sounds like a plan." He then stuffed the ascended into the jail cell with the other ascended. "I've got a protection system that I could set up on your home world to keep anymore of them from dropping in uninvited, if you're interested." Carl offered Thor.

"That would be appreciated, Carl Edwards." Thor nodded.

"Sure, it should take my ship only a couple hours to finish building it. I'll also have the documentation on how it works sent to you." Carl sent some mental orders to the Yamato to send the basic information of the ward scheme to Thor's ship, as well as having it begin building the ward scheme. Carl had plenty of Potentia or ZPMs in storage to power the wards, so he could have it installed soon.

After the two of them teleported down to the surface, Carl had the Asgard create a building where he could set up the ward scheme to protect their planet from intrusion by ascended beings. After a few hours, when the wards were activated, the Asgard scientists who were monitoring the process were flabbergasted by the readings they were getting from the ward scheme.

Carl smirked a bit at seeing their excitement. He enjoyed their reaction. It was always good to see people who were so excited to learn something new and were enthusiastic about it.

Well, they were enthusiastic for Asgardians at any rate.

He then joined the Asgard Council and offered his plan on how to take care of the Replicators. The Asgard were reluctant to implement Carl's plan at first, because the plan Carl made was considered very dangerous for Carl. It called for him to sit on an empty planet while setting up a Beacon to draw all the Replicators to him, before taking them out with a specific program that would shut them down.

The Asgard weren't convinced that it wasn't a suicide attempt for Carl to be sitting in the middle of such a large swarm of Replicators.

After a few hours of debate, Carl finally got the Asgard to agree to the plan. Carl could have just flown himself to the Ida Galaxy and done it on his own, but he thought the Asgard deserved to at least be part of the process, and to see their enemy defeated. It was only polite.

A short time later, Carl found himself on a desert planet many light years away from the Asgard. He spent some time setting up his defenses. He would wait until all the Replicators showed up before taking action, which meant he needed to keep himself and the Beacon from being swarmed until he was ready.

Now that Carl thought about it, it really felt similar to some Starcraft levels he had played back in the day, trying to destroy the Zerg by using a beacon to draw them in. Carl chuckled a bit at how he now got to live a video game.

After that little diversionary thought, Carl got back to work. A couple hours later, Carl had set up the wards and arrays that would keep all the Replicators and their weapons from coming in and ruining his day.

"Okay, Thor. My defenses are ready. I'm activating the Beacon." Carl reported over the communicator.

"Acknowledged, Carl Edwards. We are standing by and monitoring the situation." Thor responded.

Carl then looked over at the comically large red button that would activate the beacon. He smirked a bit at the unnecessary little prop that Carl had built for fun, before he pressed the two foot wide button.

The 10 foot tall beacon powered up. Arcs of lightning ran up and down the beacon as various parts came alive with a deep blue glow. A loud hum reverberated through the air.

"They definitely notice the signal." Thor reported almost immediately. "They are already making their way to your location."

Carl chuckled a bit. If his senses weren't as good as they were he wouldn't have heard Thor's report over the loud humming of the beacon. Carl then made an adjustment and the humming sound lessened by 4/5ths, becoming just a background hum. The beacon continued working just fine without the added sound or light effects, but Carl felt the need for a bit of showmanship.

"Sounds good, Thor. Let me know when you think I've got them all." Carl offered before taking a seat on a conjured recliner and began reading some reports from his people. He had pulled the Yamato into his pocket dimension by this time because he didn't want to give the Replicators any chance, no matter how small, to get a taste of the tech on his ship. That would be exceedingly dangerous if they got any more advanced than they already were.

Over the next few days Carl watched as the Replicators made their way down to the planet. Some of them had taken over some of the Asgard ships in their war with the Asgard so they were the first to arrive on planet. The Asgard ships that they took over landed close by and the robot spiderlike Replicators came pouring out of the holds to surround Carl's defensive ward set up. Then the very ship looked like it was disintegrating. The ship itself was made up of Replicators. Every single one of them came for the beacon, and made their way over to try to reach it.

But there was an invisible force field that they couldn't get past. They were continually moving around, trying to find an opening in the defenses to finally reach the beacon. The Replicators would occasionally combine into various weapons to fire on the shield, but the shield held fast.

As the days passed, and more and more ships arrived, the depth at which the Replicators were piled up outside his barrier continued to rise. Soon enough it covered the entire dome. The replicators tried to dig under the barrier, but found that his perfect sphere of protection just floated in place, not bothered by the lack of ground under it.

After the third day, the sphere was completely covered by the Replicators, and Carl could see nothing outside his sphere but the shifting limbs and bodies of the mechanical plague that existed solely to replicate and eradicate anything that threatened them. The damage to their base code ensured they were untamable.

If Carl were one to have a phobia, he figured the mechanical spiderlike creatures would be it. Looking at the ever restless mass of Replicators, Carl was happy he had his shield up. Some things just didn't need to be experienced, and having mechanical spiders crawling all over him rated up there in his top 10.

On the first day, Carl had tried to interface with the first ones that showed up, but he found that whenever he tried to reprogram one of the spiderlike robots, once he was successful every Replicator surrounding it tore it apart before it could convert any other Replicator. Once torn apart and destroyed, the materials were used to build a replacement replicator.

Obviously a protracted battle where Carl would attempt to control the Replicators would take a long time and be annoying. And if the battle for control distracted the Replicators from the beacon too much, or took too long taking them out, he was afraid they would adjust their base code and start ignoring the beacon. With the sheer mass of Replicators here, they would be much smarter than a single Replicator alone, by a huge amount.

So Carl left them alone after that, rather than provoking the Replicators to adjust themselves.

'Good it wasn't my plan to take over control of the replicators.' Carl thought. 'If it had been, I would have been screwed at this point.'

He had just been a bit curious, so he had played with the one Replicator, just to see how hard it would have been.

Carl continued to watch the growing mass of spiderlike robots. Some of the later arriving Replicators were obviously of inferior technology and materials compared to the ones created from the Asgard ships.

'That must have been a nightmare for the Asgard. Every ship they lost strengthened the Replicators while weakening them. So difficult to confront an enemy that adapted and assimilated your best tech.' Carl shook his head.

Finally after the fifth day, Carl got a message from Thor: All the Replicators had arrived.

Carl stood up from his chair. He already had the high powered transmitter and self destruct code ready to go. Which was a good thing, since he had noticed with his profound senses that the Replicators were trying to create something to breach Carl's wards, and he didn't want to see if it would work, not with him in the middle of it.

What if they created something like a black hole? Was he tough enough to survive that? Carl didn't want to find out anytime soon.

He activated the command signal that was still active in the Replicator's programming, and all the replicators suddenly fell apart, turning into metal bits and dust like nano particles.

Carl smiled at the success of the plan. But since he didn't want to take any chances, Carl pulled out the Blue Orchid, his goblin blade / profound weapon and started channeling his profound energy through it. Calling up his Golden Crow fires, he started creating a vortex of fire just outside the barrier, stoking the flames hotter and hotter.

He himself was fine, not bothered by the heat or fire at all. The inferno of flame became a giant tornado. With his talent in the Wind element, he also created a suction effect, pulling all the metal from the Replicators into the inferno of his tornado that as hotter than the sun.

He watched as the metal left behind by the Replicators turned to liquid, and very nearly sublimated. The huge mass of metal eventual turned his tornado into a huge molten metal whirlpool. When he was sure that all the Replicators had been melted down and had no possibility of coming back or being reassembled, Carl directed the molten metal down and into huge blocks of metal. He began working on siphoning the heat out of the metal to solidify the huge blocks.

Looking around, Carl found that for miles around the ground was burned and glassed. Absolutely nothing would be able to grow there for many years without great effort to add soil back to the area. Carl spread his senses out, and could sense absolutely no Replicator presence. He pulled the Yamato out of his pocket dimension and had his ship do some scans.

When even the scans from his ship came back clean of Replicator presence, Carl sighed in relief. He then put the metal that used to be the Replicators into his pocket dimension. He could drop it off for the Petes later to build some more ships.

Even though a small voice in the back of his mind kept saying that, depending on the genre of the story, it was possible for the Replicators to still be capable of making a comeback, Carl decided to trust in his skills, senses, and technology.

While the threat of out of control nanotech was very scary, there was a point where the paranoid fear was too detrimental and needed to be cut off.

If the Replicators did make a comeback, he would just keep destroying them until they didn't reappear anymore. There was no real need to give into baseless fears about future possibilities. Carl decided to just enjoy the win and move on.

"Thor, buddy. It looks like the operation was a complete success." Carl commed the Supreme Commander of the Asgard to give him the good news.

"That is what our sensors are informing us as well. You have the gratitude of the Asgard People, Carl Edwards." Thor solemnly stated.

"I'm glad to help your people, Thor. Mind coming by and giving me a ride back home? I've got some things to do when I get back, and we can talk some more on the way. From what I hear, our people have pretty much got your cloning problem licked already. So without the Replicators around, you guys should be able to focus on healing up your race." Carl wanted to take the chance to speak with Thor about what they should do with the ascended beings that used to be Alterans.

"Indeed, Carl Edwards. I look forward to that." Carl smiled at the amount of emotion that Thor kept hidden under that deadpan delivery.

* * *

Now that Carl had manipulated the Stargate program to be shut down back on Earth and have the reopening bogged down in multiple negotiations so they wouldn't be blundering around and causing the Goa'uld to actually focus on Earth, Carl knew that a lot of the worlds weren't being visited by the SG-1 team that would have been.

And the funny thing was that the shutdown of the SGC program actually, in the long run, made the SG1 team much more capable.

Now that the former members of the SG-1 teams had their own ships and powers, they were much more active than when they were a part of the SGC.

There was nothing stopping them from getting together and visiting some of the worlds they would have through the program. They were a very disparate group of people that seemed to have found a deep friendship with each other in the midst of the excitement of exploring the unknown.

Carl was pleased to see that they continued to maintain their friendship with each other and work together as they continued making friends and recruiting people.

Besides, for the former SG-1 team, continuing their efforts seemed to be a good way to metaphorically flip off Kinsey for ruining the Stargate program.

Carl was very amused to see that they occasionally sent emails and pics to Kinsey to show that he couldn't stop them. That Kinsey lost, they won, and that friendship was more magical than corporate greed, or some such sentiment.

Kinsey still didn't seem to get that point, as he was often heard to be grinding his teeth in frustration.

Carl didn't have any problem with the former SG-1 team doing some exploration and making friends in their spare time from their duties in the FCO. They worked hard in all aspects of their lives, and Carl could appreciate them doing what they liked to do for fun. And now that they had more resources and their own ships, they were more able to help the locals they ran into in their travels than they were able to while part of the SGC.

Besides simply enjoying their work / hobby, now that they didn't have politicos always yelling in their ears about stealing tech from their new friends, the exploring part was even more fun to do.

So Carl learned through reading the reports that the former SG-1 team had run across a group of terrorist Reetou that had a serious hatred for the Goa'uld. The Reetou were a group of aliens that were slightly out of phase with everyone else, so they were invisible and couldn't talk with humans through normal means.

No one was sure just why they were so mad at the Goa'uld, but their solution was to kill all the humans. That way the Goa'uld wouldn't have any hosts to inhabit.

Carl just sighed. What a bunch of assholes. 'If you've got a problem with the Goa'uld, attack the freaking Goa'uld, don't kill everyone around them.' Carl thought. 'What is it with extremists that seem to have genocide as their default mode?'

The team had their Profound Senses that let them "see" the Reetou, and their technology to assist them to be able to communicate with the more moderate Reetou and learn about the split amongst them. They were able to target and kill off the terrorists, while setting up relations with the more decent ones.

Carl's people even made some arm bands to sync the Reetou's phasing so they could interact with humans, and the moderate faction actually joined Carl's Empire, happy to be under his protection from the Goa'uld. He had no idea if they could learn to utilize Ki or Profound Energy yet. It would take some work the next time he ran a time dilation Basic Training to discover how they differed from humans.

Over the next few months before the FCO's next operation against the System Lords, Carl's people were building larger, and more intimidating, ships in the same style as the Starcraft Battlecruisers. They were training crews that knew how to utilize the technology, how to fly and how to fight with their ships.

In addition to the large Battlecruisers that would directly take on the Goa'uld Hat'ak, Carl's people also designed and built Valkyrie fighter craft to counter the Goa'uld Death Gliders and Al'kesh bombers.

While Carl would like to capture and free as many Jaffa as he could while taking over the System Lord's territory, he was more concerned that his Army could end the threat of armed ships fast if the fanatic Jaffa were going to do suicide runs on Carl's people or on civilian populations.

So while his plans included attempting to board and take over the Hat'aks, if that didn't happen then Carl wouldn't be too disappointed.

Carl had never planned to rely solely on his disciple's ships that were too small to properly intimidate the enemy. The small gate ships that packed a big punch that Carl gifted his students were always meant as personal transport and support of the main army in tough situations.

So he was pleased to see the results of his people expanding on what the unenhanced military members could use in future campaigns. The larger ships that didn't rely on pocket dimensions and magical shenanigans were perfect for the normal soldiers in his army to use in the campaigns.

By March of 1999, Carl's Organization had built up their infrastructure and solidified their people's education and logistics. They were ready to continue expanding. And the next target was Apophis. The clone Apophis, that is. Carl still had the original in prison.

Carl had pulled all the information from Apophis about his forces, where Carl could find the clones and clone facilities, and any other relevant information on taking over the territory.

So this time, Carl let his disciples and Army leadership plan and execute the takeover of Apophis' 33 planets. Carl made himself available for backup if they needed him anywhere. It was going to be a busy time for them, and a big operation. So far, they only had 16 planets, so adding on 33 more would be a big jump. Getting everything squared away after the operation would take a lot of work.

But everyone was excited to get started. Especially those who had suffered under Goa'uld rule were eager to get some payback.

Carl watched the operation being carried out from the bridge of the Lancer, one of the enlarged Battlecruiser ships that was in charge of taking Apophis' main planet. He was on hand just in case something unexpected happened.

Despite all their intelligence and technology, the Fire Crow Organization still had limited numbers at this time. And they couldn't exactly expect the enemy to be accommodating and not do crazy things in the heat of combat.

So when a situation developed that had no one nearby to respond to it, Carl jumped in to stop a Jaffa fanatic from piloting his Hat'ak into a suicide dive onto one of their own cities, intending to deny the people and technology from falling into enemy hands.

Once Carl saw the situation, he simply apparated to the planet in front of the Hat'ak and burned the ship to molten metal, dropping the resultant mess of metal into his pocket dimension for later.

While he would have liked to take the Jaffa on board prisoner, he'd prefer to keep the civilian city below him alive rather than let both the Jaffa and the civilians die. It happened so quickly, he could only make the decision in the heat of the moment to kill all those Jaffa onboard to protect the civilians.

Carl once more scoffed in his mind, greatly disliking the actions of fanatics that would rather destroy everything than accept that they didn't get their way. Especially when they were basically fighting to remain slaves, it just blew his mind.

Carl returned to the Lancer after dealing with the Hat'ak, and continued looking over the battle reports. He studiously ignored the looks of awe that were being thrown his way by the various bridge officers who had a good view of Carl's action of personally melting a Hat'ak.

While the people Carl had recruited had heard of Carl's powers, this was the first time they saw it. It definitely made an impression on them.

The rest of the battle went well. Carl's students that were spread around the battlefield kept things under control, and his regular army personnel were professional and efficient.

The ship that Carl destroyed wasn't the only Hat'ak that was destroyed in the short war, but destroying it had averted the largest disaster that would have resulted in a massive death toll. Most of the others simply chose to self destruct in space, attempting to take the enemy with them.

In the aftermath of a successful but bloody campaign, Carl reviewed the numbers of deaths and injuries of his troops. They had lost 83 men due to the actions of the fanatic Jaffa that caused the self destruction of their ships, or who turned suicide bomber.

Looking at those numbers of his own people that died made Carl grit his teeth in anger, and looking around at his students and the army officers, he could see they too felt grief and anger over their losses.

And while the numbers of deaths was statistically small, it still didn't feel good to lose anyone. Especially when they had such advanced tech compared to their enemy, there was no real excuse to be losing so many.

As a result of their losses, everyone in Carl's organization spent many hours over the next few weeks reviewing the tactics that they had used, and fine tuning them. They designed more technologies and scheduled more training so that they wouldn't suffer such casualties in the future. They wouldn't be taken by surprise anymore by the fanatic Jaffa that would destroy everything to prevent being taken prisoner. And they would have the proper equipment to finish the battle faster and with fewer casualties.

Meanwhile, Carl's logistics and management personnel continued to educate and assimilate the people and planets that they had taken control of while the HFRs Apophis and Moloc kept up the charade to the other System Lords that they were still in charge. That way the rest of the System Lords wouldn't band together and assault Carl's growing Empire before they were ready.

While Carl would win a war against the Goa'uld, simply due to the huge disparity in technology of the two sides, it would end up being a very bloody war, and the collapse of order would let chaos, war, and death to come to so many populated planets. It was something Carl wanted to avoid. There were so many civilians that would suffer and die if that happened. So Carl was determined to take the conquest a bit at a time in as orderly a manner as war allowed.

* * *

George Hammond looked down at the fishing pole he was holding, and sighed. He'd been sitting here for a good hour and not one fish had bit his bait. Feeling incredibly bored, he looked around the lake, seeing that he was the only one there that was trying to fish. The occasional boater would drive by, having fun, by the sounds of it.

George sighed once more. He was still riled up from having had his command and decision making questioned in the insulting manner that politicians seemed to always have and forcefully retired.

It wasn't being retired, per se, that bothered him. Before the Stargate program had been started up he had been on the verge of retiring anyway. He was more than ready to get out of the politics and enjoy the time with his grandchildren. Or spend his time picking up old hobbies that he had left behind when he got too busy with his command.

But then the Stargate had happened, and he had gotten stuck with that mess. It was something that needed doing, what with the Goa'uld out there looking to enslave or kill the human race, which is why he had deferred retirement and accepted the command once he knew what was at stake. He had found a calling that needed doing.

But now, with what Kinsey had done to undermine him, his command had been torn out from under him in a most insulting manner. George was just thankful that the vision Daniel Jackson had of Earth being invaded by Apophis had didn't come true. That would have been a nightmare.

But once the dust settled, with his calling and command taken from him so suddenly, he had been looking for something to fill his time. For some reason he'd thought back to all the times that Jack had talked about his fishing hobby, and thought he would give it a try.

George looked down at his fishing pole once more and sighed.

He was seriously not enjoying himself. He didn't know how Jack could enjoy it and talk it up so much. George reeled in his line and began packing his fishing equipment up. Since he wasn't enjoying himself, he decided he would try a different hobby.

"Hey there, George. Fancy meeting you here." Just as George was about to leave, he heard a familiar voice cheerily greet him.

Looking over at the voice, he saw Jack O'Neill standing there, smiling his stupid grin. While he was a bit surprised to see O'Neill out and about after having gotten in trouble for disobeying orders, George was pleased to see him, apparently free and clear.

"Jack." George greeted cordially. "You're looking good. I heard about the deal you made while separating. How are the people you're working for now?" George asked while critically observing Jack's reaction, so he was able to catch the feral smile on Jack's face, but had no idea what motivated the sentiment or expression.

"Oh, they're great sir." Jack offered. "In fact, there's no where I'd rather be."

George just hummed in acknowledgment, thinking about what that could mean.

"In fact, I've been authorized to pitch a job offer your way, sir." Jack offered after a moment. "The benefits package is great. Care to listen to the spiel? We could use some men of your caliber."

Normally George would have declined, especially after having his last command taken away from him. Even just a week ago he had been thinking it was for the best that he put all that behind him. But that was before he went on a fishing trip and was just so incredibly bored out of his mind.

"Okay, I'll listen to the pitch." George found himself saying, interested despite himself in finding out just who these people were who took away his best team. And just what Jack had been doing that made him so excited.

George then got in his car and followed Jack's truck to a nearby resort. After parking, he followed Jack to a conference room that had been reserved. As soon as the door closed, a while light flashed in George's sight, and he found himself elsewhere. In front of him was a view screen showing the Earth from orbit. Next to him Jack was grinning hugely. But it was a Jack that looked very different from before. He looked younger and much fitter than he was before.

George worked hard to tamp his immediate indignant reaction down. Judging from how he had been teleported here, Jack's employers had access to some impressive technology. And judging by how Jack looked younger and fitter, they had a damned fine health package. It would be the smart thing to hear them out.

"I'm sure you've got a lot of questions sir. Let me start with telling about how we got recruited…" Jack began telling George everything. From the advanced tech, the health and youth regeneration, the training, taking on the Goa'uld, everything. "…and we're desperately in need of every good man with the right skills that we can get. Which is why we suggested you and quite a few other retired military should be recruited. So, interested?"

George looked down on the Earth, thinking over the offer. So, he finally knew why the invasion predicted by Daniel Jackson didn't materialize. These people who employed Jack had stopped it cold. That was something amazing, and needed at just the right moment. From what Jackson had said, even nuclear missiles had no chance of getting through the Goa'uld's shields.

While looking down on Earth, George realized there really wasn't any need to think about it anymore. He had made his entire adult life about duty to country. This was just one or two steps higher, but it would keep his family on Earth safe.

"What do you think about recruiting a retired nurse along with me?" George asked.

"The wife, sir?" Jack clarified. At George's nod, Jack broke into a smile. "We would love to have more medical personnel!"

"Good. Mary would never forgive me if I went off and got younger and didn't include her." George stated to Jack's amusement.

* * *

Carl sat at the head of the enormous banquet hall in the massive facility that had been built up over several sessions of time dilation in the Time Pearl. He wore a faint grin on his face as he watched his students' party.

Alice sat down next to Carl, leaning against his right shoulder. Carl enjoyed the sensation and closeness of his girl as he smiled warmly down at her.

"Enjoying yourself, dear?" Alice asked as she placed her head on his shoulder and looked out at the hall.

"Of course he is." Tera proclaimed as she seated herself on Carl's left, also molding her body to his. "With this training session over he can get back to playing hooky while the rest of us work."

Carl chuckled in amusement at his two girls banter. "What can I say? I take training seriously, but conquering Goa'uld territory is just fun. I'm thinking of taking over Sokar's prison hell planet and converting it into a giant hot springs resort. What do you think?"

"That sounds like a sinfully decadent idea. You should make it happen." Tera urged him, while Alice giggled at the idea, completely agreeing with Tera that it should happen.

To the former Alteran, the idea of shaping an entire world into a hot springs resort wasn't impossible, but it was something her old people would never have thought of doing. They were just so…staid, boring, and not creative at all.

The various cultures that existed on Earth were something that was precious. The incredibly diverse use of their imagination to create intriguing fantasy worlds and possibilities had a high value that increased the standards of living. The Alterans had never dealt with "what if". They had only focused on science fact. And as interesting and engaging as it was, it seemed to leave a void in their culture that left them…pedestrian.

As a result, Alice had been loving her new life with her paramour Carl and her sister wife. They made her life worth living, especially after being abandoned by her own people for something her parents had done before she could even walk.

"I would love to see the results of that project." Alice almost purred in Carl's ear. "I'm sure we can find a suitable reward for such a big present."

Carl smirked and planted a kiss on each of his lovers. "Then we shall add it to the plans." Carl stated. He was already thinking of ways to add to the creativity of the bath house planet. There was that movie Spirited Away that could make up one theme in a portion of the planet.

Maybe he could set up a contest for the gamers on Earth to see who could use the Virtual Reality world to design the most creative hot springs design. Then he would have the Petes create it.

Carl pitched the idea to Alice and Tera, and the two ladies seemed to love the idea. They too couldn't wait to see what crazy designs came from such an open ended competition. And who knows, they could include as a prize the opportunity for the designers on Earth to be recruited and see their designs come to fruition in real life. If nothing else, that should encourage them to keep designing and creating things for his Empire.

The party lasted late into the night, as the over 500 students of Carl fully enjoyed the last party in the Time Pearl before they returned to the regular galaxy. Once they were back, they would either pick back up their duties, or be assigned new duties as leaders in the Fire Crow Organization.

This was going to be the last time dilation training that Carl would run for at least a year, maybe two. Carl felt that he finally had a decently sized core of powerful and talented individuals that he could delegate the daily running and military operations of his organization. For the most part from now on, his students and disciples would be training their own subordinates in a similar way to how Carl had been training them.

So within the next couple years, Carl could expect his military forces to all be at least working on attaining the Disciple class with regards to their body training. Even though they wouldn't have the benefit of all the pills and personal guidance of Carl, the military had already been seeing improvements in the several months they had of training.

With the great numbers of people that his students were training, as well as their other duties, it wasn't a surprise that they hadn't advanced as quickly as Carl's own students had, let alone Carl when he was one of three students that a group of six Masters had focused on.

Another bottleneck of training up the various members of his Organization was the sheer number of people versus the amount of resources available to make medicines and cultivation resources. Carl just couldn't supply the needed supplements for everyone from his Farms, so their progress was very slow.

Carl had already designed and organized massive farms on his planets that he entrusted to dozens of his students to manage that would eventually turn into a sustaining production of cultivation resources. The system of production of cultivation resources distribution had already been hashed out, but it would take years, decades, and even centuries in some cases, to start producing the needed resources. Those herbs needed a lot of time to absorb the energy needed to attain the level of medical efficacy needed for the recipes.

He knew that the ten years he had in the Jump world wouldn't allow his Empire to get to the stable point he envisioned, but he was hopeful that at some point in the future he could somehow gather everything together that he was leaving behind on each world jump.

Carl knew it was a very faint hope and dream, and that it likely wouldn't come to pass anytime soon. But he still felt like it was a goal worth striving for. Something that he could build himself, that wasn't just handed to him.

Carl shrugged internally and returned his full attention to his girls and the party, determined to enjoy every bit of time he had with his cherished ones before he had to leave for another world.


	56. Stargate 10

Carl was sitting at the mahogany desk in the cabin of his ship, the Yamato. He had designated it as his study room, where he reviewed most of the daily data concerning his organization. In the window looking view screen to his right was a star field passing by as if the ship was speeding past many star systems. Several times in the past while working in the room Carl had tried out the drink: Tea, Earl Grey, hot.

Despite trying the drink several times, and in many differently minute configurations, he never liked it. He figured that many of the food items that people loved were established in their younger years. A sense of attachment was needed to actually enjoy certain things.

Octopus flavored crackers weren't his thing. But then again, neither was macaroni and cheese.

The drink Root Beer, however, would never let Carl down.

It didn't matter how it expressed itself. Root Beer mixed with vanilla ice cream? Delicious. Root Beer frothed with various flavors? Delicious!

Root Beer is always delicious, unlike nasty noodles with fake cheese!

Scanning the reports on his desk, Carl saw that by October of 1999 his military forces were trained up and ready to take over Sokar's territory. The administration wing of Carl's government had prepared the people and resources to swoop in on the planets that Sokar ruled and help convert them to the FCO.

Carl smirked a bit at that bit of information about "conversion", because it was how he overcame the drawbacks in this jump. The moment the people on the various planets were no longer considered "Sokar's people", due to his take over, it eliminated their drawback driven need to resist interacting with Carl.

Carl and his people had seen this very effect before, with the amplification of suicidally loyal Jaffa suddenly losing their "drive" the moment that their Goa'uld lord had been defeated.

Carl's people were about 80% convinced of the matter, so they had drawn up plans designed to take down the targeted Goa'uld System Lord in the opening volley of each war, in order to cut down on the appearance of retaliatory attacks from the various fanatics.

If the "supernatural" influence wasn't correct, then they could continue their normal wartime operations. But if it was true, and the people lost a lot of their fighting spirit from the loss of their leader, it would save Carl's people plenty of time and resources.

Carl chose Sokar as the next target because he wanted to make a bath house. Wait, no.

Carl chose Sokar as the next target because the Goa'uld was one sick puppy, and Carl wanted to free the various people from their slavery. Most of the Goa'uld modeled themselves after various gods, because they liked the admiration of their human worshippers.

Sokar, on the other hand, chose to model himself as the Devil of the Christian religion because he liked the pain and enjoyed torturing people. A normal Goa'uld liked to dominate and be in charge. But Sokar, more than the usual Goa'uld, liked to torture everyone around him.

The Goa'uld were cut off from the human society on Earth for many years. So Carl was initially confused about how a Goa'uld like Sokar could imitate a Christian legend more than 4,000 years distant from his information feed.

It was only when Carl remembered and interrogated some of the snot balls in his custody that he found out what was happening.

The ascended Alterans were spreading certain cultures around the galaxy. The snot balls were influencing things all around the galaxy to try to bring about their desired results. And if that meant influencing Sokar to be a devil, then so be it.

Sokar obviously got inspiration for his devil and hell cult from the "snot ball's" stories. The "snot balls" didn't even need to show themselves, fulfilling their "broken" idea that they didn't interfere with the mortal world.

Sokar, obedient to the dream he had, immediately reformed his image as the King of Hell. He pyroformed the moon of his main base to be a similar environment to the fire and brimstone of hell, where he already liked to torture prisoners. The poor environment was an additional benefit for Sokar, since he was such a bastard.

Carl looked over the information he had. Sokar had actually made the moon more specialized. Some areas were more beneficial to human's survival. But the other areas were more like hell, impossible for humans to survive.

That ridiculous focus was actually a plus to Carl, and his plans to benefit humanity. But how to transform it? That was the question.

Carl decided to not worry about it. The many people of his game would come in and, like locusts, change the setting so that it was beautiful. Ignore the blood, ignore the downsides, ignore the unrealistic things. The gamers would fix everything.

Carl knew that if he allowed Sokar any leeway, then the bastard Goa'uld would make things difficult for him.

If Sokar actually enacted his war of retribution, it would greatly interrupt Carl's plans. And Carl just couldn't have the sadistic bastard interrupt his takeover of the System Lords. So before Sokar really got started, Carl had to take out his influence.

With Carl's stealth satellites, his people had up to date information on the locations of Sokar's forces. Sokar controlled 22 planets, and the largest part of his military forces were in orbit over his world Delmak.

Years ago Sokar had been the ruler of the System Lords, but he had been ganged up on by the other System Lords and been defeated. They thought he was dead, but he had managed to escape. And now that he was poised to retake his position, Carl was pleased to be on hand to stop him.

Carl was once more on board the bridge of the Lancer, which was approaching Delmak. He was going to oversee the operation his military was carrying out. Carl simply watched and waited to see if he was needed as his military leaders monitored the battlefield and sent orders to the troops.

The first inkling that Sokar's forces had that something was up was the disappearance of their Stargates. Before messages could be passed to alert them, Carl's forces struck and attempted to capture or destroy the space ships around Sokar's planets in order to deny him the ability to act.

The word was soon passed that the Hat'aks in orbit over the other planets were either captured or destroyed while Carl watched the battle going on over Delmak. There were so many space ships in Sokar's forces, that in order to keep any of them from escaping the net, they had to destroy three quarters of the fleet before they could control and capture the rest.

While Carl and his people's goal was to capture and reeducate as many Jaffa as they could, there was a limit to how much sympathy they could give the enemy in the middle of combat. There would be no quarter for a fanatic enemy that had proven they could be suicidally inclined when faced with defeat. Until they were in custody and no longer capable of blowing shit up, they would be treated with extreme hostility.

Carl watched with a small smile of approval on his face as his forces efficiently took control of the planet Delmak. Reports coming in confirmed that the same success was taking place throughout the battlefield. With their updated tactics, there hadn't been any deaths due to fanatic Jaffa killing his people, which pleased Carl greatly.

After several hours of watching the reports from the battlefield, the operation was declared an unmitigated success. There had been some minor injuries, but there were no casualties this time around. Carl left the mop up and organization efforts to his people. If they needed him for something, they could still call him, but they already knew their jobs and were starting the process of education and assimilation.

Sokar himself, while crazy and dangerous, had been captured as easily as any other Goa'uld. Carl didn't even need to assign an HFR to impersonate him, since he had been hiding from the System Lords until he had enough forces built up to attack with overwhelming force. Carl still had his people download a copy of the Goa'uld's consciousness though. It's knowledge of the territory and what he had done in the past was important to process and help the FCO know what they had to work with.

With everything being handled by his people properly, Carl teleported off to the Yamato and left the work to the people he'd assigned it to.

* * *

Over the next couple of months Carl watched the reports of defenses and infrastructure being built on his new planets. He visited each of the planets and inspected everything that was going on, even giving lessons here and there to help encourage his new citizens.

Carl had read the summary of how pitiful and downtrodden their lives were under Sokar's rule, so he wasn't completely surprised when he was being revered greatly for the amazing improvements in their daily lives. The chance to learn and make use of the "magic" of technology, and the offer to learn said magic was more than they ever thought they would have.

There was a time in his distant past when he would have been very uncomfortable being the focus of such ardent feelings and worshipful gazes. He would not have felt himself worthy of being looked at with such high regard. But he recognized that he had done something wonderful for their daily lives. He and his FCO had pulled them from the depths of hell and given them a life worth living.

Carl just accepted that they felt the way they did, and determined to himself that he would never give them a chance to regret looking at him with such high regard. He would make sure his organization ran smoothly, with every one of his citizens having the freedoms and opportunities that make life worth living. That would be enough, really, to qualify himself for the high regard they gave him.

In the middle of January of 2000 Carl received notice from his satellite spies that a minor Goa'uld flunky had crash landed on Tollana. In the shock of the crash the Goa'uld had temporarily lost control of the host, allowing the host to beg for asylum and help from the Tollan people to save him from the Goa'uld parasite.

Shortly afterwards the Goa'uld had taken control back from the host and demanded to be released. The Tollan people, trying to act in a neutral fashion, decided to hold a trial, or Triad, in order to determine just who had the rights and ownership to the body.

When Carl received word of the Triad, he rolled his eyes in exasperation at the stupidity and pretentiousness of the Tollan people. He hopped in the Yamato and made his way to Tollana to stick his nose in and watch what would happen in the Triad.

In the original show, the Goa'uld that had crash landed on the planet had been Skaara with the Goa'uld Klorel, which led to SG-1 being called in by Skaara to be his council, or Archon. A Goa'uld Lord called Zipacna had been called in as the defense Archon for the Goa'uld parasite. While the Nox woman Lya had been called in as a third, neutral Archon to judge the proceedings and cast the deciding vote.

The whole trial had been a ruse on the part of the Goa'uld. During the time of the Triad the Goa'uld had been able to sneak about and disable the Tollan's defenses. The Goa'uld would have completely succeeded if not for the SG-1 team asking Lya to hide one of the Ion Cannons that served as their defensive weapons to protect it from the sabotage. With that single Ion Cannon, they were able to hold off the attack of the Hat'aks, although some damage was done to the Tollan planet.

Tera and Carl arrived at the same time at Tollana, and Carl made himself known to the Tollan Curia (which was the governing body of the Tollan people) as a person interested in the proceeding, along with the Archon Tera who would argue the side of the Host.

Carl and Tera had deliberately made their ships seem less impressive than they were, in order to not let on to the Tollan people just how much more advanced they were. The four original members of SG-1 also showed up, since they had some prior contact with the Tollan people.

Carl wasn't too surprised to be treated like idiot unwanted cousins by the Tollan. He had watched how arrogant they were back at the SGC, and they hadn't improved their attitude even after meeting the Nox, who seemed like primitive people but were much more advanced than the Tollan people.

He was really only there to watch the fun, so Carl sat back with his popcorn and let his people do most of the talking. They were met by the Tollan Narim who had flirted with Sam back on Earth. He seemed somewhat uncomfortable with having to meet Sam again, having thought they would never interact again.

Carl chuckled at the awkwardness of the meeting, tossing some popcorn in his mouth. He knew that Narim was struggling to find a topic of conversation to get him out of the awkwardness.

Sam for her part simply treated Narim like an unwanted acquaintance, not at all bothered by their previous interaction. Especially since she now had access to tech that made the Tollan look like kindergarteners, she wasn't bothered by his act. She had no real motivation to humor Narim, so she just ignored the dude's byplay and acted neutral.

As they were following Narim through a hallway, a white light had flashed in the corridor, startling the group.

"What happened there, Narim?" Daniel asked.

"Your weapons have been disabled." Narim blandly stated with a hint of chastisement.

The group had decided to attend the event dressed in a uniform that closely resembled their previous affiliation with the SGC, and they only had a stunner/plasma handgun on their hips. Not that they really needed them, but it kept up the pretense that they were still the same people they had been previously.

"What?" Jack asked, wondering just why the Tollan people would disarm them when they were about to be in the room with Goa'uld. He was thinking the Tollan people were pretty dumb.

"Do not worry. You may continue to carry them if you wish." Narim, unaware that their weapons were perfectly functional, stated condescendingly.

"You don't think you should have told us about this before we came?" Jack asked, playing along with them.

"I didn't find it relevant." Narim stated. "No one will attack you here. You are safe. So you will not need your weapons."

Jack snorted in disgust. He was a thoroughly military minded person, and the idea of not being armed made him nervous. The idea that the Tollan people would disarm them with no advance notice made them "not friends".

Since he wasn't in truth helpless or disarmed, Jack let the issue go in order to not bring attention to his status. But the lack of trust from the Tollan in Jack's ability to judge when using a weapon or not was appropriate did not endear them to Jack.

They were then ushered into a room with a podium where a lady with her hair pulled back into a tight bun with strange robes with a high collar waited. She rose and greeted the group with a faint smile.

"These must be our visitors from Earth. Welcome."

"High Chancellor Travell, this is Colonel Jack O'Neill, Dr. Daniel Jackson, Major Samantha Carter, Teal'c, Tera and Carl Edwards." Narim introduced the group.

"We are honoured that you have agreed to participate in Triad. Your Seeker will decide which one of you will be Archon." She stated.

"Actually, we've decided that I'll be the Archon, since I have the most experience in law." Tera asserted while Carl looked on in amusement.

"Very well. If your seeker agrees to it, you shall be the Archon." High Chancellor Travell agreed.

Tera was then escorted off to meet with the Seeker while the rest of the group was ushered to the trial chambers. Carl moseyed along at the back. He noticed that all members of his group were sending out their profound senses, looking around the Tollan building to see what was happening out of sight.

When they arrived at the courtroom, they were introduced to the Goa'uld's Archon, a Goa'uld that went by the name Hunac. The Goa'uld Seeker was named Rupnot.

Carl wasn't particularly surprised to see how arrogant the Goa'uld Archon was, as he looked around at everyone like they were bugs beneath him.

Shortly afterwards the neutral Archon came gliding into the room with a small smile almost permanently on her face.

High Chancellor Travell introduced Lya to the group.

Carl pulled out another tub of popcorn and offered it to Lya, who graciously accepted. The taste of the buttery goodness that was popcorn that she had on their previous encounter was too short. She was happy to have another taste of the snack.

"Is this your custom, Carl? To gift this delicious snack to those you meet?" She inquired.

"Just with you, Lya." Carl chuckled. "This is a snack that we usually eat when watching a movie. It's my way of declaring that I'm here to watch the show."

"Indeed." Lya enjoyed the joke, since she did indeed feel like the whole process was a play. She would seriously consider the arguments, as was needed for her role as an Archon. But she did indeed feel like the question posed by the Tollan of who owned the body was somewhat ridiculous.

Over the next few days Carl watched the proceedings. The Goa'uld Archon, Hunac, asked for frequent breaks, to consult with his client, to stretch out the trial, to bide his time. All the while, Carl tracked him as Hunac visited each of the various Ion Cannons in the area to disable them.

Carl shook his head at the stupidity of the Tollan that they allowed non-cleared personnel, especially a Goa'uld, to wander where ever they wanted. The Tollan were so convinced they had control over the situation just because they shut down their guest's weapons that they didn't even keep track of him, sure in the knowledge they were safe due to their technology.

Carl's people knew what was brewing, and they decided to let it happen as a lesson for the Tollan. They wouldn't actually allow the Goa'uld to harm the Tollan people, but they would let them disable the Ion Cannons so the Tollans could see just how stupid they were to cater to the Goa'uld and debate whether or not a person had a right to their own body, or if they should give it up for the Goa'uld.

Carl was tempted to implant a Goa'uld in each of the Tollan council for a week and see if they enjoyed having their body taken over. That would give them the proper perspective on the issue. Maybe after the trial was over, he would slip them a VR helmet in their sleep and have them experience what being a Goa'uld host was like.

What was the saying? Walk a mile in my shoes?

* * *

After a few days the trial was finally over. Carl was seated in the audience section watching how the voting went.

And just like in the show, a Goa'uld Hat'ak arrived in orbit before the end of the trial, surprising everyone there.

"The ship simply arrived in anticipation of our winning the case. It will be our means of transport home." Hunac blithely lied. Carl shrugged. It wasn't like he was going anywhere after the drama happened.

High Chancellor Travell asked for the votes at the end of the trial.

Tera as the human's council naturally voted for the host, Gerry.

The Goa'uld Hunac naturally voted in favor of the parasite, Rupnot.

"After careful consideration, I believe that both Gerry and Rupnot have the right to live. But living as a host with no will of one's own is not life, therefore only one may remain in the body. To that end, I award priority to the original owner of the body. Gerry." Lya explained her decision for the benefit of the crowd.

Travell nodded in agreement of Lya's vote. "We will summon the Tok'ra to come to Tollana to assist in the removal of the Goa'uld Rupnot. He will be removed from the host and if he survives, will be sent to the Goa'uld world of his choice." She then used a handheld device and the device that allowed them to control whether the host or parasite was in control turned blue, indicating Gerry was in control.

"Thank you very much." Gerry said to Lya gratefully. Carl noticed Gerry had been giving the Tollan some not so nice looks for the whole trial thing, instead of simply freeing him from the parasite and being a prisoner in his own mind. Carl couldn't blame him. To have some pretentious assholes say that he may not get the rights to his own body must have been infuriating.

"Lord Hunac, thank you for your time. You are dismissed, with our thanks." Travell finished.

At which point Hunac took out a small ball shaped device and activated it. A moment later the Hat'ak in orbit started bombarding the Ion Cannons, destroying them.

"You will surrender to your gods or you will die!" Hunac yelled while the Tollan in the room were panicking.

Travell and Narim were desperately trying to find information on their planet's defenses, only now finding out their Ion Cannons were destroyed and they were defenseless. They were suddenly feeling hopeless about their ability to defend themselves from the Goa'uld.

Lya stared curiously at Carl. She knew the man who was Carl had many tricks up his sleeve. Carl casually pulled out a tub of popcorn and offered Lya some buttery treats in response. She smiled and grabbed a handful, curious to see what he had planned. She herself was able to hide when she wanted, so she wasn't bothered by the Goa'uld's tactics. But she was interested in Carl's abilities.

"Yeah, not gonna happen there, snake." Jack sarcastically interrupted the parasite's glory.

"You are defenseless. You will die if you do not surrender." Hunac menacingly stated while glaring at Jack.

Jack smirked and pulled out his handgun that the Tollan thought had been disabled, flicked the switch to stun, and shot the Goa'uld. Narim and Travell blinked in shock as they looked at the firearm that should have been disabled.

"What..?" Narim muttered.

Sam then pulled out a communicator. "This is Carter to the Lancer. Please take over that Hat'ak ship in orbit. We don't want them making more of a mess than they have already."

At which point the giant Battlecruiser that rivaled a Hat'ak in size unstealthed. The Goa'uld ship was soon disabled and troops teleported over to the Hat'ak and took them into custody.

They then teleported Gerry and Hunac up to have the Goa'uld removed from them and offered a place in Carl's Empire. The former hosts were incredibly happy to have ownership of their bodies, and they immediately joined the group of people who offered them freedom.

Travell and Narim were looking at the displays that told about the FCO ship in orbit that they hadn't detected before. They looked at each other in bewilderment. What happened to the Earthlings being primitive? That ship was far more advanced than their own technology.

Narim then approached Sam. "Sam. It is good that your people have such technology. Thank you for saving us. We would be interested in trade, maybe even an alliance." Narim offered with a suggestive smile, trying the same honey pot ploy that he'd used previously.

Little did Narim know how little Sam thought of him for his schemes. She had only helped him previously because she didn't want them to be used and abused by the NID. She had already hooked up with the hawt man that O'Neill had turned into, so she wasn't looking for love in all the wrong places. Even though Jack was pretty dumb when it came to science, he was a smart dude in general, and he knew enough to fulfill her needs.

"Sorry Narim. We have a policy not to give our technology to those who aren't advanced enough to be responsible with it." She gave him an insincere smile, feeling pretty good about being able to give them a serving of their own medicine. "So I'm afraid we'll have to decline at this time."

Carl chuckled in amusement at seeing the drama play out in front of him. His amusement at the scene drew some attention to him. [How did that feel to throw it back in his face?] Carl asked Sam via telepathy.

[Very cathartic sir.] Sam's mind voice had plenty of laughter in it.

Carl didn't blame her for feeling that way. As someone who highly valued her intelligence and learning ability, it had been a great insult for the Tollans to arrogantly proclaim that Sam was too primitive to be able to handle the knowledge.

And once Sam got a chance to learn something much more advanced than the technology that the Tollan had, she had proven to be a veritable sponge, soaking up the knowledge at an unbelievable speed.

"Thanks for your hospitality." Carl stated to Narim and Travell. "Now that the Triad is over, we've got plenty of things to do. We'll be in touch sometime in the future." Carl then turned to Lya. "How would you like a tour of my new home planet of Caladan?" Carl inquired.

"Yes, come and see what we've built." Tera giggled and urged Lya. She knew of the otherworldly build of the Nox race, and she wanted a friend of the race to come with them.

Everyone on Carl's side there knew that the Nox were once members of the Alliance of Four Races, and that they were practicing isolationist policies now. They had also heard Carl's rants against the former Alterans that were now "a bunch of energy snot balls". Carl wanted to get to be friends with the Nox, like he had with the Asgard.

And Carl hoped to convince the Nox to not pay any attention to the snot balls if they came calling to convince the Nox to stand against Carl's Empire, for whatever reason.

"I would be honored." Lya stated with an anticipatory smile.

Carl had Lya, Tera, and himself beamed up to the Yamato, leaving the four former members of SG-1 standing there, looking around.

"Well, I guess that's why the boss gave us our own rides." Jack said with a chuckle at being left hanging. The four of them then teleported up to their own ships, leaving Travell and Narim staring blankly at where they had once been.

Narim especially felt a great amount of regret. If he knew the lady that he'd insincerely attempted to seduce in the past would one day have access to such advanced tech that could help his people, he would have acted differently. He would have been much more sincere, for one.

Despite being barely nicer about the tech gap with the earthlings than Omoc, he too had been very arrogant and dismissive of the apparently primitive Earthlings.

But all Narim could do was regret. There was no changing what had already happened, or how much they had missed out on.

* * *

Lya's visit with Carl to Caladan was very interesting and profitable. From the very first time he had met Lya, Carl had sensed that she, and quite likely all the Nox, had some native abilities to manipulate the dimensional energy that the Alterans could as well.

Lya's reaction to the wards and wizarding plants that Carl showed her gave him the idea that, similar to Alice, the Nox might be able to learn some of the wizarding spells he had available.

After some time, the Nox agreed to an alliance between Carl's FCO and them. One of the things Carl insisted on gifting the Nox was wards to keep the snot balls away from them unless they wanted to talk to them.

Carl was still testing out ideas on the three snot balls he had imprisoned. He was learning a great deal, especially how to guard against them. It would surely be useful for whenever he ran into Anubis, the Goa'uld that was ascended before being half descended.

Once the talks with the Nox were settled, Carl turned his attention back to taking over the Goa'uld's territory. The Nox didn't want to get involved with the conflict at all, but they didn't try to chastise him over what he was doing, which was fine with him.

At the beginning of February, Carl received word that the negotiations of Kinsey and the Committee had finally borne fruit. They would gather the United States allies and inform them of the Stargate, and work to build a coalition force to explore through the Stargate.

With Carl's nudges here and there, he expected the negotiations would take at least a couple of years. The supposed invasion that Daniel Jackson had talked about had failed to manifest, and the US forces weren't out stirring up enemies to focus on them. So there was no great impetus forcing the nations to compromise for their survival.

Which all meant that negotiations could be stalled by the littlest thing, and posturing would cause the process to slow down as well.

So with the Earth's issues on the back burner, Carl's forces continued focusing on getting prepared for the next System Lord's territory to take over.

By the beginning of March of 2000 Carl's forces were prepared to take over Chronus' territory. Carl admitted to his girls that the reason he had picked Chronus was that he was the killer of Teal'c's father. So he was more than willing to give the former Jaffa and former robot the satisfaction of ending the parasite.

And now that Carl's forces and people were really starting to get numerous, the process of taking over a System Lord's territory and consolidating the new planets was really becoming streamlined.

Only three months after taking over Chronus' 25 planets, Carl's forces were already prepared to take in another System Lord's territory. What Carl hadn't expected during this time was that some enterprising entertainers in Carl's Empire petitioned for the feed from the System Lord HFRs so they could make it into a comedy show with commentary mocking the Goa'uld.

Carl approved the idea, having no idea just how popular the show would become amongst the former slaves and Jaffa. Seeing the previously terrifying Goa'uld masters being mocked and fooled by the robots seemed to do something really special for Carl's people. They just couldn't seem to get enough of it.

Even though Carl didn't really understand the appeal for his people, he saw how much they craved for anything that tore down the previously untouchable Goa'uld, so he was happy to allow them the opportunity to do so.

When Carl's next target of Niirti was announced, the Sams, Janet Frasier and Cassandra, who had been a victim of the Goa'uld's human experiments, were cheering heartily. They were happy that bitch was finally getting what was coming to her.

The operation to take over Niirti's territory in June went without a hitch, although his scientists were busy breaking down her research and the medical personnel had their hands full reversing the horrible things she had been doing to people in her territory.

The next target that the FCO took out in September was Heru'ur. There wasn't anything unusual, and by this time Carl's growing army were consummate professionals.

Carl decided that it was time for another Time Dilation training. In December he brought in 500 more students to train, which would double his cadre of students and disciples. Like his girls had teased him before, Carl was at his busiest when he was training his students. Any other time, he delegated most of the work away like a good leader should.

With the numbers that he was training, he relied heavily on his already trained students to do most of the work. But he kept rotating through classes, making sure to spend time with every new student.

When they exited the training, they spent the month of December reorganizing and continuing to train his people.

To celebrate the New Year, the first week of January of 2001 the FCO took over Yu's territory. By this point there wasn't much to say about the process other than it went like clockwork. His people already knew the best methods to consolidate and assimilate the new people. Their space mining and Stargate railroad system was continually expanding and providing the raw materials needed to build up the infrastructure, defenses, and ships needed to keep up the operations.

In March they moved onto Ba'al's territory.

In June they took over Svarog's territory.

In September Bastet fell.

And in December Kali was no more.

Carl's forces had almost taken out all of the System Lords when his HFR System Lords got word that someone wanted to address the System Lord Council. Carl decided he would be on hand for the meeting. There were only two more System Lord territories that he needed to take over, Morrigan and Olukun. And since they were kind enough to show up in one place, he could replace them now and make the takeover easier. And if the one calling for a meeting was who he thought it was, he wanted to catch the slippery snake now, before he could make a nuisance of himself.

So near the end of March 2002 Carl journeyed to the System Lord meeting. He was relaxing on the Yamato with Alice and Tera, watching the meeting when he felt him. The half ascended Anubis approached the meeting, supposedly to get his place back as a System Lord and take over the leadership.

Since Carl didn't feel like giving the snake a chance, he apparated him over and used his ghost trap to capture Anubis, while the girls took care of Morrigan and Olukun, replacing them with HFRs.

Carl chuckled to himself at just how easy it was to overcome insurmountable problems with magic and technology. The same enemies that Earth and the SGC would be struggling against were just a little obstacle for him. He had to keep reminding himself not to get too complacent or arrogant.

By June the takeover of the final two System Lord's territories was complete. All of the major Goa'uld players were taken off the board, and the Galaxy basically belonged to Carl. There were probably some minor Goa'uld still out there, and Carl's forces would continue to monitor the situation. If they ran into a Goa'uld that was being a tyrant, they would take the snake out and assimilate the territory. If they found one that was actually being reasonable, they would offer a blank clone body as a host or transference to a human body of their own and a place in his Empire.

The Tok'ra were proof enough that the Goa'uld snakes could manage to be decent people. So they wouldn't be discriminated against just for being little snakes. But if they acted like murderous thugs, then they would be taken care of like the trash they were.

The Earth Stargate Coalition had finally gotten their act together and was prepared to start exploring through the gates. Fortunately for them, the galaxy was under new management. When they got the news that they wouldn't be able to freely explore everywhere and exploit new resources as they pleased, they didn't exactly feel lucky. They felt they had lost the biggest lottery by just a couple of numbers.

So as a result of finding out that Fire Crow Industries was a subsidiary of the Fire Crow Organization (Empire), new debates and negotiations started up. Even though they wanted to crack down on FCI and exploit them, they didn't dare when they found out how powerful the FCO was. They could only debate with each other about whether they should give up their sovereignty to join the FCO in order to benefit from the advanced tech and knowledge base they so obviously had.

Carl didn't really expect that they would be able to make that decision in the next four years before he left the world. But things had surprised him before, so he would keep an eye on the situation.

Now that the Goa'uld threat was dealt with in the Milky Way, Carl had his people continue to explore solar systems that weren't connected to the Stargate Network. There was bound to be plenty of real estate and things of interest out there.

He also had his people deal with the Aschen. Investigations were conducted, the Aschen leaders who were guilty of killing off and sterilizing whole planets in the name of conquest were tried and punished with execution.

The remaining people of the Aschen were put through reeducation and morality training. Carl didn't want to discriminate against all the Aschen people for what their leaders did. Alice's example of being a scapegoat for her parents made him especially aware of not allowing the Aschen people as a whole to have to suffer from other's past mistakes. They didn't deserve to be punished for what other people did. And there really was enough real estate that they didn't need to kill off other planets in order to expand.

After several months of consolidation, in April of 2003, Carl felt it was time to travel to the Pegasus Galaxy and start cleaning up the mess the Alterans had left him there. However, before he could send off a fleet to start cleaning up the galaxy, something happened that interrupted his plans.

A Prior of the Ori arrived on one of Carl's planets.

The Ori were ascended beings, similar to the Alteran snot balls. Long, long ago, the Ori and the Alterans were one species. They grew and matured in a galaxy far away from the Milky Way. At some point in their development, there were a few members of their race that ascended. The ascended beings continued helping their physical descendants, who eventually came to have faith in the ascended beings.

The ascended beings discovered that there was an energy in the faith and worship of lower beings that allowed them to harness it and grow more powerful, or it was delicious, or something. Carl wasn't sure of that exact point, but there was a schism that developed in their society.

One side was fanatically devoted to worshiping the ascended beings, the Ori. The other side was of a more scientific mindset. They soon found themselves marginalized and hunted. The religious fanatics were more than willing to kill nonbelievers. So the people who would become the Alterans gathered in their space ships and set out into the void between galaxies to find a new home, far away from the persecution back home.

They eventually arrived at the Milky Way galaxy and began to flourish. Eventually some of their members also ascended, and started the rules of non-interference with the physical plain, hoping to avoid becoming like the Ori. But they were still human in nature, and couldn't stop themselves from meddling here and there.

Carl wouldn't even have thought of them so badly if they just admitted that they still had human emotions and wanted to help people. But instead they put on airs and became arrogant, thinking they were above the petty concerns of humans. They left dangerous devices that became a danger to their allies like the Replicators. Or they ascended a Goa'uld and then didn't fully take care of the problem they created. Instead they left him in the Galaxy to continue to spread misery and death and slavery.

It was that attitude and refusal to clean up their messes that caused Carl to have a great dislike for them.

In the Stargate show, the people of Earth earned the attention of the Ori from a device found under Glastonbury Tor that transferred Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran's consciousness over to the galaxy the Ori were in. That was how the Ori learned of Earth and all the possible worshippers there, who they just had to convert because faith energy was better than soft serve ice cream, apparently.

So as Carl was watching the recording of the arrival of the Prior, or priest of the Ori, he was wondering just how the Ori came to know of their existence. He had long ago cleaned out the things that Merlin, or Moros as his Alteran name was, had left behind. So Carl knew that no one had used the communication device to alert the Ori to their presence.

On the video, he watched as the blue and black robed Prior with a staff condescendingly talked down to the security troops, proclaiming how they shall be converted or die. Carl was pleased to see the wards he had designed seemed to keep the Prior's powers, granted through his staff, in check. The look of shock when he wasn't able to blast the nonbelievers was very comical.

"The first question I have, is how did the Ori find out about us." Carl said to council. His first six students, the SG-1 teams, Hammond, Bra'tac, Ishta, and a few others were Carl's closest students that he worked with the most often. "Any suggestions on how to figure that one out?" Carl threw the question out to be pondered on by everyone present.

A chime at the door interrupted anyone from answering. Carl knew that unless there was something important, the guards wouldn't interrupt them, so he called for the guards to enter.

"My lord." The lead guard, Harlowe, bowed and began reporting. "We received a message that three emissaries from the Ascended wish to speak with you about a matter of great importance to the Empire, but are unable to approach due to our protections. They said the matter of great importance is information on a dire threat currently facing us."

"Well, did these three give a name, Harlowe?" Carl inquired.

"Yes, my lord. They said they were known as Oma Desala, Ganos Lal, and Chaya Sar." Harlowe promptly answered.

'Hmm, what are three ascended doing here?' Carl thought. 'Could the ascended council have done something stupid and brought the Ori to us?'

"Interesting. Here, pass these arm bands to them." Carl tossed three arm bands to Harlowe. "That should temporarily get them inside the wards so we can meet them and see what they want." Carl said.

A short time later three wide eyed ladies entered the conference room, having just arrived on planet through the Stargate. Carl guessed that the amount of work that his people had put into the city had impressed them.

"Greetings ladies." Carl began when the door was closed once more. They were seated in three visitors chairs in front of the conference table, while Carl's students were spread around the room. Alice was seated on his right while Tera was on his left.

"I'm the leader of the Fire Crow Organization, Carl Edwards, this is Alice, Tera…" Carl introduced the rest of his people to the ladies. "And why don't you go ahead and introduce yourselves." Carl finished.

"My name is Oma Desala." The dirty blonde haired woman in the center took the lead. "This is Ganos Lal." She indicated the dark brown haired lady to her left. "And Chaya Sar." Oma indicated the redhead sitting to her right. "We know you've run into the Ascended Council members before. We too are ascended, but in poor standing with the council because we keep trying to help people, and so we keep being punished by the council."

"Despite being warned against it, we've come to give you a warning. The council felt threatened by you. By how you've been protecting your territory so they can't get inside. Despite our advice against it, they decided to incite the Ori against you." Oma then went on to explain who and what the Ori were. "Because of their actions, the relentless religious fanatics will be coming for you, to convert or destroy you. We didn't want to see what happened before happen here. The plagues and deaths, the fanatic war. But the council felt like whichever one won, you or the Ori, they would be able to mop up the remnants."

"We've finally grown sick of their hypocrisy. We can't stand by while they plunge the galaxy into war. So we came to warn you, and to bring you news of a weapon that can help you fight off the Ori." Oma finished.

"Hmm, are you referring to the Sangraal, the weapon project that Moros created?" Carl asked. He was amused to see their shocked looks that he already knew what they were talking about. "Yes, I already picked up the weapon and have been studying it. Moros himself needed a rejuvenation treatment from the stasis he was put in, but he is at this moment figuring out how to deliver the weapon to the galaxy the Ori reside in, so we can end this war as soon as possible."

"W-what? How could you…?" Oma whispered.

"How could I know about it?" Carl asked, and got a shaky nod from the three ladies in question. "Oh, I found the first clue under Glastonbury Tor, and the rest was easy." Carl deflected. He didn't just blab his secrets to anyone. They had to develop a certain amount of trust and loyalty first.

"Well, ladies. I have to say you are lucky you made the decision to come warn me that you did. I'm responsible for quite a lot of people. And I really don't appreciate having some people instigate a war that I and my people weren't ready for. So I was going to punish the council for their callousness and meddling in other people's lives. Since you've come here, I'll give you the chance to survive the coming war, under my protection."

The three ladies looked at each other in dismay. He was telling the truth. He really did have the Sangraal and was going to use it not just on the Ori, but on the Ascended Council too.

"Is there any way we can persuade you to save some of our friends. They too don't like what the council has been doing. But the council has too many people on their side. It has been impossible to go against them." Oma begged Carl to save some of their friends.

Carl looked at his students who were also his friends and advisors and consulted them using profound energy to project their voices to each other. The consensus was to save as many as would descend and join them in the Empire.

He turned back to the three hopeful ascended ladies, and gave them the choice. "If you can bring your friends, the ones that are decent people along with you, you will have to descend back into physical bodies and join us. Then we will save you from the results of the Council's war efforts." Carl promised.

"Thank you!" The three ladies each agreed. They spent some time organizing how they would gather their friends and where they would go to descend and become part of Carl's Empire.

After the planning session, the women got up from their chairs and left. They had some work to save as many as they could. They were magically bound though so they couldn't tell anyone exactly what Carl was planning on doing. Carl didn't want the council to have the time to counter attack or flee the repercussions of their acts.


	57. Stargate 11

The sun was high in the sky, shining down on a cabin in a clearing in the woods. The planet was a backwater unimportant planet. It didn't even have a Stargate on it, having escaped the notice of the Alterans back in the day because it lacked the scarce metals necessary for a high technology society.

It was the perfect, out of the way, place to hold a meeting away from notice by certain busy body-less council members.

A week after Carl and his people had their meeting with Oma Desala, Ganos Lal, and Chaya Sar, Carl and several of his people were enjoying the rustic setting at the hastily constructed cabin, waiting for the arrival of the ascended beings that were seeking asylum with him.

Over the past few weeks, ever since the Prior showed up, Carl's people had been finalizing the means and planning of opening a Stargate connection to the galaxy the Ori were in. They would then set off the Sangraal device. The shockwave would propagate through the higher dimension that the Ascended and the Ori occupied. Any Ascended or Ori would find themselves being torn apart by the wave.

There had been a slight change of plans when the three ascended ladies had shown up. The presence of Chaya Sar had proven that there were still a number of ascended hanging around the Pegasus galaxy where Atlantis, the Asurans, and the Wraith were. Since that was the case, Carl decided that they would take care of all the snot balls in the Pegasus Galaxy as well, and they might as well clean up the Ida Galaxy, where the Asgard called home, while they were at it.

Carl had lost all patience with the interfering busybodies that were the ascended, and there was no way he'd put up with the Ori or their religious fanatics trashing his home and Empire. Carl was hoping the destruction of the Ori would halt the actions of their worshippers. But if they were still belligerent, there were plenty of ways to curb their enthusiasm.

A distant sense of roiling energy caused Carl to look up in a certain direction. There were dozens of the Ascended flying in, but they were being harassed by hundreds of other snot balls.

"Looks like the busy body hypocrites wouldn't let them go so easily." Carl snorted, causing his close advisors to look up in the direction Carl was looking to see what he was talking about.

As Carl watched, some of the Ascended that were trying to make their way to Carl to defect were snuffed out by their attackers. Carl frowned at that. He'd promised them sanctuary, which meant they were now his responsibility. He was pissed they were dying right in front of him.

Wasting no more time. Carl activated the ward he had installed that was powered by hundreds of Potentia. Every single Ascended being and snot ball froze where they were in the lower atmosphere. Manipulating the wards, Carl allowed the three ladies and their people a little bit of freedom of movement so they could join them on the surface of the planet.

Once they landed in front of Carl, they took on human form. Carl looked them over, and nodded. There were a little over 3 dozen of them left.

"Okay, welcome all of you to the Fire Crow Organization." Tera began speaking to them while Carl focused on holding the attackers frozen. "Is this everyone? Are you waiting for anymore?"

Oma made her way to the front of the crowd. "There is no one else coming. We lost 11 while fleeing. I don't know how the Council found out about what we were doing."

"You're safe now, which is the important thing." Alice warmly assured them. "For now, it is important you all descend fully. In a short time we will set off the Sangraal. If any of you are still energy beings, it will tear you apart."

Oma and the rest of her people nodded seriously, then focused on returning to a mortal form. Carl could feel the difference, as they lost the energy signature that labeled them as ascended beings. The group finally collapsed to their knees, fully corporeal. They lost a lot of energy and knowledge that they couldn't hold in their minds when they descended.

That was one of the amazing things about the various methods Carl had learned to enhance himself, as opposed to how the Alterans ascended. Profound Cultivation, Ki practice, even with Magic, he was able to store and enhance his body such that even his mind and memories improved. Just the fact that he was able to safely store the repository of information in his mind was proof of how upgraded he had become.

Whereas with ascending, the body was abandoned and they became an energy matrix. In Carl's mind, this even cut off their potential future growth.

Carl's people moved forward and pulled the descended new members of the FCO into chairs, giving them stout drinks to get them over the shock. Once Carl double checked that everyone was descended and protected, he commed his people on standby.

"You have a mission go. Fire up the Sangraal and clean up our home." Carl ordered.

On the other end of his transmission were the two Jacks. They had accepted the responsibility of firing the weapon that would kill off any ascended being. The two Jacks soberly looked at each other, and together pressed the start button.

Carl could faintly feel the energy wave as it propagated through the upper dimensions around the galaxy. He knew that at that moment, the wave was being carried through the Stargate network, propagating around the galaxy, disrupting the energy matrices that made up the ascended beings.

He watched coldly as the snot balls that he held prisoner were torn apart. Their energy was spread out, leaving behind a faint impression of painful screams.

He knew that the same thing was happening across all four galaxies. He had made the hard decision to end the ascended Alterans. Not because they refused to work with him, because he would have let them go their own way if that was all.

Carl chose to kill them because they had already once invited their enemies to come attack him and his people. They were arrogant and manipulating plotters, who would always remain a dagger at his back. Instead of the Alterans choosing to be friendly with Carl, or ignoring each other, they actively plotted to force him to take care of their mess. Their arrogance lead the Alterans to insist on being the ones in control and manipulating others, even if it resulted in many millions or billions of deaths from their actions.

And Carl didn't want people like that to continue being a threat to him and his people. He had a duty to deal with such threats, in order for his people to live well.

When the Sangraal weapon was finished doing its job, Carl and his people beamed their new citizens up to their ships and headed back to Caladan. It was time to get them settled in.

He decided he would run another few Time Dilation Basic Trainings. Oma Desala, Ganos Lal, Chaya Sar, and Moros had already earned a spot in the training with their actions. And if the Priors didn't stop their invasion plans with the death of the Ori, then he would need many more trusted and capable people to take charge of a second front in the coming war. His plans for the Pegasus Galaxy and Atlantis would not be delayed more than they already were.

* * *

It wasn't until June of 2003 when Carl sent his forces on their way to the Pegasus Galaxy. Thor and a fleet of the Asgard were going along, since they knew they had relatives that had broken off from the main Asgard society there. They wanted to reunite with their brethren and make sure they too got the cure for their cloning problem.

And it also allowed them to participate in the campaign against the Wraith, which would no doubt prove to be an enemy of the Asgard as they were of the Humans.

Meanwhile, Carl planned to spend a few more months training up his forces before joining his expedition to the Pegasus Galaxy. His people would spend the majority of their time cleaning up the city-ship Atlantis. They would make sure it was safe and study the additions to the database that hadn't been present in the repository that Carl had gathered at the beginning of his time in the Stargate world.

While the expedition was securing the Solar System where Atlantis was located, Carl was working with his people to build a home defense force that could react and strike against any attack by the Priors if they came looking for them.

One of the things they needed was up to date intel. Because if a Prior came over to the Milky Way galaxy by ship and set up shop in an out of the way Solar System, they could create a foothold and build up their forces and defenses enough to make it difficult to kick them out.

Carl's people were planning for a series of ships that would be sent out to deploy monitoring satellites around the galaxy. While the galaxy was huge, the technology Carl's people had could monitor vast swaths of space for any moving bodies. Even a large comet or asteroid coming in would send up a flag and prompt investigation.

It would take at least several months to fully deploy the satellites, and their forces wouldn't be able to inspect everything, but they could be on hand to look over the most suspicious things to prevent infiltration.

Meanwhile the expansion, exploration, and build up of the FCO continued. A huge portion of the people, who were forced by the Goa'uld to be simple farmers, weren't completely comfortable with the new technology, so they remained at their normal farming jobs.

Many others, on the other hand, were eagerly enthusiastic to learn the new and magical technology and fully embraced the changes.

But even the ones who decided to stick to their known primitive lifestyle seemed eager to offer their children the chances of education and change that they themselves didn't feel comfortable taking.

Many of the empty habitable planets that were being discovered were put on a future expansion checklist for when people inevitably wanted to spread out again.

The lifeless planets that showed promise were put on the "To be Terraformed" list for future expansion as well. Carl was fully embracing the idea of building for the future. It might be hundreds or even thousands of years before anyone got around to wanting the real estate, but he was putting them on the list for the future.

Carl then ran into something of an issue that he had to deal with, since his people were kicking the problem up the chain of command, unsure of how exactly to handle it.

Many of the planets they were finding that had industrialized societies expressed interest in allying with the FCO, but the leaders of the societies would often raise a stink if they didn't get to meet with the leader of the FCO. They felt insulted that they were fobbed off on a simple diplomat. They felt their status was high enough to demand more respect and concessions.

They were totally ignorant of the fact that most of those diplomats were Carl's students who had the power to destroy their capital cities all by themselves without technology. Which meant the arrogant leaders were actually receiving more than their fair share of "respect", even if they didn't recognize the fact.

They should be grateful Carl didn't recruit any arrogant Prince Vegeta types (from Dragonball Z) in the diplomatic corps, or more than one arrogant leader would have been removed from the gene pool for being too stupid to be polite.

At first Carl wanted to blow off the demands of these leaders for disrespecting his students. But, his diplomatic students convinced him that it would help their work if he would show off the flag, so to speak.

So Carl decided to go along with the persuasion of his students and do the "proper" thing and travel around meeting these leaders.

Carl was pretty sure he wouldn't want any of these arrogant leaders in the FCO, since they would no doubt try to throw their non-existent weight around. But the talented people under the leaders would be another matter. After assimilating and training them into the FCO forces, their loyalty would be to the FCO, not these leaders.

Besides, having friendly relations with them was worth it so the FCO wouldn't be forced to massacre their leadership every few years. It was a noble goal. Everyone needed unattainable goals to force them to work hard, after all.

Carl just gritted his teeth and dealt with the schmoozing. If only Carl didn't have to put up with the presumptuous and arrogant twits while pretending to be polite. But Carl realized that he was the one who had made the decision to build an empire. He was hoisted on his own petard.

Thankfully his time with Caiyi had taught him much about how to pretend to be sincere and flattered while he spent time with people he detested. In other words, politics.

While Carl was doing the leader tour thing, he kept track of the progress of the expedition to the Pegasus Galaxy. They had powered up Atlantis and were working on cleaning it up and updating their technology from what was in Atlantis' databanks.

In some cases the brilliant people that worked for Carl had already worked up more advanced applications of the knowledge they had than was found in the Atlantis database. In many other cases there were advances in energy manufacture and usage, materials, and other such things.

For Carl, seeing the various different brilliant pathways the Alterans had taken in their science over the years had been good for Carl. It reminded him that while he was talented and smart (because of the perks he had purchased), he couldn't underestimate the ingenuity of people and what they could accomplish.

Even though Carl had spent hundreds of years in time dilation experimenting and learning, it was still amazing to him what many enthusiastic people could come up with. Carl was only one guy, with one perspective. Having more people to throw at a problem would bring different solutions to diverse problems.

Carl felt happy that he had decided to build an empire here so he could have many people at his disposal to solve galaxy wide problems. If he tried to solo everything here, he would have been overrun and overworked.

While the science and tech people were working on the Atlantis city, the military, medical, and administration people began recruiting the people of the Pegasus Galaxy. The first settlement they went to was the Athosian people, where Teyla Emmagen was the leader. Carl had suggested them to his people because of Teyla's role in the show, as well as their knowledge of the local people they traded with through the Stargates.

One of the difficulties that they discovered they would have was that because of the Wraith, the populations of each planet were a fraction of what they would normally be. Because the Wraith went into hibernation for years waiting for the populations to rise so they could feast, many settlements deliberately kept their populations low.

Some of the settlements desperately tried to come up with technology or strategies to attack the Wraith and destroy them. Others would have their people commit suicide at the age of 25 to keep their numbers low, hoping the Wraith would pass them up if they were few in number.

One of the trading partners of the Athosians, the Genii, put up an image of being a low tech farming society. But underneath they were desperately advancing their technology and willing to use any tactics, no matter how despicable, to end the Wraith threat.

In the show the Genii were very underhanded in their dealings with the main characters of the show, which initially engendered Carl's dislike, but he realized several things that changed his mind about them. The first thing Carl realized was that the Genii hadn't actually done anything to his people. Condemning them for what they did in the show was stupid.

The next thing Carl realized was that the reason the Genii were so underhanded was because they were so desperate to end the Wraith threat, they would do anything. If his people could bring some hope to them, they would likely be more reasonable and willing to deal in good faith.

And the last thing Carl realized was that even if the Genii tried to be underhanded, his people could easily handle them. With his people's tech and physical abilities, they could keep the upper hand in the case the Genii really turned out to be ungrateful scorpions.

After several weeks of negotiations with the Genii, they finally decided to join Carl's FCO. Seeing the technology and skills of Carl's people finally convinced them their best bet to finally defeat the Wraith lay with the FCO. Unsurprisingly, many of the Genii people entered the military.

After several months of doing the diplomatic tour, Carl finally met all the leaders that were throwing a fit about being fobbed off on diplomats, so he put his foot down on repeat meetings. His time was too valuable to be kept busy with a bunch of leaders of single planets. That's what he had his students for. He even encouraged his people to give demonstrations of just what they were capable of so the people would be a bit more polite and a bit less arrogant in front of his people.

Just because Carl was polite enough to meet them once didn't give them leave to abuse his people or demand anything from them.

Carl, Tera, and Alice promptly made their way to the Pegasus Galaxy while Carl had the Yamato scan the void between galaxies for any ships travelling at near the speed of light. He remembered there was a ship of the Alterans who was stuck with no Hyperspace capability traveling at 99.9% the speed of light. If they could be rescued and chose to join his people, that would be pretty good PR to the people of the Pegasus Galaxy to have life Lanteans among his people (Lantean is what the Alterans were known as in the Pegasus Galaxy).

Unfortunately the void between galaxies was incredibly large, and Carl found no sign of them. Since his plans didn't hinge on saving the Lanteans, and he didn't have any emotional connections to them, Carl shrugged his shoulders and continued on his way. If they showed up sometime in the future, great. If not, no skin off his nose.

Once Carl arrived at Atlantis, he took the grand tour of the city, letting his people know just how impressed he was by their work. The mining operations in the asteroid fields were well set up, and their internal Stargate Railway was running smoothly.

His scientists and engineers were already designing an updated city ship with advanced technology, Profound crafting, and Magical Runes to make his flagship the best they could design. Carl didn't have plans to bring the city ship with him on jumps, it was too big. But a new and updated Yamato was also being built that he would be able to take with him.

Now that Carl was on site, operations began in earnest. His people had already linked up with the more advanced Stargate network in the Pegasus Galaxy and downloaded the data the gates stored. It allowed them to gain a minimal amount of intelligence on where they were located, and who was using them.

With that information they began planning the campaign on how to begin taking over solar systems, how to deny the Wraith food, which threats to meet first, etc.

Carl also discovered that Thor had found his people's cousins and were in the midst of reconciling and helping them overcome the cloning problem. He was happy for his buddy's success, and knew that once they finished helping the local Asgard, they would be available for operations against the Wraith.

"The first issue I want to fix here in the Pegasus Galaxy is the Asurans." Carl announced to his people as he looked over the crowded conference room. "It was yet another thing the Lanteans left behind that is causing problems. So, let's crack open the database and find some solutions to dealing with a nanotechnology based species." Carl ordered the scientists, who got cracking.

Meanwhile the military members began expanding their sphere of influence. Each planet with a Stargate they arrived at was scanned for Wraith presence, and the Wraith destroyed if present, and defenses were set up so the Wraith couldn't bombard a planet from orbit. Any Wraith Darts, that were fighter style ships set up for raids and kidnapping humans for food, would be destroyed immediately upon exiting the Stargate.

At the beginning of December Carl's people produced what he needed to take care of the Asuran issue. He took the device that was the size of a sedan and popped it into his pocket dimension.

He then took Tera and Alice with him, since the girls refused to let him go alone, and gated to the Asuran homeworld, Asuras.

Upon stepping out of the Stargate, Carl spotted a blond haired man in tan robes looking surprised upon seeing the three of them. Carl smirked a bit at how it seemed like the "man" had been in standby mode until he showed up.

"Hello. Welcome to Asuras. I am Niam." The man belatedly greets them.

"Greetings. I am Carl." Carl greets him.

"I am Alice. It's nice to meet you, Niam." Alice greets him, while looking around in interest, seeing the high tech city.

"And I'm Tera. We would like to meet with your leaders, Niam. We have some proposals for them." Tera greeted.

"Hmm. Yes." Niam looked off blankly for a moment, before refocusing on them. "Yes, they are interested in meeting you. This way, please." He motioned Carl's group to follow him.

As Niam was leading them to the council chambers, he began telling them about his people, about their city ships, and about their technology. Carl was a bit amused at how "open" Niam was being.

"Hmm, but what do your people like doing?" Carl asked. "Aside from technology, do your people enjoy creating art? Music? Food?"

"Well, we really don't have any use for those things." Niam hesitantly offers, thinking about why none of them ever indulge in those kinds of subjects.

"No worries, there Niam. Those kinds of subjects aren't for everyone." Carl reassures the nanotech man.

Soon enough they arrived at the council chambers, where they met the leader of the Asurans, Oberoth. Niam made the introductions before standing behind Oberoth's shoulder.

Oberoth was a tall man with a beard, but a bald head. He was currently glaring arrogantly at the three of them.

"Who are you people?" Oberoth seemed to be especially glaring at Alice, which annoyed Carl no end.

Carl raised one eyebrow as he looked at the man. "Well, I'm the leader of the Fire Crow Organization. And while looking around the Stargates, we found your people. So we decided to come visit and see if you're interested in opening up relations."

Oberoth narrowed his eyes at Carl and scoffed. "I can't believe you were stupid enough to come here with that." Oberoth pointed at Alice. "You should have known the reception you would get here." Then without a word, half a dozen guards showed up pointing weapons at the three of them.

'Apparently they scanned us and found that Alice is an Alteran or Lantean, and now they are rolling out the welcome mat.' Carl chuckled to himself.

"Well, that's one way to negotiate." Tera sarcastically said. "I've never tried that myself, cause it leads to an increased possibility of backstabbing. But to each their own."

"Well, what can we expect when they were programmed by the same idiots that left all kinds of dangerous things lying around and never cleaned up after themselves." Alice added, not at all bothered that she used to be an Alteran. They had rejected her long since, and she had a new family now.

"Well, no time like the present then." Carl said and pulled out the large device and activated it.

Inside the expanded space inside the device were hundreds of Potentia powering the device to freeze the millions of Asurans on the planet through their code. It immediately began rewriting their code so they didn't have the unrelenting hatred and aggression codes.

Carl continued to monitor the progress of the device as it piggybacked on the signals of the Asurans and made sure than none escaped the cleansing. A couple hours later, the process was complete, and the Asurans were released from their petrification.

Oberoth took a deep breath, and glared at Carl in hatred. "Kill them!" He ordered the guards.

When the guards lifted their weapons to follow the order, Carl turned the device back on, freezing them in place.

"Huh, guess this Oberoth guy is committed to his course. Blinded by hatred. Even without the aggression codes he is too full of hate." Carl idly commented as he operated the device to scan through Oberoth's memories and programming. "Well, since he won't stop, it's time to end him." Carl then gave the command to delete Oberoth.

The moment the command was executed, Oberoth's body dissolved, leaving behind a pile of dust made of nanotech, with no chance to escape electronically and create a new body.

"I'm calling our people in to begin the process of putting them in real bodies." Alice stated. After some experimentation, Carl's people had found a method of using two or more people to embody machine intelligence people. It was basically like giving birth to them, sharing some small part of their souls as seeds so the AIs could grow into real people.

"I'll start making a plan of where to start, and order of operation." Tera stated.

"Good. I'll keep an eye on the Asurans and make sure none of them have a chance to break out." Carl informed the group. They already knew what each was going to do, but vocalizing it made sure their partners knew they were on task.

A few minutes later Carl's people showed up in dozens of ships. They settled on the planet and Carl began routing the various consciousnesses to the ships, where they were downloaded into human clone bodies. The idea was that if they were converted into biological entities, they would be too preoccupied with living and integrating into the FCO and forget their previous programming to be full of hate and aggression.

Even with how fast and advanced their technology was, it still took a couple days to get through everyone. Carl's people kept up a stream of ships that came and went, transferring the newly humanized Asuran people back to the Milky Way Galaxy, where they could get away from their old life and the Wraith. They could spend their time learning to be human and integrating with society.

Carl remembered from a lot of cultivation novels that in those cultivation worlds pretty much everything had a chance to absorb enough energy of heaven and earth and gain sentience and self awareness and become a real person. Herbs, animals, hell, even rocks could become people. So why not artificial nanotech people? He was just speeding up the process a bit.

The big concern Carl had was that the Asurans would never get away from their previously habituated hate if they remained in their nanotech bodies. Carl was especially concerned that he couldn't trust them to play nice. But making them human would give them a chance to become more than their programmed hatred. Now that they were cut off from the collective constantly reinforcing their actions and behavior, they could grow and become individuals.

And while they were being integrated into his society, Carl's people could keep an eye on them to make sure they didn't go off the deep end. It would be quite a while before he trusted any of them enough to take them into a Time Dilation Training Session, but they had just as much of an opportunity as anyone else in the future.

Carl, Alice, and Tera departed back to their base in the Pegasus Galaxy at Atlantis while leaving behind their people to figure out what to do with all the tech left behind by the Asurans. Whether they would break it down for the metal, or retrofit it with updated FCO tech, it would speed up the expansion of his people in the Pegasus Galaxy.

* * *

The operation against the Wraith was going well. They were denying travel via the Stargates to the Wraith, their sphere of influence continued to grow, and the patrols were finding many Wraith ships to use as target practice. Unlike the Goa'uld ships which were filled with Jaffa slaves Carl wanted to give a chance to integrating into a new life, the Wraith had no such thing holding back Carl's forces.

If any of the Wraith proactively surrendered, Carl would of course accept them into his organization with alternate feeding methods and magically backed loyalty oaths. He didn't want to discriminate. But he wasn't holding his breath on the idea that a predatory species that saw Humans as cattle could accept being subservient to said food.

In the middle of October of 2003 one of the patrols came across a Lantean ship that had suffered damage to its systems and was dead in the water. The crew had put themselves into stasis while their minds were residing in a virtual reality world. It was the only chance they had at survival.

Carl was happy at the news of the ships discovery because they supposedly had some important intel about the Wraith that would have given the Lanteans a fighting chance back in the day.

The patrol brought the ship back to the base at Atlantis, where the medical personnel were able to create some new clone bodies for the crew of the Aurora and put them in their new bodies.

At first the Captain and crew of the Aurora kept their mouths shut, concerned about being tricked. Carl authorized his people to shore information, informing them of the end of the Lantean people in their war against the Wraith 10,000 years ago, as well as how the Galaxy has fared under the Wraith predations over the past millennia.

When the Captain was finally convinced as to the truth of just how much time had passed by and that they were the last remnants of their society, he seemed to lose a lot of his pride and defiance. The mission they had been hoping to fulfill to save their people from the Wraith was failed.

While the Captain, whose name was Gil, felt like a failure, he still did what he saw as his duty and passed the military intel he and his crew had gathered: the frequencies of the Wraith's Hyperdrive engines.

Carl's people spent a few weeks working on the devices needed to project the blocking signals through the normal Stargate network. It would interfere with the Hyperspace engines of the Wraith. Anywhere they tried to enter Hyperspace in the Pegasus Galaxy would create a disastrous resonance in their engines, causing the destruction of their ships.

Now that Carl's people were aware of that kind of weapon being possible, they took care to code failsafe checks in the programs of all their ships to ensure that they themselves didn't fall victim to such a tactic. A quick check of the frequencies and status of their engines before entering Hyperspace was easy enough to do with practically no delay.

After they deployed the weapon against the Wraith's Hyperspace capability, the frequency of Wraith predations dropped to practically nothing. Carl's people continued their patrols and hunts for any remaining enemies though, just to be sure they wouldn't come back later, worse than ever.

Once the Crew of the Aurora saw their mission succeed, they asked for admittance to the FCO. If their own people were gone, at least they could join a somewhat civilized people and spend their time in their own pursuits, instead of war with an implacable enemy.

Now that the war against the Wraith was mostly taken care of, Carl's thoughts turned to the Priors and the remnants of the Ori's people. He was somewhat surprised that no Priors had made their way back to the Milky Way to perpetuate war. It almost made him think the military expansion to counter their offensive hadn't been needed at all. But better to be safe than sorry.

After thinking about it, and discussing the matter with his closest people, Carl decided that he wouldn't try to take over the Ori Galaxy for the time being. He already had the Milky Way and the Pegasus Galaxies to focus on. If the Priors came to him, then he could go all out and kick their asses. But until then, it was important to build up a solid society, especially when it was spread over two galaxies.

And another piece of news that amused Carl greatly was that most of the governments on Earth finally threw in the towel and decided to integrate with the FCO. Apparently once the news had become public that the FCI was the Earth based company that represented the Galaxy wide Fire Crow Organization, citizens of Earth had been settling their affairs and applying for immigration in droves.

It finally got to the point that the various Governments of Earth realized that if they continued being stubborn then they would only be left with a population in the tens of thousands at most as most of their citizens left for greener pastures.

And they couldn't even do anything about it because of the security measures the FCI had instituted on Earth.

So the politicians and businessmen finally made the decision that they should join the rush instead of getting left behind.

Carl made sure that six individuals at least got left behind. Kinsey and the Committee members were stuck on Earth, ruling absolutely nothing, with just the bare minimum to keep them alive, but not much else. Carl thought it was a fitting punishment for them for all the evil things they had already done and what they planned to do in the future.

Now that Carl had mostly solved the immediate problems and with so much help had created a stable Empire, he shifted from an active role to a more supervisory role. He didn't need to keep running people through Time Dilation trainings. He left it up to his students to decide who they would be training to spread his teachings and abilities to keep things going.

With less than three years left until Carl left the world, he decided he would spend the time with his girls Tera and Alice, enjoying the time with them. He had no real clue about just when he would meet up with them again after leaving the Stargate world, so he was determined to enjoy the time he had.

And with his extra free time while his girls were busy with their own projects, Carl started preparing and stocking up his Warehouse for future jumps. With all the advanced tech, magic, and profound crafting techniques, he starting building all kinds of toys and devices that might be useful or fun to use in the future.

Carl also spent time tinkering with his Profound Weapon. The description of it from the ATG world said that it was extraordinarily receptive to enhancements of any and all kinds. So he was working on adding magical and technology enhancements.

With his profound crafting skills, Carl had been forging profound weapons to practice the upgrades with before applying them to his Profound Weapon. It wouldn't do to have his main weapon fail him in the midst of combat due to being poorly upgraded.

It only took him 217 failures to figure out how to create a stable inner world in the sword that could handle all the energies Carl could channel. It acted very similar to the Inner World Carl himself had inside his body due to the Nine Profound Exquisite Body. And all Carl had to do was leave his sword floating inside his own Inner World and the sword's inner world would slowly be charged.

Carl was still working on adding adjusting the edge of the blade to have a chainsaw like monomolecular edge, powered by an array of Potentia. He was having a bit of a chore combining the various different magical, profound, and technology fields to work perfectly together. There seemed to be various principles that Carl was just not getting right to make them work perfectly together.

At most when he added two or more different systems together, they had to act like separate circuits, not mixing together, in order to work properly. His goal was to eventually get them combined into a coherent whole, instead of separate parts.

But his time in the Stargate Universe came to an end before he could get very far.

Carl sat up in bed, stretching out. With all the time dilation he'd done, it felt like _ages_ since he was in between worlds once more.

"No time like the present to make my perks permanent." Carl moved on over to the kiosk like device that Spere 037 had left behind. He had three intelligence and ingenuity perks to add to his base body.

* * *

As was usual when adding perks to his base body, Carl woke up on the floor a day after confirming the selections.

Carl got up off the floor and moved on over to the bathroom. He had made some modifications to his housing in the Warehouse. The inside was now massively expanded. There were dozens of guest rooms, just because he could. He might invite someone to stay at some point. The bathroom had an Olympic sized bathing tub. One of the rooms was a Room of Requirement.

The entertainment room now had multiple VR hookups where people could enter and adventure in his virtual reality set up from the World Seed he'd gotten from the SAO world.

Even his Dojo that was attached to the Warehouse had gotten significant upgrades so he could actually use it to train decently well, where before it would only be somewhat useful for someone in the Master Martial Artist class.

Carl took his time in the shower, decompressing and meditating over his experiences in the Stargate world.

One of the things he realized was that he didn't want to overuse the Time Dilation like he had done before. It really was a good thing that he had the Time Dilation, because he wouldn't have been able to assimilate that much science and technology knowledge in a normal fashion without the ability to manipulate time.

Due to all the scientific study and training sessions, his time in the world had stretched what should have only been 10 years out to hundreds of years. Although it had been worth it in the end, it just felt like it stretched his goal of reuniting with his girls too far away from him.

And the extra work was annoying. Especially Empire building, which required politics and him being polite to people he didn't like. He wasn't sure if he wanted to do that again in the future.

At least he was thankful he wouldn't have to spend quite as much time in the future assimilating new science and technology knowledge. That first chunk had been massive, but any future knowledge should go down much more smoothly.

Carl let out a sigh and moved on to having his breakfast. While he really didn't need to eat regularly due to being sustained by profound energy, he liked food too much to pass up on it. And he wasn't going to give up his Root Beer anytime soon.

Carl spent the morning wandering around his Warehouse, checking that everything was in place. Mostly just keeping himself busy. He found himself on one of his farms, looking over the lake that provided all kinds of fish. And he just…drifted for a while.

After several hours, Carl got up and moved back to his house, where he spent the next three days meditating to file away the memories from his last world and prepare himself for the next.

With his eyes closed, Carl let out a long sigh, and with the action visualized blowing away any concerns, any past issues, and just feeling free.

Carl opened his eyes, and hopped to his feet, feeling energized and refreshed. Time for a new world!

Carl made his way to the Jumpchain kiosk just outside his house. Clicking away, he soon found out what his next world would be.

**A Song of Ice and Fire.**

Carl got a very solemn look on his face as he looked at the jump document. In a hoarse whisper, Carl proclaimed, "Winter is Coming."


	58. ASOIAF 01

**[A Song of Ice and Fire**

**You are now going to the World of A Song of Ice and Fire. This world is not too dissimilar from the history of your own. There are Heroes, Villains, Wars, Religion, and a great deal of Politics.**

**Magic is rare but powerful. You will begin in Westeros, Essos, or perhaps even the wilder parts of the Known World.**

**You will spend the next 10 years in this world.]**

"Okay, so what do I know about this world, other than a few memes?" Carl asked himself aloud. "Everyone that seems like a decent person dies, mostly due to the machinations of their enemies that they didn't even know were actively plotting against them."

"Joffrey is a little shit. Cersei, or whatever her name is, is crazy. The dragon chick walks around naked. Jon needs to get laid more so he can loosen up. And ice zombies are coming from The North." Carl was rubbing his chin. "Yeah, I got practically nothing here."

"So, with the 1050 cp I've got banked, I've got 2050 cp to spend or bank. Let's see what is available to see if I'll spend any cp, or save it up for later." Carl started reading over the document.

"I can spend 50 cp to choose a location to start in, or roll a 10 sided dice for free. Since I don't really know a whole lot, and I've heard the whole land is full of assholes, it doesn't matter where I go. So, I'll roll for location." The table appeared before Carl as usual, and he rolled a 2.

**The Riverlands: The Riverlands are situated to the immediate south of the North. The climate is generally fair and the lands are fertile, rich, and prosperous. It has no natural boundaries and as such has been contested throughout the centuries and has frequently been a battleground. It is dominated by large rivers. It is not considered one of the traditional Seven Kingdoms.**

"Not one of the Seven Kingdoms, huh? From what the rest of the region choices are, it looks like the Seven Kingdoms are The North, The Vale, The Westerlands, The Iron Islands, The Reach, The Stormlands, and Dorne." Carl mused.

"The North is just above my starting zone, and it's cold as a witch's tit, apparently. Bogs on the southern part of The North, and then there is The Wall and the Night's Watch on the northern part of The North. I find it funny that the kingdom is called 'The North'. It can lead to such silly sentences as 'We're headed south-east to The North'."

"Okay, to the east of my starter zone is the Vale. Surrounded by mountains and extremely fertile, but troubled by mountain clans." Carl nodded, cementing what little knowledge he was getting from reading the Jump Document in his head, not that he could forget it anyway.

"The Westerlands are to the…west…of my land. Seriously? The West lands? Whatever. A very rich region with gold and silver mines. Hah! I've got a philosopher's stone, let's see who has more gold at the end of the day!" Carl joked around. "Okay, west lands, you've also got some defenses and crops that make you a decent land to hold."

"Next is the Iron Islands, west of me and north of the Westerlands. Small, rocky, and barren, and filled with a bunch of pirates apparently." Carl scoffed. "What, the Iron Islands gets to be one of the Kingdoms, but my Riverlands don't? What use is the Iron Islands if they are just full of reavers who don't do anything useful?"

"Okay, next is the Reach. Yeah, the author was really rea- you know what, never mind. I'm not gonna make fun of his naming sense, considering my own poor attempts. So the Reach is south of me, located in the center and south west of Westeros. Fertile, populous, and rich. Home of chivalry? Sounds like a bunch of arrogant berks roaming around playing at being Knights because they have leisure time. Lots of food and wine, though."

"Next is the Stormlands. I bet they have plenty of rain and lightning. Yup, it's on the coast with bad storms. It lies east of the Reach and is one of the smaller kingdoms covered by stony shores, harsh mountains, and large verdant forests."

"Dorne is a hot desert region south of the Reach and the Stormlands. Water is more precious than gold. Well, I've got the Aguamenti spell, so I'm automatically rich." Carl chuckled.

"And the Free Cities are off to the east on its own continent. So…this world is some kind of analog to Europe or something? Whatever. I'm sure I'll learn more about it, later."

**Timeline: You may choose any point in time to arrive in this world. The default is 298 AC (the beginning of A Game of Thrones). Some dates of interest include: 2 BC-1 AC (Aegon's Conquest), 195-196 AC (The Blackfyre Rebellion), 282-283 AC (Robert's Rebellion), 298-300 AC (War of the Five Kings).**

"Well, now. That's interesting. I can choose to pick some random 10 year span and just chill, never having to deal with ice zombies." Carl thought for a bit. "For some reason I feel like jumping in right at the end of Robert's Rebellion. Even though I don't really know a lot about the story line, I've picked up enough random bits about which people are such absolute wastes of space, I wouldn't mind cutting them from the story early." Carl mused, selecting the date 282 AC. "Might as well get in on the action at the beginning of the Rebellion."

"And now to pick an identity. Not going to spend CP to change genders, thanks. Free pick for my age? I'll go for 18 years old, thanks. And now I get to choose between Drop In, Smallfolk, Sworn Sword, or Noble. Okay, that one's a no brainer. In a medieval society like this, only the Nobles really have freedom and decision making powers. Not that I couldn't just take over things anyway. But it'll be easier to start as a noble."

**Noble 100 cp: You are a member of the nobility in your area, perhaps a landed knight or member of some lesser house. You have a reasonable amount of coin and influence on a local level. You may choose specific parents (if appropriately aged) as your own and, along with them, a specific house to belong to. No Great Houses.**

**\+ Formal and martial education, some wealth and influence.**

**\- Sheltered upbringing**

Next Carl looked over the perks available. He first added the free perks based on his identity.

**Weapon Proficiency 0 cp: You are capable with most common weaponry found in this world and truly exceptional with one specific type. Alternatively you may be extremely good at needlework and other womanly pursuits.**

Even though Carl was already an expert with swords from training, he chose to add swords as his one choice to continue adding to and deepening his skill. When he went to select swords though, he found that the drop down menu had a selection of different weapons. After looking through the choices, eventually Carl chose Bastard Swords to specialize in. Carl decided to choose that sword in order to blend in with the warriors and nobles that he would no doubt be interacting with.

**Mine By Right 0 cp: You are generally given more consideration than others. People consider your rights and desires as generally more important than those of other people.**

"Yup, that's what I was saying. As a Noble you can get away with things that most people can't." Carl nodded to himself in affirmation. "Hmm, there are a couple of perks that are interesting, but I'll come back to them in a bit after picking up all the free stuff I get from beinga Noble."

Carl then moved on to the gear section, picking up the free ones as a matter of course.

**Heraldry and Words 0 cp**: **The heraldry and words of your design. They are inextricably associated with you and give the impression and feeling you'd like to get across with them (within reason). Nobles begin with a cape and standard of the finest quality displaying their arms and motto, everyone else starts with their emblem and words crudely painted on a bedsheet.**

"Hmm, how about a flame red Phoenix in flight over a blue river for my Heraldry." Carl used the indicated space on the jump document to draw out his Heraldry. "And as for my motto, how about: Fire or Flood. A warning to enemies of what will come to them if they mess with me or mine. Die by the fire, or drown in the water. And it goes well with the fire bird and river on my Heraldry."

**Castle Forged Steel 0 cp: A well made set of steel plate and chain as well as a single, finely made, steel weapon of choice.**

**(Sworn Sword's free armor is slightly rusted and dinted.)**

Since it was free, Carl selected it. It didn't say anything about adding his preexisting weapons or armor to it, and there was no other option.

"Well, I guess it is going to end up being a display item, once I pull out my profound armor and weapon." Carl commented. "But still, I won't pass on free stuff."

**Pouch of Gold 0 cp: A pouch of golden coins. Around 100 Golden Dragons worth.**

Carl had no idea just how much 100 golden dragons could buy him in the world. But with his properties from Monopoly, let alone his Farms, and Philosophers stone, he was sure he wouldn't have to worry overly much about his budget.

**Fine Clothes 0 cp: A very fine and ornate set of clothing. The equivalent of the finest you could expect to get in your starting region.**

Carl shrugged at getting a fine set of clothes. He hadn't been bothered too much about basics like food or clothes for a while now, but free was free. He did somewhat wonder if the outfit would change based on the world he was going to be in. That would make the outfit worth something if it did indeed change based on where he went.

**Land Deed 0 cp: A deed to an area of land close by in your chosen region. It will be accepted by all authorities as rightfully yours. This updates each jump but is generally not a particularly large plot of land elsewhere.**

Even though it said it wasn't a lot of land, Carl particularly liked getting more land and resources that followed him from world to world. Like adding the sword skills of this world to his own, every little bit counted, no matter how miniscule.

Carl decided while looking at the gear to purchase a discounted item.

**Valyrian Steel Weapon 100 cp: An excellent weapon of your choice made of Valyrian steel. Light and exceptionally sharp. Serves as a symbol of status. Gives an impression of great strength and brings dread to your enemies.**

Carl added his the Blue Orchid to the Valyrian Steel Bastard Sword to gain those properties for his sword. He decided on adding the Valyrian Steel Weapon's properties to his sword pretty much solely for the symbol of status that Valyrian Steel was. He knew from various talk on the internet that Valyrian Steel was one of the few things that could kill the ice zombies, but he wasn't too worried about them. He had access to Fiendfyre as well as the Golden Crow flames. Besides which, the Winter Apocalypse wasn't even scheduled until long after he left the world.

As Carl scanned down the page, he read through the various quests, questioning himself as to whether he wanted to choose one or not.

**You may choose a single optional Quest. This removes the 10 years limit and replaces it with a victory condition that must be completed in order for you to succeed. Quests have requirements that must be filled in order to be chosen.**

**Note: Boons from Quests are awarded immediately on selecting the Quest.**

After looking over the quests, Carl wasn't too impressed with many of the quest rewards.

**You become incredibly lucky when trying to take anything that rightfully belongs to you.**

"I can't see anyone taking my stuff." Carl chuckled at the idea of anyone truly stealing from him. "And if someone was able to take something from me, I'd just make myself stronger,more clever, or more skilled until I could take it back."

**You become almost inhumanly beautiful and a truly brilliant warrior.**

"I already have great looks with my Metamorphmagus skill, if I so desired, and I'm already beyond brilliant as a warrior. So the quest that would require me to go be a Targaryen bastard in 182 AC I'll pass on."

**You know how to cut the faces from dead bodies and replace your own with them. You also know how to store them hygienically and without them decaying.**

"Damn, but that's morbid. And gruesome. Hard pass. If I want to look like anyone else, I've got the means with magic. No need to go all serial killer."

**Enhanced lifespan, night vision, preternatural skill at hiding and quicker reflexes.**

"Maybe if I was a baseline human those would be nice. But I've already got better. Besides, that would require me to be one of those little Children of the Forest dudes. I'll pass."

**You are 14 feet tall and inhumanly strong and durable and can withstand extremely cold temperatures and hostile environments.**

"I've already got all that except for being 8 feet taller than I already am. Besides, the victory condition would be to bring the Giant's population level up from a few hundred to 5,000. Seeing as I would be one of those giants, that would mean I'd have to join in with having lots of kids, and I've already made a promise not to have kids before the reunion. So I'll pass on that, thanks."

**You attain an uncanny ability for accumulating wealth and trading and mercenaries under your command tend to be unusually loyal.**

"Might have been more interested about nine worlds back. But I've got money and loyalty perks already. So that boon doesn't really interest me as much as it would have before, considering I'd have to gain control over the 9 Free Cities. I mean, controlling them with force would be easy enough, but doing that would be a pain in the ass."

**You are immune to all poisons and can slightly control the direction of fire.**

Carl laughed for a good long time at the suggestion that slightly controlling fire was something he would waste his time on at this point. Spending time converting 50% of the people of the world to worshipping R'hllor in order to very slightly improve his already perfect fire control? Hard pass.

No, there was only one boon from quests that Carl was interested in.

**Best Dynasty Ever**

**Requirements: None**

**Boon: The gods smile on your family. Anyone directly related to you tends to be blessed with peace, plenty, and a happy life.**

**Whether noble or not you certainly intend to be, you cannot stand the idea of anyone being above you and covet the throne of this land for you and yours.**

**Victory Condition: Take the Iron Throne for your house and hold it within your family for 300 years.**

**Note: Should you die of old age in any of these Quests you will take the place of your eldest legitimate heir should you have one.**

Carl paced in front of the kiosk, rubbing his chin as he thought about whether or not he wanted to take the quest.

"On the plus side, that is a nice guarantee that anyone I'm related to has a nice life. Which I want for my loved ones." Carl was talking out loud while gesturing in the air with his hands.

"On the other hand, that is a long time to invest into making that boon permanent. And it said 'directly related to'. So does that not include spouses or girlfriends? Besides, aren't I working to get strong enough to guarantee my loved ones have decent lives anyway?"

After thinking about it for some time, Carl decided not to take the quest. While he liked the idea of the boon, he didn't feel like the amount of time and effort that would be required to sink into it was completely worth it.

But while Carl was thinking of the quest and what he would need to do to fulfill it, he realized he wanted to purchase at least two more perks.

**Great House 50 cp: You may choose any house or family to belong to from your starting region and any appropriately aged parents.**

Carl decided that it wasn't enough to just be a random noble, he was going to be a member of the Family that ruled the Riverlands. He didn't plan to go Empire building in this world like he had in the Stargate world. In the Stargate world his big goal was to get the advanced technology. But then he'd gotten tired with the blind bumbling of the main cast and decided to take charge of the affairs of the galaxy.

Not that the people involved weren't doing the best they could with what they had and knew at the time. But since he had such advanced technology, he'd wanted to just _fix_ _it._ So he had gotten a little out of control, conquering galaxies and building empires. It had been good times.

But here in this world he planned to just sit back and administer his lands and make sure to enjoy the ten years. And to make it easier on him, there was one more perk to get.

**A Quiet People 100 cp: You find that the people under your authority are remarkably unlikely to cause you trouble. While not necessarily truly loyal they are exceptionally unlikely to rebel.**

How was Carl supposed to enjoy his time in the world if his people are always fighting and rebelling against him?

"I'm sure it wouldn't stop the people from rebelling if their lord got bad enough. But at least small mistakes I make aren't likely to cause issues." Carl muttered as he checked over his selections. "Huh, that's interesting."

Carl just noticed that with the purchase of the **Great House** perk, since he picked the ruling family of the Riverlands, his **Heraldry and Words** were automatically changed. The Heraldry was now a silver trout leaping on a striped field of blue and mud red. And his house words was "Family, Duty, Honor".

"Yeah, I can live with that. Not as intimidating as threatening to burn or drown your enemies, but it shows what my new family finds important. And I find myself resonating with it." Carl nodded in approval.

"Now, let's check over the Drawbacks and see if I can get any free points."

"Okay, I want to be the ruler, so I'm not picking up **Bastard.**" Carl snorted. "Being a bastard isn't some shame that the children should have to suffer under, but let's be realistic here. We're talking about a medieval society that has nobility and underhanded fighting for the succession rights. So if I don't want to end up fighting with my half siblings, which would directly go against our house words, it's best to avoid issues of illegitimacy."

"**Stalwart Shield** would make me a loyal supporter and ally of someone. That wouldn't necessarily be that bad if I could choose a decent person who I could trust, even though it only gives 100 cp. Too bad I don't know any one appropriate. Besides which, the idea of having my loyalty and choices forced, even if only for 10 years, is repellant. I'll pass on that."

"**Honourable **for only 100 cp would make me stupid with morals. I'll pass. Now, it says that Ned Stark epitomizes this trait, so I could possibly set up Ned as the target of **Stalwart Shield**, but then I would probably be just as dumb as Ned because I'd be forced to support him. Any drawbacks that modify my behavior and that I can't fight against with occlumency I'm gonna avoid the hell out of, especially when it gives a measly 100 cp. So miserly." Carl curled his lips in disgust at the very idea of not being in control of his decision making for such a pitiful amount of cp. "Which means that a lot of these drawbacks are right out."

**Cruel +200 cp: You are naturally cruel and known as such. You will not be able to suppress the urge to torture people from time to time.**

**Paranoid +200 cp: You are rather paranoid, particularly politically. You will naturally suspect people are plotting against you and will not rest easily. This will likely cause mistakes on your part.**

**The Unworthy +200 cp: Your sexual appetites are astounding and you will sire many a bastard (and you probably already have). This will take up a reasonable amount of your time and your bastards are or will be an extremely troublesome lot.**

**Craven +200 cp: You are naturally afraid and no amount of willpower will help. Whether it's fighting or meeting new people you will be consistently terrified and show it.**

"Yeah, there's absolutely no chance I will take any of those. As amusing as family drama would be, I made that promise to Serena not to have children until everyone is reunited. I never knew just how difficult that promise would be to keep. That was a difficult sell to Caiyi, but the promise to have children as soon as I returned finally won out in the end." Carl sighed at the difficulty of ensuring he didn't have children. "Not that Alice and Tera were happy about it either, what with all that time spent in Time Dilation."

Carl carefully didn't think about just how easy it would have been to "slip up" and just go ahead and have a family in one of these jumps. As much as he wanted to have a family, he knew that leaving behind kids as well as lovers would just make it harder for him to go forward.

"Based on the **Honorable **drawback, and how it mentions Ned Stark, I think it's likely that I'll be meeting some people who epitomize these drawback traits. I've definitely gotta keep my eye out for the dude that epitomizes the **Cruel** drawback. If I catch him in the act, he'll be out of luck. Of course that's assuming it's only a single person who epitomizes the trait." Carl shook his head and sighed at the realization that there were probably many people who had the various traits.

Carl finished reading the other drawbacks with a sigh of disappointment. "I don't want to touch any of these drawbacks. **Eunuch **removes little Carl root and stem, 'can barely even urinate'. No thanks. Even if I can heal it after the fact, that's just a prohibited area for dudes. And some of the other drawbacks I've seen specify that the effects can't be healed while in the world, so I'll pass on the possibility of being a Eunuch for 10 years." Carl shuddered in dread at the thought.

"With **Greyscale **I'll get some weird disease five years into the jump that within four years after getting the disease, it will make me violent and insane. And it says it's incurable, so I'll pass. Who knows how much damage I would do over the course of that one year of being insane. An insane cultivator in a land where no other murder hobos are there to stop him? There probably wouldn't be anyone left at the end. And it's not like it would be the amusing kind of insanity that would make me think I was Santa Claus' cousin and start handing out gifts. No, it has to ensure I'm violent." Carl was pretty sure that the insanity wouldn't stop him from remembering any atrocity he would inflict on the world. He definitely didn't need that on his conscience.

**Imp +300 cp: You are a very ugly dwarf. Your legs are stunted and sore and you cannot move quickly on them. You may not change form for the duration of your time here.**

"**Imp** will make me a very ugly dwarf for the 10 year duration, and it wouldn't even let me change my form. Being an ugly imp wouldn't really be an impediment for me being a noble or ruler, once I woke up my memories and abilities, even if I couldn't cure it. But my relationships with people and their impressions on me would be affected before I woke up my memories, which would seriously affect the memories and relationships that I would have with people." Carl thought about it for a bit. "It all comes down to my desire for CP battling my pride. What would I put up with for cp? Flip a coin it is, I'll leave it up to chance. Heads I go for it, tails I'll pass."

Carl pulled out a quarter and flipped the coin, letting it land on the floor so he wouldn't be tempted to manipulate it. The coin flew into the air, shining as it spun. As it hit the ground it bounced around, hitting the kiosk base before coming to a halt. Tails. "No cp for you, Carl."

"And the final drawback, **A Long Night**, will basically have unending swarms of ice zombies for 10 years. I'll pass on the Zombie apocalypse."

"Well, I guess that's that. No drawbacks, and just enough perks to enhance my leadership while I'm here." Carl took a deep breath and pressed the complete button. The world dissolved into darkness around him.

* * *

A tall and sturdy man was pacing back and forth in his solar, nervous about what was happening in a nearby room. His brown hair and beard took on a vague tint of red in the candle light. His blue eyes were flashing with worry over his wife, who was currently in labor.

Hoster Tully had not been especially lucky with having children so far. His wife, Minisa Tully nee Whent had always been on the frail side. She had successfully given birth to two sons for him, who had grown sick and died before they had even reached a year old.

Hoster was now the Lord of Riverrun and the Lord Paramount of the Trident since his father had died only a few months ago. So it was even more important than ever that he have an heir. The deaths of his previous two sons increased the weight of worry on Hoster over his duties as the Lord Paramount.

It was a difficult position that House Tully was in as the leader. They didn't have the numbers of military men that the other houses in the Riverlands did. They weren't very wealthy so it was difficult to attract more knights to their service. And they weren't the family with the most history in the Riverlands, thus their prestige wasn't quite as high as others.

As a result, it was incredibly difficult to _do _anything or even rule properly in the Riverlands. He had seen how much those worries and difficulties had weighed on his father. And now that his father was gone, that weight fell on him to carry.

But if he didn't carry those worries, it would likely spell the end of his family as their rivals would have no compunction not to cast them down and destroy his house if they ever managed to do so.

_Family, Duty, Honor._

They weren't just empty words for House Tully. They were the most precious guidance that had kept House Tully alive in the midst of jealous enemies and rivals. Protect the family. Do his duty to family and kingdom. And preserve their family's honor as the Lord of the Riverlands so no one could legitimately challenge them, seeking to destroy them.

There were already talks about him not being worthy of the title Lord of the Trident, there were worries about the succession since his previous two boy didn't make it past their first year.

A knock on the door interrupted his worried thoughts. He glared at the door for a moment, before bidding them to enter. One of the servants entered and bowed, well aware of the volatile temper that his lord was under at the moment.

"Lady Tully has given birth to healthy twins my lord. A boy and a girl." The servant reported.

Hoster laughed in joy. "Good!" He exclaimed as he made his way out of the solar and moved to the birthing room just down the hallway.

Brushing past all the servants gathered in the halls, Hoster entered the room to find Minisa looking wiped out, but smiling lovingly down at the two bundles in her arms. She looked up at Hoster, her red hair still sweat streaked and smiled at her husband.

"A boy and a girl for you, milord." She softly said.

Hoster gently pressed a hand on her shoulder before peering down at the two bundles. His children. Hopefully they would survive. He wasn't sure he could handle the whispers of the nobles he was in charge of if his children didn't.

"What did you want to name them?" Minisa asked.

Hoster looked at his son and daughter. They both looked the same, wrinkly red. One of the babies was struggling to get free of the swaddling clothes, not content with simply lying there.

"Your son is a restless one already." Minisa offered with a smile when she saw Hoster looking at their boy.

"Aye, like I was growing up. Since he seems to want to be a free man already, let's name him Carl." Hoster then looked at the beautiful face of his daughter. "And for your daughter, Minisa?"

Minisa looked down at her girl who was sleeping so peacefully. "She looks so sweet and pure. We'll name her Catelyn."

"A good name." Hoster nodded approvingly. "Rest now, dear." Minisa smiled at her husband and let her eyes shut as she fell into slumber.

Hoster looked down at his son that was unusually active just after birth. He had a good feeling about this active and healthy son. He felt like the boy was going to grow up strong.

* * *

Carl Tully, much more than his twin sister Catelyn, soon proved to be a handful to care for. He wasn't a particularly loud child, no more than his sister. But he was awake and active much more than his sister. Even before he grew strong enough to crawl, he loved to roll everywhere.

The servants had to be especially careful where they placed him, since he would have rolled off a bed on more than one occasion if they weren't watchful. And that carelessness in protecting their Lord's heir would have been worth their life.

Catelyn, in comparison with her brother, was a calm child. She wasn't truly a calm baby, not more so than any other baby, really. But when compared to her brother she seemed positively serene and content to be still.

When the Tully Twins were several months old, Carl finally learned to crawl, which made him a double handful of trouble. After only a few days of seeing how Carl could get around and find the most unusual and dangerous of places to crawl to, his parents assigned three servants specifically to keep a 24 hour watch on the young heir.

The servants took to jokingly referring to their duty as being one of the corral guards, since it was a full time job, and was a play on the young heir's name, Carl.

But despite the young active boy's proclivity for exploring, he also seemed to love spending time with his sister and mother, when he could. While Carl's twin sister wasn't as active as he was, she too liked to be around her twin brother.

Hoster found that after long days of dealing with conflicts between his people, politics and fights between his knights and lords, he enjoyed coming back to their rooms and sitting with his wife, his daughter content to sit in his arms playing with his beard, while his son played with blocks or some other toys while his wife told him tales of what kind of mischief his son had gotten into that day. It was a balm on his soul after dealing with stubborn idiots all day long.

Soon enough Minisa was pregnant again, and two years after giving birth to her twins, gave birth to another daughter in 266 AC. They named their small girl Lysa. Carl and Catelyn were too young to really interact with their newborn sister, but when they were shown their sister they babbled excitedly at her, seeming to immediately bond with her.

Life continued on for some time in their normal routine. Hoster dealt with all the various issues that cropped up from time to time. Natural disasters among the common folk that he was Lord over and had to help them with recover from. Arguments between his landowners over boundary disputes. Thieves stealing livestock or destroying crops. The other nobles testing him while seeking advantages for themselves.

Minisa managed the household and the ladies, spending her time in needlework or managing the household food and item supply, watching over their children.

And Carl learned to walk and soon run, which made the job of the Corral Guards that much more difficult. Catelyn on the other hand was seen as a sedate and ladylike young girl, even though she too got up to mischief like all children do.

When Carl was four name days old in 268 AC, his brother Edmure was born to Hoster and Minisa. Carl, Catelyn, and Lysa all seemed excited for the new addition to their family.

Nothing much changed for the family until two years later, when Minisa passed away in childbirth. The young baby boy didn't survive either. A pall of sadness and grief seemed to descend on the castle and the family for quite some time.

Edmure was still too young at two name days old to properly remember their mother, or understand that she was gone. Lysa and Catelyn though especially missed the presence of their loving mother. While Carl was also greatly affected, as a young man of six name days of age he knew it was his job to toughen up and be there for his siblings.

Despite Carl's best attempts at being there for his siblings, there wasn't much he could do to soften the blow of never again having their mother there for them.

Hoster especially took the loss of his wife badly, and threw himself into his Lordly duties to stop thinking about his grief so much. He still occasionally made time for his children, but he was a busy lord with many duties. And their days had normally been filled with time spent with their mother, so the children especially felt the absence of their mother.

But despite the sad loss, life went on. Carl and Catelyn were started on the lessons with the maesters needed for children of their station. They learned to read and write, history, simple maths, and most importantly they learned the duties of their station.

Carl had additional lessons in the martial yard, starting him on the exercises that would turn him into a knight capable of protecting his lands.

Carl took to all his lessons like a fish to water. He was an unusually smart child, able to remember whatever he read or heard. The maester of the castle constantly said how well Carl would do in the Order of Maesters. Thankfully for all involved, Hoster put his foot down firmly. Carl was his oldest and would be inheriting his lordship. He certainly wasn't going to allow Carl to give up his family name and joining the Order of Maesters just because he was smart.

Besides, Carl was a very active boy that would have absolutely hated being stuck in the sedentary lifestyle of the Maesters. Despite having a talent for learning, the young boy much preferred the active lifestyle of a knight.

Over the next four years the Tullys settled into their new routines and life. Their father's brother, Brynden Tully started showing up more and more to help his brother with looking after the children.

Despite the addition of their uncle in their lives, Carl made sure to look after his siblings, since he was the oldest he knew it was his responsibility. As such, Carl scaled back on the amount of mischief, exploration, and fun that he had enjoyed before. While still of a cheerful nature, he grew to be more duty minded as he looked after his siblings, making sure they were safe, looked after, and had fun.

He kept in mind their family's words to guide him.

_Family, Duty, Honor._

His intelligence and physical abilities were far above that of a normal child of his age, and it had all his teachers praising him, and throwing more advanced materials his way. He soon began learning swordsmanship, taking to it as if he had already learned it, and was simply remembering the moves. His uncle Brynden was a knight of some renown. He had been in many battles, and when he saw that Carl was a natural at the blade, he made sure to spend time tutoring Carl in the martial endeavors of knights, especially sword fighting.

And throughout the time he grew, Carl continued to find that he had exceptional talents in many things. He couldn't explain just how he had gotten those skills, they were just there.

When one day his younger brother Edmure had gotten lost and the servants couldn't find them, Carl found that he had a natural skill in tracking as he followed his brother's trail until he found Edmure, lost in a copse of trees some distance away. He brought four year old Edmure back to the castle on his back, refusing to let the servants carry him.

At nine years old he was the first to jump in front of a scared and startled seven name day old Lysa when a dog went mad and almost attacked her. The practice sword he had flew fast and true, breaking the dogs jaw and legs, leaving it helpless for the servants to gather up and put the mad thing down while he hugged his scared sister to comfort her. He was never sure afterwards just how he had known that the dog was going to attack, but it had allowed him to get in front of his sister in time to protect her, so he wasn't going to question it too much.

It wasn't until he was nearly ten name days old before he finally realized that not everyone can see in the dark as well as if it was midday. Or see the wings on a fly from a hundred yards away. He always knew his senses were better than others, but since he grew up with them, he never thought about just how much better they were than normal.

Shortly after Carl and Catelyn celebrated their 10th nameday, his father Hoster Tully brought a six nameday old boy into their house to foster. During Hoster's time fighting in the War of the Ninpenny Kings, Hoster had made friends with Lord Stephan Baelish of the Vale.

Lord Baelish was the first of his family to be considered a noble from birth. Lord Baelish's grandfather had been born in Braavos and came to the Vale as a sellsword employed by House Corbray. Lord Baelish's father had started life as a landless hedge knight before gaining a small piece of land in the Fingers, which was a peninsula in the north-east of The Vale. He established House Baelish there.

Lord Baelish had prevailed on Lord Tully's friendship to foster his son. Carl himself assumed that Lord Baelish wanted his son to make connections and increase their House's prestige and influence.

But the arrival of six name days old Petyr Baelish was what let Carl know of another innate skill he had. Despite the pleasant face and innocent act of Petyr, Carl found that he didn't like the boy at all. He felt deep inside that the boy was a sneak and would do anything to benefit himself.

And Carl really didn't like the way that Petyr eyed Carl's sisters. Carl vowed that he would keep an eye on the boy, since telling his father not to trust a six name day old boy would have been an exercise in frustration and pointlessness.

Since Carl was on guard against Petyr, he saw the things no one else did. When several hounds got loose and made a mess in the kitchen, he saw the smirk of triumph on the boy's face, especially when the servant in charge of the dogs got punished. There wasn't any evidence that Petyr was the one who did it, but Carl knew.

Some time later while Carl was in the training yard, he saw Petyr and his two sisters sneaking out of the castle. The sneaking and surreptitious nature of their movements caught Carl's eye, and so he ended his training session early and followed them.

Without the three seeing him, Carl followed them into the Godswood grove just outside the castle. The boy had a smug attitude to him that immediately made Carl want to beat him.

It was only when the three started exchanging kisses that Carl knew just what Petyr had been up to. Enraged at the boy taking advantage of his sisters, he stepped inside the clearing and grabbed the boy in a head lock, tearing him away from his younger sister Lysa.

"Just what do you think you're doing, you little sneak?" Carl growled as he punched the boy a couple times in the ribs. "Taking advantage of my sisters after we took you in?"

"Carl stop!" His sisters pleaded with him, trying to pull him off the boy. "Why are you beating him? It was our idea!" Catelyn cried out.

Carl stopped, furious that his sisters would take the side of the sneaky and underhanded boy over him, their brother. He dropped Petyr out of the head lock and kicked him aside, furious at the boy and at his sisters. "You get away from here. And if I see you trying to take advantage of my sisters again, I'm going to do much worse to you."

Carl smiled in satisfaction as he saw the fear in the boy's eyes over his threat as he cowered away. Carl then turned to his sisters.

"How dare you!" Catelyn suddenly slapped Carl while Lysa also glared at him.

A feeling of betrayal shot through Carl at the slap. He glared at his sisters like he had never done before. The two girls quailed a bit at the glare, suddenly realizing that maybe they had gone a bit too far.

"You would take his side over your own brother? You would take the side of that underhanded and sneaky rat over me?" Carl growled, hurt that his sisters would dare betray him like that.

"Petyr isn't like that!" Carl's eleven name day old twin declared. "Besides, it was all a bit off innocent play." She declared.

"I like Petyr, he's funny. He wasn't hurting us." Lysa joined in.

"I see he has you fooled too." Carl bitterly spat. "He's an underhanded sneak, is what he is. I've seen him play foul tricks on people and get others blamed for it. And he's been fooling you two with his jokes and wit. He just wants to use you two to advance himself. And I won't have it. I won't allow him to take advantage of you two."

"I think you're jealous and a fool if you think that of Petyr!" Catelyn declared. "I like the boy and I'll continue to associate with him if I want!"

Carl looked back and forth between the two girls. "You both really think that?" He was furious at the whole situation. His sisters were betraying him for an outsider, for some not-family runt that was smart enough to fool nearly everyone. They didn't trust him enough to believe him over the honeyed words of an outsider. Didn't they know that the first word in their Family Words was _Family_? Why would they abandon that?

When Lysa nodded in agreement with Catelyn, who she was always the closest with, Carl's anger suddenly went completely cold. Arctic cold. The change of his expression caused an uneasy feeling to develop in Catelyn's stomach, but she pushed the feeling aside and continued to glare at her twin who was being so unreasonable. Who she associated with was her business. How dare he try to dictate to her!

"Fine." Carl coldly declared. "If you would rather betray your _family_ for some underhanded outsider, then there's not much I can do, now can I?"

Carl turned around and marched off, leaving his sisters in tears at his hurtful words. Catelyn wondered what she had done, but she was too proud to go apologize when she felt she hadn't done anything wrong. And Lysa followed Catelyn's lead, so she too continued to be friends with Petyr.

The following year was the most uncomfortable in the Tully household due to the rift between siblings. Carl refused to talk to the girls until they had come to their senses, even though he continued to watch out for them and make sure they didn't get taken advantage of or hurt.

Carl continued to exercise and play with Edmure, but refused to train with him if Edmure brought Petyr along. It infuriated Carl that the little bastard was winning over his own family away from him.

Petyr all the while was full of smug looks and smiles, seeing as how he had convinced the girls to his side, away from their own brother. He was so proud of himself.

Carl vowed that he had to do something soon to change the situation.


	59. ASOIAF 02

Young Carl sat in the Godswood with a scowl on his face, looking at the location where his family had fallen apart nearly a year ago. Where his twin and younger sister had chosen to believe in a lying snake over their own brother.

It had taken all his self discipline not to kill the arrogant little boy when Petyr would smugly smile at Carl at the dinner table on a daily basis.

Even his father wouldn't hear a word against the little Baelish brat. He kept claiming that the son of his good friend Lord Baelish couldn't be that bad.

Carl was beginning to suspect that Lord Baelish had taught his despicable son the same kinds of tricks he'd played on Carl's father, to fool them all.

While the rest of his family didn't believe that a young six, now eight year old boy could be so underhanded and sneaky, Carl knew it was more than possible. His own intellect and ability at a young age had proven to him that age was no real indication of skill. He had been incredibly skilled from a young age.

But he had never gone the route of being a sneak thief fooling the people around him into believing his lies of innocence.

Carl punched the nearest tree in frustration, cracking the trunk so the tree leaned dangerously close to falling.

There were so many times over the past year that he wanted to just kill the little sneak. He was sorely tempted. The only thing keeping him from doing so was his family's words. What his family think of him, and what it would do for his family's standing with the other lords. What it would do to their honor when word got out that fostering with the Tully's wasn't safe for other young lords.

That would be a stain on their honor, an impediment to their ability to govern the Riverlands that wouldn't be easily washed away.

Despite his estrangement from his sisters, Carl had made sure that Petyr never had a chance to pull any more of his wooing tricks on his sisters. Even though he was frustrated with them, he wouldn't let them be taken advantage of.

Carl sighed in frustration from where he leaned against the tree he had punched. The fury hadn't departed at all with his expression of anger. If anything it was worse. He still wanted to punch Baelish's head off. Why would his family automatically believe Baelish but not their own blood?

Determined to think about the problem logically, Carl finally managed to push his anger away for the first time in nearly a year. The way he had been going about this problem was all wrong. It wasn't getting solved. He had been too close to the problem, and too hurt, to think about how to solve the problem.

And, he must admit, he had been sulking a bit. Sulking at the fact that his family didn't listen to him. He had been feeling sorry for himself instead of solving the problem.

So now Carl finally sat down and thought over the issue with as detached a mind as he could

After thinking about it for some time, Carl froze in shock as he finally fully realized just how stupid he had been about the whole thing.

He had been reacting emotionally, instead of planning and acting. He had been pouting that his family wouldn't take his side, and was just waiting for them to come to the realization that he knew best.

Instead Carl should have been thinking up plans and methods to expose Baelish's true nature to his family. The only way to solve a hidden sneak and planner like Baelish, aside from straight up killing him, was to use his own kind of sneaky traps against him.

After all, the strategies that Baelish was using were so effective, why not use them against him?

And once his mask was ripped off, once his family truly saw what kind of person Baelish was, they wouldn't fall for his innocent act anymore. Then things could finally return to normal around here.

Carl scowled in frustration. He had already wasted so much time! He needed to work on plans to uncover Baelish's duplicitous nature as soon as possible.

* * *

A few weeks later the pounding on the door woke Hoster from his sleep. Grunting in anger at being woken up, he tore open the door and was about to yell at whoever was waking him in the middle of the night when he saw it was his eldest son, Carl.

"And what is it that couldn't wait until morning?" Hoster demanded of his 12 name day old son while noting his focused look.

"Father. There is something you must see this night." Carl said before immediately walking away, only pausing a few steps away to give his father time to join him. Hoster scowled at his son's back, but eventually decided to see what his son was up to. This past several months had been uncomfortable while his son and daughters were estranged and not talking. He could at least give his son the benefit of the doubt and see what his son thought was so important in the middle of the night.

Carl then led his father to a specific room that he had prepared in the castle for this night of revelations.

Over the past few weeks as he made his preparations, Carl had occasionally had some strange dreams. In one of the dreams he learned about a symbol in strange symbol writing. He instinctively knew it meant silence, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out how he knew that.

Inside the room that Carl led his father to, Carl's siblings were already sitting in their chairs. Or rather, they were tied to chairs.

Carl's two sisters and his brother's mouths were open as if they were shouting, but they were completely silent. They were jerking around, trying to free themselves but unable to due to the ropes tying them to chairs.

The unnatural silence the three children were under was an effect of the symbol Carl had carved into their chairs.

Hoster paused as he took in the scene. "Just what are you doing here, Carl?" He asked his eldest boy in a dangerous tone of voice. The oddity and wrongness of the scene put him on edge.

"Giving you proof." Carl replied flatly. "None of you would listen to me, your own family when I told you the true nature of the Baelish brat. You all were fooled by his honeyed words and looks of innocence. So if you'll take your seat, you'll see just what kind of a person he really is." Carl gestured to an empty seat near Carl's siblings for Hoster to sit at. Carl's father remained standing as he glared at Carl, demanding answers.

"My sisters and I haven't been on the best of terms ever since that day, so I had to do something to ensure their attendance. I wouldn't want them to deny what was reported to them later, after all. They need to see it with their own eyes." Carl added a bit of venom to his voice. The betrayal of his sisters still hurt him greatly. "In an old chest I found some books about magic symbols. One of them had the use of putting the immediate area under silence. That way, my sisters won't disturb what they are about to learn with their shouts."

Hoster looked at Catelyn, Lysa, and Edmure. The three seemed fine, aside from not being able to talk and being tied to a chair. He finally, grudgingly sat. He really didn't appreciate his son and heir dictating to him, but he was willing to let him put on the show. If he wasn't satisfied, his son wasn't too old to have his hide tanned.

Once Carl saw his father sit, he opened a particular window looking box on the wall, exposing the room on the other side of the wall to the view of all who were there. In the other room were two figures, a 14-15 year old girl, and the almost 9 year old Petyr Baelish.

Catelyn and Lysa immediately blushed and would have gasped or screamed out loud if it wasn't for the silencing runes on their chairs. Edmure blushed but seemed intrigued by the view of the naked girl who Baelish was having sex with.

Carl smirked at the betrayed faces his sisters were making. Petyr was always so good at acting like a sweet and innocent boy, that seeing him blatantly and lustily having sex ruined the image he had crafted for himself. Especially when Catelyn and Lysa got a good look at the expression on Petyr's face now that he wasn't making any effort to hide who he really was. The greedy and arrogant look wasn't something they had ever been allowed to see on his face before.

Hoster scowled at Carl for showing him a scene of a boy making time with a whore. Everyone did it, it wasn't anything special and it wouldn't make him think differently about Petyr. So far, it was a waste of Hoster's time. Besides, why was Carl exposing his daughters to this sight?

"Give it a moment or two, you'll find you answers." Carl answered the unspoken question Hoster had.

At about that time, Petyr finished up and collapsed on the bed next to the young whore.

The girl propped herself up on her elbow, looking down at the boy. "I still don't know why I'm not enough for you, my little lord." The girl said as she stroked a finger over Petyr's bare chest. "Why do you still give those Tully girls attention? They can't do for you what I do. You know the older one only thinks of you as a brother anyway."

Petyr sarcastically laughed. "Hah. Like a brother. They treat me better than their own brother. I saw to that!" He bragged to the girl.

Carl saw out of the corner of his eye that Catelyn and Lysa flinched at Baelish's words, and looked at Carl in mingled regret and begging for forgiveness. The show wasn't over yet, so Carl didn't acknowledge them for the moment. There would be time enough after everything was revealed to mend fences.

"Tell me your plan again, Petyr. I so love to hear how smart you are. It turns me on so." She purred as she leaned down and kissed him.

"It was my father's plan initially. But I modified it when I got here when I saw how nice the two sisters looked." Petyr grinned. "The stupid Lord Fish thinks my dad saved him that day in the war, which gave us the opening we needed." Petyr didn't disguise his contempt for Hoster, which had the Lord grinding his teeth at being so disrespected.

"The stupid Tully sluts will soon be mine. I've already gotten them in my pocket and estranged them from their pain in the ass brother. I've just got to keep them isolated a bit more, and they will be more than willing to give it up to me. I'll fuck them good and they'll be mine forever. I'll marry Catelyn and become Lord of the Riverlands. Then I'll sell off Lysa to some lord to cement his allegiance, while I keep fucking Lysa behind his back." Petyr bragged.

"Ooh, so manly. Tell me more." The girl moaned as she writhed against Petyr.

"Their older brother will die in some ambush in a months time. No one will ever know who did it. I've already worked on making the younger brother so wishy washy in his decision making, that he'll never be able to inherit, and if he tries, an accident waits for him, too."

"So sexy." The girl moaned even more.

Carl looked at his family. His sisters were crying, tears running down their faces. Edmure had a look of anger on his face. Apparently he was remembering some of the manipulations Petyr had been pulling. And Hoster's face was set in a stoic mask that barely contained his anger.

"But why did you target the Tullys? Wasn't your father friends with Hoster?" The girl asked, since that point hadn't been brought up enough yet. Carl wanted to make sure Hoster knew what the Baelish father and son were like, and didn't try to keep his friendship going with the father.

Petyr laughed loud and sarcastically. "No. He just made use of the situation to get in Hoster's good graces. My father saw that Hoster mistook him for the one who actually saved him, and let him continue thinking that while striking up a friendship, just in case he proved useful. When he learned about the two daughters that Hoster had, he came up with a plan to send me to foster. He taught me all I know about manipulation so I could bag the two girls when they were still too young and naïve to know any better. And I was a very good student of my fathers." He bragged.

Carl's dreams of strange but useful symbols had more than just the one for silence. One that encouraged those under it to speak the truth, and another that encouraged the running of the mouth were placed in the bed, while the young lady was on Carl's payroll to ask those questions and get Petyr talking.

Carl had finally taken a page out of his enemy's book and created the scene he needed, while bringing those who needed to hear it. It was all the better because he was using the truth from the bastard's own mouth to condemn him.

Carl smiled coldly in satisfaction when he saw that his family finally saw Petyr Baelish for what he was. They finally knew the truth that Carl had been right all along about the weasel. He closed the hidden viewing window, which was kept hidden from Baelish by another strange rune, and turned to his family.

"I love you all. I want nothing more than to see you have happy lives. But I find myself very hurt that you couldn't trust me when I told you about Baelish's true nature, and chose him over me. I'm glad that you're finally seeing what's real."

Carl then released his siblings from the ropes, and was about to leave the room when his sisters tackled him in a hug, not willing to let him stalk off in anger like he had been the past year or so.

The apologies and tearful begging for forgiveness finally touched inside his heart that had been so cold for over a year. It cracked through the ice armor he'd been employing, and made him feel again the love of a family. He had missed those feelings greatly over the past year. So he finally started letting go of his anger, in order to reconcile with his family.

He tentatively hugged his sisters back in the first time in a year. It felt awkward at first, but he soon started feeling like it was normal.

'Maybe we can't go back to how it was.' Carl thought as he was being reconciled with his family. 'But at least we can build a close approximation. _Family._' Carl thought as he reveled in the feelings and closeness that he thought was long gone. 'And maybe our bond will be stronger for having gotten through this ordeal.' Carl hoped.

* * *

The next day Carl answered a summons from his father to the solar. When he arrived, he saw only his father sitting inside. Usually the maester would also be there, to take notes and messages at the least.

"Sit, Carl." Hoster sternly said when he saw his son. "Your…unconventional method of uncovering the truth will not be repeated." Hoster ordered his son. "If you dare to treat your Lord so cavalierly in the future, no matter what age you are, you'll get a tanning you won't soon forget. Am I clear?"

"Yes father." What else could Carl do but agree. He had been a bit high handed with his Lord Father. He let his emotions get the better of him, and wouldn't do that again.

"Now, despite his despicable plans, Baelish didn't actually _do _anything. As much as I'd like to send Baelish off with a nasty telling off and hiding, or something worse, there are some considerations that I must take into account."

Carl scowled at the thought the brat might get off scot free. Maybe he should have just made the sneak disappear? Hoster continued, breaking Carl's thoughts.

"If word began getting around the lords that I can't even handle fostering one little brat, the next thing we know, we'll be dealing with all kinds of other rumors and troubles from the various lords. The brat hasn't even really done anything yet. So it all would devolve to rumors and hearsay."

Carl thought about it and saw the sense in what his father was saying. Even though Hoster was the Lord Paramount of the Trident, their family was in many ways weaker than the other houses that owed allegiance to House Tully. Their unstable position made it difficult to do many things. They had to be careful in all they did.

Their family had attained the Lordship yeas in the past when Lord Edmyn Tully had led the rebel River Lords who deserted King Harren the Black during Aegon's Conquest back in 1 AC and joined Aegon the Conqueror. Lord Edmyn Tully had been rewarded for his support with dominion over the Riverlands and the title of Lord Paramount of the Trident for his support of King Aegon.

But they hadn't grown as rich or numerous of many of the other lords. Even the fat bastard Frey squatting on the Twins had more money, men, and knights than they did. He was often testing the bounds of what Hoster would put up with from him.

In the 275 years since the Tullys were awarded the title, they had struggled to stay in their position. And because they were the Lord Paramount, they had struggled to ensure the prosperity of the Riverlands, even at the expense of their own family's prosperity at times, due to their commitment to _Duty._

When Carl though about it, he found that he didn't think much of the Lords Tully that made those decisions. Family was first before Honor or Duty. So for them to put other Lords and family's benefits before their own family was wrong, in his opinion.

"So what are we going to do with the little bastard?" Carl finally asked.

Hoster sighed. "I'm going to let my brother know about his duplicitous nature and send him off with him. It will get him away from the girls. And your uncle is very strict with anyone not family. Maybe he can beat decency into the boy before he becomes too set in his ways."

Carl frowned. Obviously he wasn't going to get his wish to execute Baelish. At least he would be out of their hair and suffering under their uncle. Uncle Blackfish loved Carl's sisters, and once he was informed of what Baelish had planned for his nieces, the brat wouldn't have any good time being under their uncle.

"Okay, father. As long as Baelish doesn't come along when Uncle Brynden visits." Carl finally allowed. "I don't really care if Baelish does get suspicious of why he's suddenly carted off and not allowed to visit. As long as he doesn't get a chance to sweet talk Catelyn or Lysa around again." Carl replied.

"I'm not so worried about Catelyn. She can get stubborn when she thinks she's right." Carl ruefully said. "So I don't think Baelish will be able to talk her around after what she saw. But Lysa is just too sweet and nice. If he gets the chance to employ that golden tongue of his, she'll likely give him another chance. And if that happens, I'm liable to kill him myself, damn the consequences."

"Agreed, son." Hoster could see that his son was serious too about that promise. Sometimes it startled him just how seriously his son took their house words. "The other thing I wanted to inform you of was that I've been in talks with Lord Stark. We're planning on betrothing his son Brandon to Catelyn. What do you think?"

Now that Carl's judgment had been proven true in Baelish's case, Hoster was more open to seeing what his eldest son thought about the Stark boy. Carl was Hoster's heir, after all, and it was important to teach him of the matters regarding the Lordship.

"Well, I haven't met him yet, have I?" Carl said with a smile to show he wasn't being sarcastic. "Get him and his dad to come visit. I'll let you know if I think they are decent people. At the very least, they have good reputations. And their visit will let Catelyn meet him and get to know him." Carl suggested.

"Hmm. I'll try, but those Northern Lords hate coming south for anything other than wars." Hoster said. Carl chuckled in response at the truth of that statement.

"Aye, they are a hardy and stubborn lot." Carl got up and started pacing while thinking about the situation. "From what I've heard, Brandon is a decent sort, if a bit excitable. It would be good to be friendly with him and be on good terms with their family, even if he and Cat don't get along."

"Okay, then. That's all I had for you. Get back to your practice then, son." Hoster said after agreeing with Carl's last statement.

"Yes father."

Carl nodded to his father and left to go back to the practice yard in good spirits. His family was finally getting back to the way it should have been. Now he just had to make sure the guards kept Baelish away from his sisters like he ordered them too. 'If those guards let the bastard's golden tongue convince them to let him by despite my orders, they will spend the next month up to their gills in the sewer.' Carl swore to himself.

* * *

"Carl!" The voice of Catelyn called out just as Carl was about to enter his room for the night.

Carl turned and saw his two sisters standing in front of him, looking nervous.

"Hey there, Cat, Lys. Are you two alright?" Carl asked.

"We just wanted to be sure you really forgive us?" Cat said nervously.

"We're sorry we didn't listen to you." Lysa added contritely.

"All's forgiven. You're my family, I'll always love you." Carl assured the girls. He hugged them reassuringly "And I'll always look after you. Best as I'm able."

After some more reassuring words, Carl escorted his sisters to their rooms. As he was leaving, he made sure to give the guards the hairy eyeball, making sure they knew not to slack. Even though Carl was only 12 name days old, he had a reputation for martial prowess. He could defeat any two men in the practice yard, so he had quite the reputation and influence with the guards.

He returned to his room, and started up his extracurricular studies. He had found over the past year that he only needed a few hours of sleep to remain alert and have his wits about him.

He didn't know why he was so physically unusual compared to everyone else, but he was happy for it. Without his strange dreams and runes that caused Baelish to run his mouth, he didn't think he would have been able to convince his family of the runts duplicitous nature anytime soon. He would have had to figure out a way to disappear the lad. And with all the guards and servants eyes around, that would have been a difficult prospect.

Carl had a good sleep that night, but didn't have any unusual dreams.

'Those unusual dreams must have been triggered by my intense need for help with the situation I had. Strange.' Carl made his way down to the practice yard. Ever since he had solved the issue with Baelish, he hadn't been having new dreams with strange but useful symbols in them.

He didn't really know what to think about the situation, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

A couple hours later, as Carl was in the midst of his daily practice, he noticed many riders entering the castle. The first group had the standards of Lord Bracken. The next group that entered separately had the standards of Lord Blackwood.

Carl was interested in what was going on. Those two houses were houses that owed the Tully's allegiance due to their role as Lord Paramount of the Trident. Both houses had more wealth and had a larger number of military and knights than the Tullys had. And the two houses, Bracken and Blackwood, had a long running feud with each other. So it was unusual to see them both arrive here.

Carl was very interested in learning what they were both here together for. Deciding to end his practice early for the day, Carl washed up quickly before making his way to the big hall.

When he arrived, his father and Lords Bracken and Blackwood were in serious discussion. After listening for several minutes, Carl came to realize that the two lords were seeking to put their family feud behind them because their continual fighting only served to hurt their two family's interests. So they brought their concerns to their Lord to mediate between the two as the families attempted to reconcile with each other.

Carl scowled a bit on the inside while thinking about the situation. Even with the two houses feud going on and wasting their resources on fighting each other, the two houses were wealthier and had more military than House Tully. If they ended their feud and could put their resources towards getting stronger, and House Tully didn't keep up, then it would put his family in a precarious situation.

He would have to keep an eye out for possibilities to help grow House Tully so they would be in the premier position they should be in, instead of the precarious situation they were in.

Carl only briefly considered using underhanded methods to keep the houses under them weak, so they wouldn't overtake his house. But he immediately discarded those ideas. Even thinking that way reminded him of the Bastard Baelish.

Besides which, doing underhanded methods to hurt his vassals would be going against his house words. _Duty. Honor._

And there was the final consideration that even if House Tully was the top of the heap inside the Riverlands, there were many wealthy and powerful Lords outside the Riverlands. It wouldn't benefit them any if House Tully was the strongest of a weak lot that could be pushed around by any two bit lord from outside.

No. House Tully needed ways to get truly strong.

After some hours of discussion between the various parties, Lord Tully invited the two groups to stay for a dinner feast while they continued to patch up the relations with the two houses, which they accepted.

Later that night, Carl was enjoying the feast until he spotted the Baelish Bastard making his way to his sister Catelyn to ask her to dance. Scowling, he made his way over and intercepted the boy before he could talk to his sister.

"You'll leave my sisters alone, and leave this feast if you have any desire to keep your teeth in your mouth, you little cunt." Carl stated flatly, staring down at the smaller boy.

"I don't know what I've done to earn this enmity, my lord. I assure you, I remain your family's friend." Baelish replied in a smooth manner, his voice pitched to carry to their audience, especially to Catelyn who was behind Carl.

Carl had to admit, the way the kid could act was impressive. Especially the way he was talking and looking at Carl, but so obviously at the same time giving the puppy dog eyes to Catelyn behind him. If Catelyn hadn't seen for herself what Baelish was really like, she would have stormed over and torn a verbal strip from Carl for harassing her friend.

But unfortunately for Baelish, all Catelyn did was sniff disparagingly and turn away. Petyr's look of shock at his golden tongue failing was absolutely delightful for Carl.

"Last warning, Baelish. Leave now, or be carried out." Carl stated.

With a scowl, Bealish made his way out. Carl didn't trust the look of cunning the boy had gotten while turning away, so he discreetly kept an eye out.

He knew he was right to do so when a half hour later a servant entered the hall with a drink and a note in his hand and made his way directly towards Carl's sister Lysa. Scowling, Carl intercepted the servant.

"Hand the note and drink over, now." Carl ordered when he was standing in front of the young servant man.

"I'm sorry, milord. I was instructed to not hand it over to anyone but the young lady." The servant stated in a mock apology tone, but with a hint of arrogance underneath it.

Carl simply looked at the young man for a moment, furious that his family's own servant thought he had some backing in the Baelish bastard and could defy him, the Heir of the Riverlands. Carl kept those thoughts off his face, though, to see how the servant would react. Just when the man thought he had succeeded in warding off Carl and was going to move around him, Carl struck. The servant dared ignore his orders?

A quick blow to the sternum to stun and wind the man, and Carl grabbed the cup and note out of the man's hands before he could spill the contents. Sniffing the cup, he could tell that something had been added to the wine. That was another one of his senses that he knew was incredibly acute, his smell. His enhanced sense of smell had been handy over the years, but at no time was it more useful than at this moment.

He looked over the note, which was from Baelish, offering to Lysa of a nice cup of wine Baelish had saved for her and a request to meet with Baelish in his quarters. Reading the note caused Carl to frown as he stood glaring down at the servant while he debated how to handle this situation.

Looking over, Carl saw one of his house's guards and motioned for him. The guard swiftly approached him and the wheezing servant that was collapsed on the ground.

"Take this piece of trash and lock him up. Don't let him out until I or my father comes or sends someone with a note from us." Carl ordered.

"Yes, milord." The guard acknowledged Carl's orders before grabbing up the servant and frog marching the still winded man away.

Carl found another guard and ordered him to go to Baelish's room and ensure that no one, especially Carl's sisters, were to be allowed inside. If Baelish tried to leave, he was to be detained and kept inside his room. Carl emphasized strongly that if the guard listened to Baelish and let him out, he wouldn't like the punishment that would come his way. Once the guard respectfully acknowledged the order and departed, Carl then sought out the castle's maester while carrying the cup of tainted wine.

"Maester Naet. I need your assistance for something. Would you be so kind as to accompany me to your study?" He asked the man who was sitting off to the side of the main feast.

"Certainly, my young lord." Maester Naet got to his feet and walked with Carl away from the noisy hall.

Once they had arrived in the man's study, he spent a few minutes lighting some candles from the banked fire.

"So, what did you need my expertise on?" The old man curiously asked. He had a great deal of respect for Carl for his intelligence, and was flattered that the young lord would ask for his help.

"I know that this wine is tainted, but I need your expertise on discovering just what it is tainted with." Carl put the matter to the man straightforwardly. "I will also need you testimony later, Maester."

Maester Naet frowned as he took the cup of wine. "Of course. Give me some time to determine what class of substance is in the wine. You can trust me, young lord."

Nodding gratefully, Carl stood watching as the maester performed several tests with substances that Carl didn't recognize. While watching, Carl had the thought that it might be good if he learned as much as a maester so he could do similar tests on his own. But only if he didn't have to spend his time at the Citadel. He enjoyed the martial arts too much to live a life of scholarly pursuit.

As the saying went, two men can only keep a secret if one of them is dead. And being able to utilize a maester's knowledge base and skills without the possibility any other knowing the results of his studies was an attractive idea. While Carl respected the maesters, he didn't trust that they wouldn't be sending any information they learned on to the Citadel or other maesters.

Humans so loved to gossip, even erudite scholars.

"My lord. I've determined what was added to the wine." Maester Naet proclaimed after some time. "It is a powerful aphrodisiac. If a lady were to ingest this wine, they would not be able to control themselves and would be in the throes of passion all night long."

Carl nodded. It wasn't outside his expectation for Baelish to do such a thing. He was still furious at hearing just what the bastard was up to, though.

"Please write out an official affidavit on your findings, Maester Naet. Bring your report to my father's solar tomorrow morning, where we will meet to discuss the matter. Other than that, thank you for your expertise, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening." Carl offered, before departing.

He soon found the captain of the castle's guards, and ordered him to ensure that Baelish was to remain imprisoned in his room, no one allowed in or out.

"Captain, I assure you that if you slack in this duty, my father will find a very painful way to teach you this lesson." Carl warned the man when it looked like he wasn't going to take the duty seriously. "Baelish already tried to delivered a spiked cup of wine to one of my sisters. Do you really think that my father would take dereliction of duty lightly where it concerns his family?" Carl smiled coldly at the man as he gulped in nervousness. "I thought not. Carry on your duty, Captain, and our family thanks you for your dedication."

Carl departed with satisfaction for having put another fool in his place. Carl wasn't sure just how many people Baelish's golden tongue had influenced. He didn't think the Captain of the Guard had been directly influenced, but apparently he had listened to some gossip or other that painted Carl's hostility to Baelish in a certain light such that he hadn't taken Carl's orders seriously at first.

Carl paused in his steps. "Just how did I know all that?" He whispered to himself. Because it wasn't just a supposition. He had somehow _known_ the whole sequence of events that caused the captain to take his orders lightly.

After a moment's consideration, Carl shrugged and continued on his way back to the hall. It didn't really matter too much how he had known something, so much as that it had been useful and helped him head off trouble. As long as he continued getting these helpful hints and abilities and knowledge, he would keep using them, and be grateful.

And if all his strange bits of knowledge just stopped coming one day, then he wouldn't be worse off than any other person. He would just have to remember not to rely on them, since he didn't know when the helpful things would come.

* * *

"…and so I ordered the guards to keep Baelish in his room until we were able to discuss his attempted crime against our family, father." Carl was reporting the next morning with the relevant people in attendance. Baelish and the arrogant servant from the day before were also there under guard, looking the worse for wear. Carl hadn't been gentle with the servant that conspired with an outsider.

Baelish was attempting to brazen it out, acting innocent even now. The servant on the other hand was cowering in fear and had been pleading mercy until they had been forced to gag him to shut him up.

"With Baelish's own actions, he has spit upon guest rights. He has spit on House Tully's honor. He should be punished accordingly." Carl finished with a faint feral grin tossed towards Baelish.

"Well done in preventing the affront against your sister's honor." Hoster praised Carl before looking at Petyr Baelish. "I once considered your father a friend. It was why I accepted fostering you, Petyr Baelish. But you have spit upon that friendship and attempted to assault my daughter. In remembrance of the friendship I once had with your father, I will not execute you. But you will be imprisoned until such time as your father can ransom you. Take him away."

The guards dragged Baelish, screaming and pleading, away. The brat finally realized that he wasn't going to be given a chance to use his golden tongue to wriggle out of punishment. And apparently he didn't think his father could afford to pay the ransom, if his pleadings were to be taken seriously. Carl wasn't too bothered by the idea of Baelish being in prison for the rest of his life.

"And now for your sentence." Hoster looked at the servant. "You were a trusted member of this household. But you conspired with someone to attempt to assault my daughter. I have no idea what other crimes you have committed against your lord. But what you have already done is enough to sentence you to death. You will be hung until dead tomorrow morning. Take him away."

Both Carl and his father ignored the man's muffled pleas for mercy. Where was his loyalty and mercy when he was aiding Baelish to set up the rape of Lysa? The traitor was getting what he deserved.

Hoster looked at Carl in pride, and Carl felt proud at his father's approval. They moved on to talking about the various duties and considerations of a Lord Paramount. Hoster had begun teaching Carl recently as he would need to know many things before he came of age at 16 and began helping Hoster with the ruling of their lands and eventually taking over as Lord Paramount.

With the event behind them and with Baelish out of the way, the Tully's family life settled down to what it was before Baelish had arrived. Carl once more enjoyed his time with his family, and they were closer than ever. The knowledge of how a smooth talking outsider had almost ruined their family closeness made all of them work even harder at making sure their family bonds were solid.

_Family._

* * *

Life returned to normal for the Tullys soon after. Carl and his siblings continued their various studies, and Carl and Edmure trained in the practice yard.

Edmure had expressed a desire to become a knight, so Hoster had assigned Edmure as a paige. If he did well and was conscientious in his duties, he would be assigned as a squire to a knight for several years until he was knighted himself.

Hoster's brother Brynden had offered to take on Edmure if he proved that he was dedicated enough. Carl did what he could to help Edmure prepare for his being a squire and knight. Part of that was knowing how to take care of all of a knight's gear. So they often spent hours in the armory learning how maintain and repair armor and weapons.

Carl's sisters were quite ladylike, so they stayed far away from the boys as long as they smelled like a pile of metal. Carl always smirked when he would give either sister a big hug, breaking into laughter at their squawks of outrage.

Life was good for Carl now that he had his family back.

Later on in the year 276 AC word spread around the kingdom that King Aerys II and his sister-wife Rhaella had another son who seemed healthy enough to survive. It had been 17 years since the last child that had survived. They named him Viserys.

Carl's family had a feast in celebration of the news of Viserys' birth and gave wishes of good health. When Carl asked Hoster in private just why they needed to have a feast when they weren't anywhere near the family in question, Hoster told him about the King's spymaster who had informants everywhere. And it wouldn't do their family any good if they weren't seen to celebrate the royal family's triumphs.

Carl made a note to himself to never complain about their rulers where anyone might hear. He wasn't sure if that level of paranoia was justified, but it was better to be safe than to accidentally bring disaster down on his family because he had a loose mouth.

One day early in the year of 277 AC, Carl was woken up by the noise of many people in the castle all moving about, creating a big racket. When he exited his door, he saw his siblings also looking around for answers.

"I'll go ask father what is happening." Carl reassured them when he saw how nervous his siblings looked. "Why don't you stay together and I'll be back soon."

When Carl entered his father's solar, he saw Maester Naet and the military commanders of his father, as well as the guard captains.

"Father, what has happened?" Carl asked his Hoster.

"It's insanity. Lord Darklyn has rebelled and taken King Aerys II captive, and is making demands. We are being called to join the besieging force to rescue the King." Hoster informed Carl. "You will remain here. Brynden will be here soon to look after you and your siblings. I want you all to be good for him." Hoster sternly told him.

Something in Hoster's voice made Carl aware that there would be no give in those orders. Even though Carl wanted to join Hoster and their military as they went to rescue the King, he knew he would be denied, so Carl swallowed down the request and acquiesced to his father's orders.

Carl returned to the family wing and informed his siblings about what was going on, and what would happen from then on. The siblings piled together in one bed, talking together until they fell asleep all together. Carl smiled as he looked down at the sight. Up until he and his twin sister were 8 name days old they had shared a room together. But it had been 5 years since then. He sometimes missed the time when he and his twin were so close. But that was just part of growing up.

The siblings were up early the next morning to see their father and their soldiers off as they left for the siege.

Life felt different with their father gone. Carl spent more time working with the various servants and stewards, learning about their lands and making decisions on how to govern it.

Carl's sisters, especially, were nervous while their father was gone. They didn't understand war too much, being ladylike young girls. But they knew war was dangerous. They had already lost their mother at a young age, and were nervous about their father being in danger while he was gone.

Carl did what he could to comfort his sisters, but it was just one of those things that he couldn't really fix, even with strange dreams. The only solution would be for their father to return home safely.

The siege lasted for six months. With the King hostage, the loyal forces didn't dare attack for fear that the rebels inside would kill the King in retaliation. Carl and his siblings received occasional letters from their father that reassured them he was still fine, which eased their worries.

Catelyn and Lysa relaxed a little when they learned that there wasn't really any fighting going on. Edmure simply continued to focus on his duties as a paige, more determined than ever to become a knight.

Carl, on the other hand, began studying all the military books they had on siege warfare, as well as questioning everyone who had any knowledge of the topic. His interest was whetted on military topics due to the events currently happening. Besides, they lived in a castle as well. What would he do if he was besieged in Riverrun? How would he defend against an enemy right outside their walls?

While Carl was studying the manuals on sieges, he was inspecting their home with an eye for how to defend it, as well as what the enemy would look for when seeking to attack.

He started taking notes of all the little things. Like stacks of wood and straw that were out in the open that would be easy to light on fire with arrows. Carl analyzed the frequency of patrols and the patterns that infiltrators would look for. Where the armory and supplies were, and how long they could survive on what they had if they couldn't get outside supplies.

Carl wrote them up as reports and presented them to his Uncle, since he was a knight with experience. Brynden was greatly impressed with Carl's intellect and ingenuity, and started working with the guard captains to fix some of the holes and vulnerabilities that Carl had pointed out.

Eventually the Defiance of Duskendale and the siege was over, and Hoster returned to Riverrun. From what Hoster told Carl of the siege, Lord Tywin of the Lannisters, who was the Hand of the King, had decided they couldn't wait anymore after six months of the siege. The rebels being besieged were getting more desperate the longer their demands weren't met, and they were more likely to do something rash. Their best bet was to break in and hope for the best.

But Ser Barristan Selmy of the Kingsguard was concerned about the fate of the king if they attacked. He offered to infiltrate alone and save the king. He had had 6 months of studying the enemy to know how he would infiltrate, and he was a very skilled swordsman. So he was allowed to make the attempt.

Amazingly enough, he succeeded in his attempt. Ser Selmy managed to get inside the city disguised as a beggar before scaling the castle walls at night. He managed to get to the cell where the King was being held and free him. He then escorted the King out of the walls to freedom, despite taking an arrow to the chest in the attempt. It was a very captivating tale of bravery, that all the Tully children were spellbound listening to it.

Without a hostage to keep the loyal forces at bay, Lord Denys Darklyn surrendered. But it didn't do them any good anyway, they may as well have fought. The Darklyns had not treated the King well during his captivity, and the King was seriously unhinged after being held hostage for 6 months.

King Aerys II ordered the deaths of all the Darklyns living in Duskendale. All of Lord Darklyn's family; his aunts, uncles, and distant cousins, were executed. House Hollard, Lord Darlyn's goodkin (wife's relatives), were also executed. The only survivor of the Hollard House was a 15 name day old youth, Dontos Hollard, who was spared because Ser Selmy pled for clemency on his behalf. Dontos was taken to Kingslanding, where he would be made a squire.

Carl and his siblings were spellbound as their father told the tale of the Defiance of Duskendale. It was a good example to Carl of stupidity leading to the complete end of two once great houses.

As near as Carl could tell, the whole thing started because the Darklyns of Duskendale had seen their wealth and trade dwindle due to the growth of the nearby King's Landing. They had been desperate to do something to help their economy improve. Lord Darklyn had sought to win a charter for Duskendale, similar to what Dorne had, and been denied by Lord Tywin who was the Hand of the King.

After being denied by Lord Tywin, Lord Darklyn had decided to roll the dice in the mad venture of taking the King hostage and forcing him to sign a Charter.

Carl thought that move was especially stupid. Even if he had gotten a signed Charter, his death would have come in the next moment when the King regained his freedom.

For Carl, seeing how easily a once great house had been destroyed, he was all too aware of House Tully's precarious situation. They were surrounded by lords that ostensibly owed allegiance to them. But those houses had more wealth and men than House Tully did. It wouldn't take too much of an impetus to push them into a scheme against House Tully.

Especially if one of the Lords was a wily and sneaky bastard like Petyr Baelish had been. As a result of those thoughts and concerns Carl redoubled his studies of both the martial way and knowledge. He especially concentrated on the histories, especially about politics.

If he could familiarize himself with the various schemes that people had pulled in the past, it would help him spot future schemes as they were being shaped. Hopefully he could spot them early enough to put a stop to them before his family was hurt by them.

Soon enough Carl and Catelyn turned 14 namedays old, and had a banquet celebration. Surprisingly enough, Lord Rickard Stark, his wife Lady Lyarra Stark, and their children Brandon, Eddard, Lyanna, and Benjen visited for the birthday celebration, and to talk about the betrothal between Brandon and Catelyn.

Brandon was 2 namedays older than Carl and Catelyn while Eddard was 1 nameday older. Lyanna was the same age as Lysa, 12 namedays, and Benjen was the same age as Edmure, 10 namedays.

As a result, Carl and Edmure spent plenty of time with the Starks in the practice yard, along with Robert Baratheon, who was Eddard's friend and had been fostered along with Eddard in the Vale with Lord Jon Arryn. Robert was the same age as Brandon, and had chosen to journey with his friend 'Ned' to meet his family and the Tullys. So everyone there was close to the same age, and got along fairly well.

Surprisingly enough, all the Starks joined Carl in the practice yard, including Lyanna. She was a real wild one, preferring swords and fighting to the womanly arts. Carl just chuckled when his girly sisters expressed their shock at Lyanna's refusal to join them in the "gossip circle" while sewing or knitting.

Lyanna baldly labeling their time spent as "gossip" offended Carl's sisters, who left Lyanna behind in a huff.

Lyanna was fine with it, since it allowed her to join the boys in the practice yard, which was more to her tastes than wielding a needle.

Carl had a grand time testing his abilities against new people who he wasn't used to their styles of fighting. Carl himself was especially fond of used a bastard sword so he could switch between using a single hand or two hand style.

The older Stark boys favored the greatsword and a two handed style, which had something to do with their family owning an ancestral Valyrian Steel greatsword named Ice. It was a point of pride for them to be able to use the style, since their family's prestige was tied up in the greatsword.

Robert on the other hand favored a large warhammer and a style suited to his strong stature. He was a large and strong man, and was used to being able to overpower his opponents. So he was surprised when Carl, who was smaller than him, showed so much strength that Robert couldn't push Carl around. But Robert took it well and didn't get upset; he simply enjoyed the challenge and was happy to have a strong opponent to test himself against.

Lyanna favored a lighting quick one handed style that had Carl working hard to keep track of. She was very good at confusing her opponents as to just where her blade was going.

Carl really enjoyed the week he spent with the Starks and Baratheon. In the time they spent there, Carl could see that Robert was especially taken with Lyanna, even as young as they were. And while Lyanna was friendly with Robert, something told Carl that she didn't feel quite the same for Robert as he felt for her.

The castle seemed almost empty and quiet when the visiting Starks left at the end of the week. But in the time they visited, the parents had worked out the particulars of the betrothal. They had determined that Brandon and Catelyn would be wed after Catelyn had turned 18 name days old.

Carl found to his annoyance that Catelyn wouldn't shut up about it for nearly another two months. She was certainly smitten with Brandon. His charisma and good looks certainly had quite a bit to do with it. Carl was pleased that she had someone decent to look forward to marrying. Much better than falling into the schemes of a certain rat.

With his twin engaged, Carl's thoughts turned to the topic of his own marriage. He had no idea just who he would marry in the future. He knew his father was still weighing options and trying to maximize the benefits to for their house, based on available and potential allies. He just hoped that he could stand her, whoever she turned out to be.

But that wasn't something Carl needed to worry about for now.


	60. ASOIAF O3

Life in the Riverlands had settled down into a normal routine lately.

Carl's day was full of training for his future lordship. In the morning he would expend all his energy in the practice yard, mock fighting against the guards to get him ready for inevitable future war.

In the afternoon he would spend time with his father reviewing the various cases of conflict that the people brought before the Lord Paramount. Carl soon got used to using his judgment to determine the validity of the claims brought before him.

It helped Carl's case load immensely that the armsmen and guards of House Tully were good at investigating the various conflicts and providing a summary of events to the Lord Tully for judgment.

These skills of the guards made it easy for Carl to learn about the various conflicts and issues concerning his people of the Riverlands.

One of the best things that happened for Carl was that his sister Catelyn stopped being so stubborn and antagonistic against him after learning about her "friend"s plans to use her. Prior to the Baelish fiasco, his sister had been very close to Carl.

During the Baelish fiasco, his sister had been against anything he had done or said. No matter what he did, she had been antagonistic to him because of the issue left unresolved between them. It was like a fishbone stuck in the throat. Impossible to swallow, difficult to pull out.

But now that his sister's eyes were opened and her mind was no longer constrained by the blandishments of a flatterer, Carl happily spent more time with his two sisters. They were free of the rat, and their relationship was better than ever.

Carl didn't even care that his two sisters were so girly that they only pursued the womanly arts. Some of their time was spent in embroidery, some was spent reviewing the food and supply situation and learning how to manage it. Although they had very different lifestyles, Carl made sure to spend time with them every day to try to repair the damage to their relationship.

After sparring with his little brother Edmure in the morning, Carl would seek out his sisters and spend time with them. Edmure would often follow along behind Carl, so the four siblings had time to rebuild their sibling bonds during this time.

While his sisters knitted, Carl and Edmure cleaned and repaired their armor. Just like this, the relationship between the siblings became more harmonious.

At the beginning of the year 280 AC, 21 name day old Prince Rhaegar Targaryen was finally wed to 23 name day old Princess Elia Martell of Dorne.

It was a more than welcome event for various factions in the land. A basic fact of life was that the king would get old and eventually die, leaving the kingship to the next in line. The news of the no longer young prince having a spouse and working on making heirs was a comfort to all the political allies of House Targaryen.

With the announcement sent out, all the Lords Paramount and many of the nobles of the Seven Kingdoms were obligate to make the trip to Kings Landing to celebrate the wedding. Everyone had been noticing the increasingly paranoid actions of the King, and no one wanted suspicion to fall on them if they failed to act as they should.

Especially when they were celebrating the good news of House Targaryen.

Aside from survival, the gathering of nobles would allow them to make connections and allies, discuss weddings and do profitable trade.

House Tully also made the trip to the capital to congratulate their rulers. It took a couple of weeks to slowly travel to Kings Landing.

Carl finally got to see the capital where their King made his home, and it could be summed up in two words: crowded and smelly.

The whole event lasted for several days, and included all kinds of celebrations. Feasts, jousts, and balls were just some of the events. Carl made sure that his sisters and brother always had guards to escort them. It wouldn't do for something to happen to them amidst the crowds and for no one to know what happened.

There were a couple times where some minor drunk lord tried to get fresh with his sisters due to their beauty. Once Carl received the news, he planned out a suitable revenge against the drunken sots. Whether it was to organize their enemies against them, or beat the shit out of them, he was happy to do so.

A lot of their time in the capital was spent with the Starks, who had also made the trip, since the Tullys were very familiar and friendly with the Starks. Catelyn especially spent much of her time with Brandon, while Carl and Lysa acted as her chaperones, taking the opportunity to tease their sister.

Meanwhile Lyanna took the opportunity to spend time with them and tease her brother. Carl got to know the young Stark girl a bit more during this time.

Now that Carl was 16 namedays old, he very much wanted to participate in the joust and melees that were set up, but he was prohibited by Hoster. Due to there being many nobles from around the Kingdom there, Hoster was busy looking for suitable matches for his other children. As a result Carl had to make himself available and attend many a ball to get to know the eligible young women.

Carl watched as his father tried to interest Lord Lannister in betrothing his 14 nameday old daughter Cersei to Carl. But apparently Lord Lannister had greater ambitions than to wed his only daughter to Carl, the poor-compared-to-the-Lannisters heir to the "Fish Lands". While Carl was heir to the Lord Paramount of the Trident, their family wouldn't be able to add much to the Lannister's power or profit, so the betrothal didn't happen.

Aside from Lord Lannister's disinterest in the match, Carl had danced once with the young lady in question. While she seemed like any other young lady on the outside, and quite the beauty, more than anything on the inside she seemed to Carl to be a bundle of repressed emotions that was just waiting for a chance to erupt violently.

He had no idea why he felt those emotions about the young lady Lannister, but Carl headed the warning feelings and decided to avoid her in the future. Carl was secretly pleased that he wouldn't have to deal with the drama that was bound to follow her around, if his esoteric feelings were any measure of things to come.

At the end of the celebrations of the Targaryen marriage, the Tullys left to return home. Carl still didn't have a betrothal, but his father was in talks with several families. Carl was amused by his sister Lysa, who was besotted with the spectacle of knights and damsels; especially the young and dashing knights. Carl chuckled ruefully. He would have to keep on his toes to protect his sister. At least she seemed to have put the Baelish bastard behind her, thank goodness.

His brother Edmure was all the more certain that he wanted to live the life of a knight. Carl knew that a knight without land to support him was a miserable person indeed, so he was thinking of ways to make sure his brother had land to support him as a knight in the future.

Now that Carl was 16 and considered a man, his father gave him some duties. He assigned 40 guardsmen to be under Carl's command. They would travel around the Riverlands, meeting with the various nobles under their banner. Getting to know the lords, and let them know him was an important part of his duties as the future Lord Paramount. He would also be making judgments for the common folk as he passed through, so they wouldn't have to make the trip to Riverrun.

Starting at Riverrun, Carl and his troupe traveled north to Raventree Hall where they met with House Blackwood. They arrived at the Blackwood Vale, where Raventree Hall was located. Carl gazed at the tall ancient stone fortress that had square towers flanking the gates and at each of the angles of the walls. Just at first glance Carl noticed some of the weaknesses of the fortification, like not having the trees trimmed far enough back from the moat that it could give besiegers some protection from arrows fired from the walls.

Carl spent a few days with the Blackwoods, and he got to know the 10 nameday old Tytos, who was the heir to Lord Blackwood. Carl appreciated the young Tytos' enthusiasm for the martial skills, and sparred with the boy each morning, giving him tips and help on improving his swordplay.

After several days, as much as he was enjoying himself, he needed to move on. He then made his way north again, visiting with various nobles on his way. He briefly stopped in Wendish Town that was near the Oldstones Castle.

Wendish Town was ostensibly under House Darry, which was one of the prestigious houses that were giving House Tully problems over the years as they chafed at not being more important or having the title of the Lord Paramount of the Trident. The welcome in Wendish town wasn't particularly warm, but it couldn't exactly be called rude either. Carl wasn't particularly bothered to be moving on from the town after a couple of days.

As they passed by the Oldstones Castle on their way to Seagard, Carl contemplated the history of House Mudd, who had at one time succeeded in unifying most of the Riverlands. They were of the First Men and ruled for over a thousand years over the Riverlands. Then over four thousand years ago, the Andals had come. They had burned the Weirwood groves, slain the children of the forest, which were a little elf / brownie race tied to the land, and conquered the land. They then started fighting amongst each other to determine who ruled the area. Various Kings of the Trident succeeded and ruled the land until Aegon's Conquest, where the Tully's had seen the trend and jumped on the bandwagon before being destroyed. As a result of their joining the Targaryens early in the campaign, they had been given the title of Lord Paramount of the Trident.

Viewing the old ruins that many years ago was once the seat of power over the Riverlands put many ideas in Carl's head. Ideas that he didn't really like, since they would disrupt his normal life.

He was pondering if Riverrun would one day end up falling into ruins, the same as Oldstones. Carl realized that, despite the Tully's long and ancient history, any one house hadn't been able to rule the land forever. Eventually they would be taken down by enemies, or fall due to the negligence of incompetent heirs.

'But that won't happen in my time to House Tully.' Carl vowed. 'It won't happen while I still draw breath. I will work to make us strong, so we can weather the storms. And in preparation for when I die, the only thing I can do is ensure that I leave a stronger and better legacy than I inherit.'

Carl resolutely didn't look back at the ruins as he rode on.

* * *

Upon arriving at Seagard, Carl was welcomed into the fortress of House Mallister. The Hallister Heir, Jason Mallister, wasn't at home at the moment. He was off participating in some tourneys in the surrounding countryside. Carl was a bit disappointed, because he had enjoyed sparring with Jason at the wedding feast, and would have liked having some more practice with the unusual techniques of Jason.

Since Jason wasn't around for Carl to spend time with, he took to wandering the town and familiarizing himself with the area while thinking about the history of Seagard. It wasn't an overly complicated history. To sum it up, Seagard was built to protect the Riverland people from the reavers of the Iron Islands, who were basically the pirates of the sea, despite having the "respectable" identity of one of the seven kingdoms.

Looking over the prosperous town, Carl came to some realizations about House Tully's position, and the cause for their lesser fortunes than other houses in the Riverlands. While it was true they were built on the Red Fork of the Trident, so they had some control over trade, it just wasn't enough to bring in wealth.

The fact of the matter was that they had a very limited control over trade from where they were positioned. To the west were the Lannisters in the Westerlands. To the east along the Red Fork was the Trident, which was a veritable marketplace of goods and services. It was a large marketplace that House Tully had only a tentative hand in managing. Which meant that other houses that were located there gained a large share of the goods and money, while House Tully basically starved from their ancestral location.

House Tully didn't have access to the sea for trade, and the amount of goods that passed along the Red Fork through their location was very limited, and could be gotten easily elsewhere.

In short, they didn't have much trade, and they didn't have exclusive control over what they did have. The other houses of the Riverlands were better situated to gain wealth, which put House Tully at a large disadvantage.

It was a very difficult problem to solve. How to maneuver House Tully into a better position, when as soon as they made moves, their rivals and enemies would immediately counter them?

Carl determined that he would continue to think on this issue as he traveled the Riverlands. Maybe something he found would give him some inspiration to work towards solving House Tully's problem.

After several days, Carl continued on his travel north. When he arrived at the Twins, he was already second guessing himself whether the visit would be worth it. Based on the stories his father told him, he knew that he would have to be on his guard against Lord Walder Frey. The older lord was always looking for excuses to force betrothals on young lords who passed through his walls. If Carl was ever at the mercy of Lord Frey, then he could expect to be pressured into a betrothal that would only benefit the Freys.

But if the Freys, and especially Lord Frey, learned that Carl had traveled past without visiting, they would obviously take offense to the slight and raise tolls in retaliation. And with the way that gossip spread, there was no way they wouldn't learn of Carl's travels, so he was stuck with making a visit to the detestable lord that spent his time crouched in the river crossing, counting tolls.

So Carl took a deep breath, girded his loins, and rode up to the entrance of the Twins.

* * *

The Twins was the seat of House Frey. It was the only crossing of the Green Fork of the river for hundreds of miles. Due to the wide and wild nature of the river, there were no natural fords for people to cross. They were reliant on the manmade bridges that were available.

Carl pulled up the reigns of his horse a distance away from the Twins to gaze at the structure in contemplation. He had been studying siege warfare for the past few years, so he was especially assessing the defensive worth of the seat of House Frey.

From where he stood, he could see that there were two identical castles, one on either side of the river, with a fortified tower in the middle of the river. The castles on either side had a bridge that ran straight to the tower in the middle.

The tower in the middle of the river was built on a small island that was offset from the fortifications by 45 degrees, leaving the whole of House Frey looking like a bent leg put on its side.

Carl scowled at what he saw of the fortifications. From his studies of siege warfare, he could see how costly it would be to take the castle by force. To put the castle on either side of the river under siege would be difficult, since it would be supported by the presence of the middle island tower and the far side of the river fortification.

A successful campaign against the Twins would require an army on either side of the river at the very least. And unless there was treachery inside the fortifications, or some surprise attack to quickly open up the defenses, an unqualified success would require boats of some kind to blockade off the river itself to keep ships from sailing right up to the island in the middle and passing over supplies to keep the defenders from starving.

And that wasn't even taking into account that the twins had all the water they needed from the Green Fork itself, as well as being able to gather up fish as they pleased, which would make a protracted siege less useful. These facts meant that an actual siege of the Twins would have to by necessity be long and troublesome.

Which would allow the Tully's other enemies to get up to mischief behind his armies. While focused on the Twins, if they didn't have other forces pacifying the land behind them, the various Lords could make a huge racket in the land, forcing their forces to fail at the siege.

A direct assault of the well fortified seat of House Frey would be very costly in men's lives. The two castles were well fortified, and would be difficult to breach.

And a protracted siege to starve them out would be very costly and ultimately a failure.

It was truly a headache for House Tully to have no decent way to deal with House Frey and put them in their place. But on the other hand, since House Frey was only strong at their House's seat at the Twins, House Frey had no real way to influence outside events other than to control the toll of passing through the bridge.

So there was pluses and minuses to the presence of House Frey, which was par for the course of politics.

The bridge connecting the two sides of the river itself was only wide enough for two carts to comfortably pass by, which limited the number of men able to pass over the bridge at any one time.

This also made it so that an assaulting force couldn't gather a large group of men to overwhelm the defenders. It left the narrow avenue of assault as easy pickings for the archers from the fortified tower in the center island. And since each of the fortifications were completely self sufficient for the most part, it would require three bloody assaults to completely take the whole thing from one direction.

To add insult to injury, the Twins was astride the only direct route between Riverrun and Winterfell. To send a caravan between Riverrun and Winterfell by a circuitous route was just as expensive and took more time than to just pay the toll at the Twins. This was evidence of the calculating nature of the Lord Frey. If the toll to cross the river rose above the cost of the roundabout route, then they would spend the time necessary to go a different route. But the toll was calculated to be heavy but barely bearable.

But in Carl's mind, the heavy tolls extracted by Lord Frey on the caravans traveling between the two cities was one of the direct reasons the Tullys weren't as prosperous as they should be, and that food shipped to the North vastly more costly than it should be. The Freys were using their unique position to skin the Tullys of any profit they may make. House Tully was barely surviving as it was, and for the Freys to take such a large margin of profit from them when they were vulnerable made the Freys opponents and enemies of House Tully.

All these facts were on Carl's mind when he rode towards the Twins.

Upon arriving at the western castle, Carl and his men were faced with a passel of Frey's get. Their narrow shoulders, weak chins, and large noses gave them away. Maybe if they travelled away from the area no one would be able to instantly recognize them as a Frey. But here at the Twins, they were obviously members of House Frey.

One of the Frey's approached Carl and his men and gave them an assessing look. No doubt judging how much they could charge. Carl stared the man in the eyes, judging his character in turn.

"That'll be 1 silver stag a man." He said in a whining voice.

Carl narrowed his eyes as he realized the man had lied to him. The "fee" for crossing he was gathering here was to line his own pocket. The actual official fee for crossing was taken by someone else in the tower in the middle of the river.

"No, I think we'll pay the fee to the proper supervisor." Carl announced with a glare, daring the man to carry out his fleecing operation.

The scowl on the Frey's face gave Carl a bit of amusement. If the Frey get tried get offended about it and refuse them passage, then Carl could ride away with a clear conscience and spread the story of just why the Tully heir hadn't paid Lord Frey a visit.

Obviously this little Frey rat hadn't recognized exactly who Carl was. He had just seen the rich clothes that Carl and his guards wore and wanted to extort a bit of silver for his profit.

"Besides, we're not here just for the crossing. I am Carl Tully, here to visit Lord Frey." Carl added when the Frey paused for too long while thinking. While Carl was more than happy to have an excuse to excoriate the Frey Lord, he couldn't neglect the basics, or he would be the one to be criticized by their fellow lords.

The rat Frey scowled, but no longer obstructed them and let them pass by. They soon met the actual supervisor who collected fees, and it ended up being three silver stags per man for the actual crossing. Carl knew that complaining about the fees wouldn't do him any good, and would just raise the price.

The various lords of the Riverlands, the North, and everyone else in Westeros had been complaining for years about the Freys. At this point, everyone knew that a trip through the Twins required good silver to be thrown away.

Carl paid the price with anger and fire in his heart, but an outwardly calm face. He would one day get revenge against these overly greedy bastards.

His group was passed through the western castle. They walked their horses over the bridge to prevent any kind of accident. If the horses spooked and went over the bridge into the river, they would take their rider with them if they were ridden. So Carl's group walked beside the horses to avoid accidents.

They soon passed through the fortified tower, and on to the eastern castle. Carl's sharp eyes were making note of everything he saw, remembering it for later in case he ever needed to take action against the Freys.

It didn't take long before Carl and four of his guards were brought in to Lord Frey's audience hall. The rest of his guards stayed with the horses, waiting for them.

This was an "audience" that Carl Tully had expected ever since he arrived here.

Carl entered the hall and looked over the set up. There were windows high up that let in a small amount of sunlight, while candles were placed on the table in front of Lord Frey. The "throne" was set on a raised dais that looked over the hall. Carl noticed there weren't any seats for guests, giving them the impression that they were petitioners to the Lord who sat up on high.

Carl snorted inside at the psychological ploy that Old Frey committed to here. Even for the heir of the Lord Paramount of the Trident, Old Frey was trying to play his mind tricks on him.

There were rows of tables and chairs to either side of Lord Frey's seating that held a number of his children and grandchildren. Carl noted that it mimicked the appearance of a King holding court, and Frey's progeny were the courtiers.

The babble of the Freys in the wings filled the hall. Carl's enhanced hearing clearly heard the words they said. Carl ignored the rabble though, since what they gabbled about didn't matter to him.

As Carl looked at Walder Frey sitting on the throne, Carl made a special note to himself not to fall for the mind games ploy of thinking he was beseeching anything of Frey, so as not to lose the advantage. So many people of lesser minds that were ushered into the room would fall into the rhythm of the Freys and give into their delusion.

But Carl wasn't here to ask anything of the old lord. He was simply passing by and giving greetings to the old man before making his way to his destination.

Those people who fell into the mindset the Frey's wanted would be beseeching the Lord Frey for his help. They would start out by owing Frey the honor of seeing them, and swiftly fall into debt by their lackluster negotiations. It was a clever stratagem the old man played.

Carl could see how the ploy was useful, but only felt contempt for the older man who needed to employ such stratagems to come out ahead. Instead of being an upright individual, Old Frey was an overly clever man who took advantage of others.

"Ahh, if it isn't the young trout." Walder announced when Carl got close enough. Carl didn't stop at the expected "beseecher" position though, and walked right up to Frey, looking the old man over just as he looked over Carl.

"And if it isn't the old tower guard." Carl finally replied in a faint disassociated voice. If Frey wasn't going to give Carl the respect of a title and proper address, then Carl would play his game by not giving Frey the proper respect.

"That's Lord Frey to you." Walder snapped at Carl, instantly revealing how much he was annoyed by Carl's ploys. "You weren't even a swimmer in your grandpa's trousers when I was already a Lord. Proper honor should be paid to those how earned it!" The old man self righteously proclaimed.

Carl casually shrugged at Frey from only five feet away. "Oh, it's like that then. Based on your initial greeting I thought we were being informal and friendly like, since you called me a "young trout", instead of my own name and title of Heir Tully."

The "ignorance" that Carl affected, combined with the actual knowledge served to make the old Lord Frey unsure of just how to reply to the young man. The young Tully heir wasn't following the script that all the other supplicants had and seeking his approval, so Old Frey was spending a lot of brain power trying to figure out how to grab a handle on the young lord.

Meanwhile Carl was doing his best while standing so close to the old man to ignore how the old man was rubbing up the ass of his latest timid young wife. Carl figured the old man was likely doing it just to get a rise out of him. So much of "Lord Frey's" actions seemed to be calculated that Carl didn't bother to differentiate between his genuine and affected actions. He assumed anything was meant to get Carl to lose his composure which would give the old man an angle to exploit. So he worked on not giving any advantages away.

"I was just passing through and thought I would give greetings to you Lord Frey. Well, now that I've greeted you, I think I'll be on my way." Carl nonchalantly began walking away without a hint of staying in his bearing.

"I didn't dismiss you yet, boy!" Walder snapped in anger, having been provoked by Carl's attitude of not giving him respect. "I still have business with you."

Carl paused and turned around, giving the 78 nameday old man a deep look. "Oh really? And what might that business be? If I'm not mistaken, you sent no letters to me, requesting a meeting." Carl paused while watching the red color due to unspent anger crawling up Old Frey's face.

"In fact, I'm just passing through the area and came here to give my respects to a lord of your stature. But I've got places to go and see. You know how us young people are, always on the go." Carl casually eyed the old lord and his retinue, giving the old man the impression that he didn't respect him, which was actually a true impression.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure there is some young whore you've just got to visit." Carl snorted at the attitude the old man displayed. "But I know your father is having a hard time finding you a wife. So I thought I'd just offer you one of my daughters or granddaughters to save you the time of looking."

Carl chuckled a bit at how "magnanimous" the old lord was acting on his behalf. "While I appreciate your thoughtfulness, I'm not prepared at this time to commit to marriage. Thank you for your time, Lord Frey."

And Carl turned around and departed the hall, ignoring the yells and glares sent his way from Old Frey. He rejoined the rest of his men and continued traveling east, where they would meet up with the kingsroad.

As they travelled and met more lords on their way, Carl pondered the issue of the Freys, the Darrys, and the other enemies of his family.

From his short meeting with Walder Frey, he had gleaned a lot of information. One of his talents that had shown up in recent years was the ability to read the intentions and even some of the thoughts of people he faced.

One of the things he learned while facing the old lord was that the Frey's high tolls was deliberately set up to weaken the Tullys, not just because Frey was greedy. One of the major travel routes that the Tullys used to exchange goods with the Starks passed right through the Twins.

The other big thing Carl learned was that Walder Frey truly hated the Tullys and was plotting and waiting for an opportunity to end the Tully's rule of Riverrun. It wouldn't have mattered if Carl had been the most polite and accommodating person around, Frey already hated him just for being a Tully.

The only thing keeping the old man back from attacking Carl was the repercussions from the rest of the loyal Tully banner houses. If he was too open in his attack then hordes of fighters would come to attack the Freys. So the old lord acted in a clever manner to avoid the anger of the masses and any repercussions from blatantly attacking. He stuck to his M.O. of sneakily making things difficult for House Tully.

But Carl knew that, given the chance, Frey would do anything to hurt the Tully's interests.

After learning that bit of knowledge, Carl was more determined to destroy the Freys in order to secure the rule of the Tullys. A scorpion held in the breast would eventually sting them, so he wanted to get rid of the scorpion for good.

As Carl continued travelling around the Riverlands, he discovered that the Darrys were another family that seemed to hold the Tullys in contempt and would gladly help them fall.

So while not all of their bannerhouses were necessarily against House Tully, Carl cme to the realization that there were a few that were. A few of them would do almost anything to pull down the Tullys.

With that realization, Carl spent some time thinking about what he could do to strengthen House Tully and weaken their opponents at the same time. A lot of what he considered doing, he wouldn't be able to implement for years. Either because of lack of funds, or because he wasn't the Lord Paramount, with the authority to implement certain policies.

Many of the plans that Carl thought up were thrown to the back of his mind. Later on, he might revisit them, when he could do something about it. For now, Carl focused on getting a decent impression of each of the lords that he would be interacting with in the future.

* * *

Towards the end of 280 AC word was spread around the country that Prince Rhaegar and Princess Elia had a daughter born to them at Dragonstone.

Shortly after the news of the birth of the new princess Rhaenys, while Carl was still touring the Riverlands, he received word that Lord Whent would be holding a massive tournament at Harrenhal in the middle of 281 AC. It was a must attend event. The winning prizes announced were three times greater than the tourney that was held in honor of Prince Viserys' birth, totally throwing the various people into a frenzy.

Carl was also pretty excited about the tourney. He would finally be able to compete and show just how good he was. And with the high prize, there were sure to be competitors coming who could actually challenge him!

He continued his journey, adjusting the route so he would arrive at Harrenhal in time for the announced tourney.

A few weeks later he met up with his family as they were making their way to Harrenhal. He was happy to greet his siblings, not having seen them for many months as he traveled the Riverlands.

"Carl!" Catelyn and Lysa called from their carriage when they saw Carl had arrived at their caravan. The two girls were on the verge of jumping off their carriage to greet their brother, which amused Carl greatly. Seeing how much his sisters cared for him improved Carl's mood greatly.

"Hello there, beautiful sisters. And how is your day?" Carl asked with a smile as he dismounted his horse and hopped in the carriage to chat with his sisters. Just because his sisters were willing to jump away from their carriage didn't mean he, as a brother would let them.

He was amused over the chatter of his sisters as they talked about the tournament they were going to watch, and how excited they were. Carl just sat back and enjoyed the feeling of being with family once more.

He took note, though, of how much his sisters were talking about handsome and chivalrous young men. Carl would have to pay a visit to these "noteworthy" young men and make sure they were well behaved. If they refused, then some kneecaps would need to be adjusted.

After having traveled around the Riverlands and seen how little his family mattered to the various Lords, Carl was more and more appreciative of his family and how much they cared for eachother. He was more determined to protect them in the future, no matter what happened.

After a few days of travel, they finally arrived at Harrenhal. The castle was massive, with five large towers that rose to great heights, plainly visible from the tourney grounds. The tourney grounds were already set up and flooded with people, with so many people eager to join in the pageantry.

Seeing the flood of people, Carl was prepared to dive in and get to know the people. But his family matters stopped him from acting too impulsively.

Carl was still feeling a bit upset due to his father laying down the law and dictating that he could only pick one competition to participate in, either the joust or the melee due to the need to circulate and participate in politics and finding their house Allies to help them. And maybe a marriage was in the works for Carl, which was all arranged by his father.

Despite being exasperated by his father's meddling, Carl was still mostly obedient to his family's rules and needs.

Carl chose the melee to participate in, since he was so much better at the sword than the joust.

The tourney started as a particularly fun and a good party for all. He and his family spent plenty of time with the Starks and other allies.

Later on in the joust, while Carl was watching the contest, he was amused to see a nameless knight show up and challenge three knights to a joust with their gear on the line. One was a knight of House Frey, another of House Blount of the Crownlands, and the third was from House Haigh, who were vassals of House Frey.

Carl was cracking up because with his sharp eyesight he could see that the knight was Lyanna Stark. He could see beyond her disguise and armor. From what he could gather, one of her father's bannermen had been ganged up on and humiliated by the squires of the knights she called out for retribution. Carl heard the gossip from his men, which enlightened him as to what Lyanna was doing.

Lyanna actually handily won, chastised the defeated knights and got them to chastise their squires as ransom for their armor.

Carl wasn't too sad to see House Frey's knights being humiliated. He felt that despite the fact that they were a banner house, they were more akin to a scorpion that would betray them given the opportunity.

The only thing that put a damper on Carl's humor was seeing from afar the madness growing in the King as he went on and on about the mysterious knight with the tree with a laughing face on it as their sigil was his enemy, and they were laughing at him. The king ordered his people to find and bring his enemy to him for execution.

The next day when Carl saw Lyanna in the area, safe and sound, he was relieved. He picked up a couple of wine goblets and handed one to her.

"Cheers, Lyanna. I'm glad to see you were so successful in chastising some oafs and got away with it." Carl murmured softly so no one else would hear. "But be careful who you tell. The King was sure that the unnamed knight was his enemy and laughing at him. You don't want the entire army trying to execute you." Carl warned her with a smile to mask the seriousness of his message to her.

Lyanna took a sip of the drink, and smiled winningly at Carl.

"There's no way for me to be caught! The idiots have no idea!" She declared, which caused Carl to laugh at her temerity.

Carl saw a small boy headed close to the two of them, ostensibly to clean up around them, but Carl saw that the little boy was paying close attention and memorizing what people around him were saying.

"So, are you going to cheer me on in the melee tomorrow Lynna?" Carl interrupted whatever she was going to say with a warning look. "I'm afraid it was the only event my father would let me participate in, other than the event of trying to find me a wife."

Lyanna scoffed at Carl. "Hah! Who wants to marry! I have too much fun riding and practicing." She said with much bravado.

Carl noticed the little boy had moved away without hearing anything important, so he sighed in relief. When he noticed Lyanna looking at him like he was weird, he explained. "The little page looked to be some kind of spy. I didn't want him to hear anything important. Like your little fun yesterday."

"Thanks. I really didn't expect there to be so many problems because of that." She frowned and bit her lip in worry. "The king…"

Carl gestured her to stop. "Even when no one is listening, some words are best not spoken. Just don't tell anyone, and it should be fine. If they didn't catch you so far, they shouldn't have any clues to go on."

"But how did you figure it out?" She worriedly asked, thinking someone might have seen the same thing Carl did.

"My eyes are extraordinarily sharp, and I don't forget anything, my dear Northern Wolf." Carl chuckled. "If I didn't recognize the moves you used on me back at Riverrun, then I would be a dead stump."

At that reminder of how she tricked and unseated him in their previous practice, Lyanna smiled in amusement. "And you got me back with that damnably quick sword of yours."

They shared a smile at the memory and continued chatting as the day wore on.

* * *

The next day Carl was eager to see how he fared in the melee. He donned his armor and mounted his horse, guiding it to the starting area. Off to the side were the seats for the viewers, while all around the enormous clearing the participants were spread out in a circle.

Carl looked around and saw many other eager knights grinning in anticipation, or looking nervous. The massive horde of participants were waiting for the signal. Only a few moments later, the horn was blown.

Carl drew his sword and kicked his horse into motion. In some of the melee events there were no rules, and the knights would start off with lances, but in this particular event lances were prohibited.

Out of the corner of his eye, Carl saw some of the nearby participants suddenly veer his way, apparently attempting to take him by surprise, thinking he was a green knight who would have gotten tunnel vision and only seen what was in front of him.

He waited until the last moment, before pulling the reins to the side. His horse followed the commands and he closed with his opponent before he expected to, coming inside his wide swing. Carl began with a quick chop to the arm, and succeeded in breaking it from the sound of impact. The knight fell off his horse in a heap on the ground.

Carl didn't let him go, but leaned down and held his sword at the knight's throat just as he was about to sit up. "Do you surrender, ser?"

"Yes, damn you!" Was the answer Carl was hoping for.

Carl signaled his people who were waiting off to the side, and they came and gathered the knight. Every knight that Carl "captured" would provide him with a ransom to keep their armor.

Returning his attention back to the melee just in time to block a blow at his head, Carl laughed in high spirits. Like he wouldn't have heard the sound of the horse galloping his way!

Carl began exchanging blows with the man who wore yellow and black, his sword in motion blocking each blow as the knight attempted to cause bruises or broken bones through his armor. Carl easily blocked his moves, and pulled back on his horses reins, getting his horse to back up a bit like he was being overwhelmed.

Once the knight pushed the offensive, Carl had his horse sidestep, putting the knight off balance, and Carl took advantage of the moment and bashed him in the helmet, knocking him askew. Not giving him a chance to recover, Carl rained down blows and knocked him out, judging from the limp way he collapsed.

Carl gave the signal to his men once more to gather up another one, and turned to the melee to see who his next target was.

Spurring his horse on, he next targeted a knight in green and blue who was spending too much time looking around. The knight heard his galloping horse and turned to face Carl. Just as he was about to spur his horse to meet Carl, a blade was swung on his blind side and knocked him over.

Carl immediately changed targets to the knight in red who had taken his target and began exchanging blows. This one was very skilled, and Carl was just getting into the fight, when he noticed his opponent gave a signal. Carl immediately threw himself to the side, almost unseating himself, but dodged the blow with a mace that would have brained him.

He gritted his teeth in anger, since being brained with a mace could potentially kill him if it hit hard enough.

Carl quickly pulled himself back to his saddle while urging his horse to give him some room to react to the double threat. The two knights kept on opposites sides from Carl, causing him to split his attention. He happened to notice that the knight that tried to brain him was from a house that owed allegiance to House Frey, which caused his anger to rise.

He feinted like he was going to attack the first knight in red, but dropped his reins and took a two handed grip on his bastard sword and charged the mace wielding knight, lashing out in a powerful blow that he tried to block, but Carl kept the blows coming, and after the third blow succeeded in slipping his sword under the man's block and into his armpit at an unarmored part. If the Frey's knight wanted to brain him to death, he would give him what he tried to give Carl.

Pulling his bloodied sword out of the knights body, he managed to block the blow the first knight sent his way, ignoring the screams of rage and promises of vengeance.

'Shouldn't have tried to murder me, then should you, ya bastard?' Carl thought as he struggled to keep his guard up under the knight's crazy assault.

A horse then charged in and brained the knight in red before Carl could counterattack. Looking over, Carl saw Robert Baratheon with his warhammer raised high, saluting Carl.

"Having fun there, Carl?!" Robert boisterously called.

Carl laughed and saluted him back. "But of course! My blood is practically singing!"

The two of them laughed again before the both of them turned away to find more knights to fight.

The melee continued on in that vein, as Carl got progressively more beaten and bruised, but kept his horse and captured several more knights.

Eventually it was just him and Robert left in the melee. He didn't even feel tired, and he could see that Robert also felt in fine spirits. The two of them continued circling each other, raining blows down on each other.

Carl had to work hard to divert that nasty massive hammer away from him, while striking hard enough to hopefully rock Robert and keep him off balance.

Finally Carl got a good hit on Robert's forearm, enough to cause him to lose control of his hammer for long enough for Carl to unseat him. Carl knew that Robert didn't hold a grudge when he heard the bark of laughter, followed by the exclamation "Damn, you clever bastard!"

The past year Robert had thought it a funny thing to say to Carl because of his use of bastard swords and that he was very smart. Carl had just chuckled at the exclamation, having gotten used to the bluster that Robert liked to employ as humor.

Carl dismounted once he knew he won and helped Robert to his feet, laughing along with the larger man.

"That was a close one. Could have gone either way, really." Carl commented.

"Aye, that it could. But damn was that fun!" Robert grinned back at Carl as the two grabbed their horses and mounted up to ride up to the stands for the announcement of the winner.

Carl saw his family up in the stands, on their feet as they cheered his victory. He grinned and waved up at them cheerily.

The next bit passed by quickly, as Carl received his award, 20,000 gold dragons for winning the melee. Carl laughingly promised to take Robert drinking sometime later as a consolation for coming in second.

Carl then departed to get cleaned up and dressed for the evening's feast and dancing.

* * *

The next day was the final day of the joust. Carl was sitting up in the stands with his family next to the Starks, Baratheons, and Jon Arryn. They were having a good time, eating snacks and sharing gossip.

They watched the final rounds, as more knights were eliminated. It was a good showing, even though Carl wished his father allowed him to enter the joust as well instead of engaging in politics.

Eventually the finale was announced. The final tilt consisted of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen against Ser Barristan Selmy. Prince Rhaegar wore the red and black of his house colors, while Ser Selmy wore the white of the Kingsguard.

The first several passes were basically ties, both breaking lances on the other's shields. In the sixth pass Prince Rhaegar managed to stun Ser Selmy. But the next round Ser Selmy managed to rally and get a good hit against the prince, making it a tie once more. The eighth pass though saw Prince Rhaegar's victory as he unhorsed Ser Selmy, winning the joust.

After everything was settled down, Prince Rhaegar was handed the crown of blue winter roses to crown his Queen of Love and Beauty. Everyone expected Prince Rhaegar to crown his wife, Princess Elia. But everyone watched in shock as Prince Rhaegar rode past his pregnant wife and approached the Starks. Before anyone could react, Prince Rhaegar had placed the crown in Lyanna's lap.

Carl scowled at the Prince for doing such a dishonorable thing. Not only was Lyanna only 15 namedays old, she had just recently become betrothed to Robert Baratheon. It had been announced at the beginning of the tourney.

Passing the flowery crown to Lyanna was a slap in the face to not just Princess Elia Martell, but also to Robert Baratheon and the Starks.

Carl looked over at the Martells and saw their faces were ugly with anger at the Prince's actions that dishonored their sister. Princess Elia, on the other hand, just looked resigned to her fate.

Robert was cursing up a storm nearby, furious that the crown prince had moved in on his woman.

The King was glaring between Prince Rhaegar, the Starks, the Tullys, and everyone else nearby, obviously suspicious that they were conspiring against him.

Everyone was whispering at the drama.

Prince Rhaegar was ignoring everything around him and giving flirtatious looks at Lyanna.

And Lyanna was blushing.

'There really is no fixing this.' Carl thought as he looked around at the various groups. He looked over at the Starks and saw the same realization on Lord Starks face. He then looked at his own father, and saw the worry on his face. The two families stood up and started to depart the area. The Starks closed ranks around Lyanna and escorted her out.

Carl had no idea what would come of this unruly act by the Prince, but it couldn't possibly be good. Putting aside the political repercussions for the time being, Carl escorted his own sisters away from the tourney. He was just glad in a way that it wasn't his own sisters that the Prince had chosen to single out in front of everyone.

* * *

Carl stayed home at Riverrun with his family as things seemed to be spiraling out of control in many ways. It seemed like every month they began hearing how the King was coming unglued with paranoia. One week he suspected his own son and Heir of conspiring against him, and banished him to Dragonstone. The next he was summoned back to be a prisoner at Redstone Keep in Kings Landing.

At the end of the year 281 AC Princess Elia gave birth to a son, Prince Aegon. She reportedly had a hard labor, and barely survived.

Early in the year 282 AC Prince Rhaegar left Dragonstone with some companions, and no one knew where he was going, but his father, King Aerys II was going mad with suspicion.

Meanwhile, Carl's family was preparing for the wedding of Catelyn and Brandon Stark. They would hold the wedding at Riverrun the week after Catelyn turned 18 namedays old. Carl was hoping that the tense situation between the King and his heir didn't spill over onto them, especially just as his sister was about to be married.

Suddenly more news spread out. Prince Rhaegar had kidnapped Lyanna Stark, intending to marry her as his new bride despite the opinions against it.

Carl was feeling really pissed at the Prince now. How dare he do that to his friend, and Robert's betrothed? If he wanted a piece of tail, there were plenty of whores who would happily fill his bed. Why would he go out of his way to kidnap Lyanna?

More bad news arrived soon after. Brandon Stark had been on the way to Riverrun for his wedding when he got word of the kidnapping. Assuming that Prince Rhaegar had brought Lyanna back to Kings Landing, he changed directions and was soon outside the Red Keep, demanding Prince Rhaegar come out to meet his sword in combat.

The overly paranoid Mad King had not reacted well and had Brandon arrested. Lord Rickard Stark also diverted to Kings Landing with 200 of his men. He tried everything he could get Brandon freed. Eventually the King agreed to a trial by combat for the life of Rickard's son.

The Mad King had agreed, but when Lord Stark showed up in his armor and sword to fight the named champion, the King had his guards capture Lord Stark and hang him over a fire. The King announced that his opponent would be the Targaryen Flames.

And while Lord Stark was roasting alive in his armor, Brandon had been tied up with a rope around his neck, with a sword just out of his reach and a promise that if Brandon could reach the sword and free himself and his father, they could live. Brandon struggled so hard to reach the sword, he strangled himself to death while his father roasted alive.

The news of the Starks' grizzly deaths had just arrived and Carl was holding his twin as she broke down in tears after hearing how her betrothed died. It took some time for him to calm her down and put her to bed.

The worst news that had sped out from Kings Landing was that the King wasn't satisfied with having killed the Lord Paramount of the North and his heir. He was demanding that Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon be brought to him for judgment as traitors, as well as demanding their whole family of traitors be executed.

The King had finally gone completely mad.

Eddard and Robert refused to submit to the mad king, rightly thinking that the King would simply kill them if they did. Jon Arryn had also declared his side of the fight. He would fight the king alongside Baratheon and Stark.

He hadn't spent more than 10 years raising the Baratheon and Stark lads only to see them executed by a mad king's decree.

Carl was all for standing with their friends and allies against the madness of the king. Even if they abandoned their allies and were able to stand by in the coming war, who was to say the King wouldn't have them killed next?

But his father had been saying that he would only join the rebellion if Eddard stepped in and filled the marriage contract with the Starks, marrying Eddard to Catelyn.

Hostar claimed that Eddard Stark would have to wed Catelyn to secure the alliance. Carl gritted his teeth at that bit of stubbornness. Cat had just lost her betrothed. She wasn't in any state to get married so soon, despite Hostar's claims.

Besides, it was inevitable that the paranoid mad King would cast his eye on House Tully eventually, especially after they joined House Stark in the Rebellion. They had been on the verge of marrying a daughter of House Tully to House Stark, after all. It would put a target on their backs for the King.

Carl groaned in dismay, thinking about how everything seemed to be spiraling out of control. War was upon them, and it made his blood chill. He had no fear of the battlefield, but a rebellion like this was another matter. Who knows how long it would go on? How many of their own bannermen would be turning their hand against them?

He made his way to the battlement, looking out over the river and forest surrounding his home. He wondered what the world would look like in the morning. What more news would come in by raven. Could the world get any crazier?

And then the time ticked over into the new day. It was Carl's 18th birthday and he remembered.

He _remembered_.


	61. ASOIAF 04

Carl stood on the battlement of Riverrun in the cold dark of night, blankly looking out on the landscape. His hands were clenched tightly as he thought over everything that he had experienced growing up as a Tully.

His family, especially his grieving sister Catelyn.

All the friends he had made, especially Brandon Stark and his father who had been killed by the mad king.

His other friend, Lyanna Stark. The young lady who was so spirited at the age of 15 she had dressed up in disguise as a knight and publically humiliated three other knights in order to avenge her family's banner man's humiliation.

Robert Baratheon, who was now being targeted by the Mad King Aerys.

Carl thought about the boiling over of the conflict, and considered who was standing with who.

And he especially thought over what he could and should do, now that he had full control over all his powers once more.

He couldn't bear to go inside right now, it would feel too stuffy in his rooms. He needed the cold air to help him clear his head. Looking out from the battlements, he could see the surrounding lands clearly despite the night.

The rivers and forests of the lands he was due to inherit were beautiful in the moonlight, in his opinion. The seeming calm lands were completely at odds with the boiling anger, lust, and greed in the hearts of men around the country right now.

His young man's mindset and memories of the past 18 years were calling out to him to use his powers immediately. To fly or teleport immediately and kill certain people who threatened his family. That mad king sitting in his castle in Kings Landing wouldn't last the night. And anyone loyal to him could be snuffed just as easily.

Carl's idea before he entered the world of just sitting back and taking this world as a vacation for the next ten years was completely shattered due to his familial attachments. There was no way he could sit by and not get involved at this point.

But Carl refused to give into his impulsive need to immediately lash out.

Despite being in an 18 year old body once more, he refused to act like an impulsive kid. He sat down on the edge of the fortifications and began meditating to calm himself and order his memories.

As Carl was reviewing and assimilating his memories over the past 18 years his face kept changing expressions. Smiling at one point, grimacing in embarrassment at others, and frowning in anger at certain memories he was reliving.

He was finding that assimilating the memories of growing up relatively normal in a medieval society did have some small effect on his mentality. Especially having been raised as an Heir with political and martial leanings, he was seeing things in a new light that he wouldn't have immediately considered previously.

As he went through the memories of the interactions and push and pull of the various lords around the Tullys while he was growing up, Carl became even more aware of the politics and sly ambitions of the various Lords. With his new, slightly different outlook on life and greater experience that came from his restored memories, it was easy to see just who among the various Lords were his enemy, who were neutral, and who were allies.

Another thing that was obvious to him as he looked over his memories and actions with new eyes was how his abilities had leaked through the memory block and influenced him growing up. It had certainly resulted in the growing Carl Tully being stronger and smarter than most children his age, with various abilities at his fingertips.

One example of when a few extra abilities had leaked through here and there in his times of need was the issue of Baelish. The runes he had used to rip off the mask and show the true face of Petyr Baelish to his family was an example of those skills.

And wasn't that an interesting situation that had occurred while growing up.

Carl could hardly believe how calculating Baelish had been, even at such a young age. In his previous life, he wouldn't have expected such a young child to be so sly. In retrospect, Baelish had probably been keeping up a correspondence with his father to continue learning and plotting how to endear himself and entrap the Tullys.

And looking back, it did seem that the children here in the world of Westeros grew up quick, he realized. They had to, to be able to survive in such a cutthroat world. And Baelish had certainly learned his lessons well.

He cast his profound senses out and spotted the slight form of a 14 year old Baelish sitting in his prison, waiting for a ransom that would never come, if he judged Lord Baelish's finances correctly.

The thin and dirty form testified that Baelish's past few years hadn't been especially good in the Tully jail. Carl knew that ideally he should have mercy for the pitiful. But examining the pitiful form of Baelish in jail, Carl couldn't feel any pity whatsoever for the young man.

Baelish had come into Carl's family as a guest and cruelly plotted against them. And from what little he understood of the "canon" works of this world, this Baelish brat would have been a large cause of a great deal of death, pain, and war throughout Westeros.

And that wasn't even considering what Baelish would have done to his sisters if he wasn't stopped, including driving his sweet little sister Lysa to madness, cruelty, and death.

So Carl reserved his pity for those that actually deserved it.

Thinking over the situation now with his memories whole didn't diminish one bit the feelings Carl had experienced while growing up.

He still felt the sting of betrayal as his family believed a rat over him.

He still felt the love and comfort as they rebuilt their family bonds over the past six years after Carl had trapped the rat.

And he still felt the helpless anguish over the situation he found himself in now. His sister was heartbroken that her betrothed was dead at the hands of the Mad King. Lyanna Stark was missing, presumed to have been kidnapped, forcefully married, and raped by the Prince.

Carl looked up at the cloudy night in deep thought. He still strongly felt the family bonds he had with his father, Hoster, his sisters Catelyn and Lysa, and his brother, Edmure.

He had spent a lot of time in the practice grounds with Edmure, helping him hone his skills. The 14 year old brother of his was so full of dreams of knighthood and derring do.

He had spent a lot of time maintaining and repairing his gear sitting with his sister Catelyn and Lysa while they were sewing and gossiping. Simply enjoying their company.

He had spent a lot of time with his father Hoster learning how to manage the bannermen, the Lords, and the land.

He had a lot of emotions invested in this land. And he was certainly going to do something about this situation.

While Carl didn't know a lot about the specifics of the plot in this world, he did remember that Lyanna had supposedly chosen to go with Prince Rhaegar of her own volition. There was a lot of speculation from the show about just what caused those two to elope.

Was it an epic love between the Prince and the Northern Rose that caused the two to elope?

Was there a prophecy told to Rhaegar that he needed three children of the dragon to fight the Night King and the ice zombies, and in order to get that last child he went and found a North girl since his wife was unable to have any more children?

Or was it something else?

Carl didn't have the answers at the moment. He scowled inside at the repercussions of the foolish girl who was apparently so desperate to get away from Robert that she would run into the arms of the most likely mentally unstable Targaryen prince. And accidentally set off the chain of events that led to her father and brother's death.

She was only 16 and without any changes in the plot she would die in child birth before she even turned 18.

His friend Lyanna certainly didn't deserve that fate.

Carl wasn't really sure, but he suspected that Rhaegar was suffering from the same mental defects his mad father was. The Prince was from a family that had apparently been marrying brothers and sisters together for years. It wouldn't surprise him to find out that Rhaegar was just as mad as his father. It seems like for those people it only required a big shock in their life to trigger their madness.

Aerys received that shock in the Defiance of Duskendale incident where he was imprisoned and treated poorly for six months.

Just what caused Rhaegar to apparently go stupid and cause so many political issues over a 16 year old girl?

Carl was calm once more. He had sorted through his memories and feelings about this life. He could now calmly assess and plan his response.

He stood up from where he had been meditating. Standing at the edge of the battlement, he looked around once with his senses. Seeing that he wasn't being observed, Carl jumped.

Utilizing his profound energy, he flew up in the air with barely a sound to alert the Tully guards in the towers.

Easily controlling his body with his profound energy to fly through the skies as he rose up high in the air.

'Damn, I missed this.' Carl thought about the sensation of flight as he drove himself through the night sky. The sense of freedom that flight gave him helped him wash away much of the lingering bad feelings and helplessness that he had only recently experienced.

Once Carl felt centered once more, he came to a stop. Looking down, he saw he was hovering over the ocean to the west of the Riverlands.

He had a lot of questions, but no real answers to the questions plaguing his mind. He desperately wanted to act, but there were some things to take into consideration.

Opening his Warehouse portal to the size of a plate, he reached inside with his telekinesis abilities to a certain storage unit and lifted out one of the items inside. He floated the small necklace out of the Warehouse and into his waiting hands. He then shrunk the portal to its usual pin sized hole as he contemplated what he was thinking of doing.

Carl gazed contemplatively at the Time Turner in his hands as he pondered the ramifications for what he was thinking of doing. All the warnings that the Wizards had for use of the Time Turners ran through his head.

Don't try to change the past, you will disappear.

Don't try to talk to yourself, you will end up killing yourself.

Only turn back time up to 12 hours, or you will disappear.

Based on the various speculations of specifics of time travel in his original life, bolstered by the knowledge and warnings of the Alteran scientists, what actually happened to the wizards who broke those rules was that their actions had created a branching of time. An alternate timeline and world was created that had branched off at some point.

The reason they disappeared from their original world was that they followed the world that was created by the branching of time. While their world went on as usual without them, the alternate world they had created didn't seem any different, so they never knew.

While thinking of using the Time Turner to change things, there were three big concerns in Carl's mind over what he was contemplating doing.

The First Concern was whether he was the first iteration of Carl to go back in time. If he was the first, then what he was contemplating could be very dangerous indeed, with heavy ramifications.

If he went back in time, he could attempt to set up a self sustaining loop to make sure that there wouldn't be any more deviations or branching off of the time line.

He would go back, save the Starks from the mad king while replacing them with fakes that would make it seem like they died in the manner that Carl had learned of. That way the next Carl would go back and save them in the same manner, thus keeping the loop going and the new timeline stable.

But if this was the first iteration of the time loop, then it meant he would disappear from this time. His sister would have not just lost her betrothed, but his family would be left wondering just where their son/oldest brother had disappeared to. He couldn't even predict what kind of chaos or heartache to his family that would cause.

The Second Concern was the results of turning back time to before he woke up his memories. He wasn't a normal person turning back time; he was a world jumper. Prior to this evening, he hadn't even regained his memories.

What exactly would happen when he arrived in the past? Would his memories be resealed until his 18th birthday again? Or would he already be counted as being 18 and keep his memories?

And did the world even exist before he woke up? Were all his memories just constructs and the world didn't exist before he "woke up"?

If the world didn't exist before that moment, would he pop out into a planet-less void? Would he die from that? Would that be counted as a loss by the Jump Chain and all his life, plans, and chances to reunite with all his loved ones disappear?

The Third Concern was just how much he could get up to in the past to fix the present?

He had a great big bloody buggering mess on his hands at the moment. Just what was he going to do about it?

How much of his powers and technology was he going to use to clean up the toilet bowl from the shit that these people dropped?

Should he try to stop the rebellion? Should he try to convince Robert to give up on revenge on the bloody Prince who stole his girl? Should he find that same Prince and convince him the time to overthrow his father was here and to join the rebellion?

As much as Carl had liked Robert the few times he met him, Robert wasn't family. The Starks were family, or they would have soon been if the bloody impatient fool Brandon hadn't gotten himself killed. And if Lyanna had joined Rhaegar of her own decision and wasn't tricked into it, then Carl would choose to stand with the Starks and her over Robert.

But on the other hand, Eddard and Robert were like brothers, having been fostered together. Carl rubbed his hand down his face in exasperation. This really was a huge family drama that threatened to throw the whole kingdom into civil war.

If only that stupid Prince could have kept it in his pants. Or at least figured out how to communicate with the Starks so they wouldn't have flown off the handle and gotten themselves killed at the hand of the Mad King. There sure was a lot of idiocy around here at this time.

And how would Dorne react when they found out that Rhaegar had put aside Princess Elia in order to marry Lyanna? Despite the Dornish's promiscuous ways, Elia was their Princess and they wouldn't brook any insult to her.

If Rhaegar had simply taken Lyanna as a lover, he didn't think Dorne would have cared. But with Rhaegar treating Princess Elia the way he had, Dorne was sure to be enraged over the insult. So that was another faction that would be plotting to be throwing cherry bombs in the can.

Carl rubbed his temples in frustration over the huge bloody mess he found himself forced to deal with.

"Bloody buggering shite. Oh sure, past-Carl." Sarcasm was dripping from Carl's voice. "What a bloody wonderful decision it was to jump into the world at this exact moment. 'I'll just jump in at the beginning of the rebellion. It'll be a great and fun time to shape the future of the Kingdoms.' Bloody wanker. Didn't even think about how you would be so attached to your new family, did you? Didn't consider that you would be giving me the mother of all headaches with this mess. Wouldn't have cared if you knew, right? Cause it's not you dealing with the problem, it's me!" The sarcastic rant against his past self didn't help better his situation, but Carl did feel slightly better having vented a bit.

"Okay, as far as the idea that the world only came into being at the moment I gained my memories, I'm going to have to bloody hope that it's a baseless fear. Cause thinking that way would make me start thinking that the people around me aren't real. And that way would lead to madness."

Carl had a thought and perked up a bit. "Besides, that Golden Crow Spirit knew about the Jump-chans and the Jumpers. So that lends credence to the idea that the world already existed, and the Jump-chans are just taking advantage of that to send jumpers in. Not that they are creating the world from scratch. So the world is real, and I won't be turning back into an empty void."

Carl nodded happily, carefully suppressing the half formed notion that it could be a huge bluff that a jump-chan threw in to convince him the world was real when it wasn't. Conspiracy theory thinking could only drive him mad now when he needed to be firm in his decisions, not wishy washy with paranoia. He didn't take that drawback for a reason!

"If I had known this mess was waiting for me, I'd have made sure to wake up two years ago so it wouldn't get to this point." Carl sighed while thinking of the dangers he was chancing by changing the past. "But it boils down to, am I willing to live with the guilt of not even trying to save my sister's husband? Am I willing to let so many people I like and care about just die without trying to save them?"

Carl had another realization that as a result of his actions, many of the characters from the original story probably wouldn't be born at all. Carl thought of Eddard and Catelyn's children from the original story that were the focus of so much of the canon story.

"But then again, with the way the world plot acts, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Catalyn and Brandon have the same number of kids, and name them Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran, and Rickon." Carl exclaimed to himself while rubbing his chin in thought.

"Besides, I don't have any desperate need to make the timeline conform to fictional stories that I only barely paid vague attention to when people were talking about them around the water cooler. In the here and now, I only care about the present, not the future 'what ifs'. The people I care about here and now are real. And I have the means to attempt a rescue to insure my family's happiness. What am I even debating here, anyway?" Carl rhetorically asked himself with a snort.

Reading too many time travel stories apparently made him more stupid. Thankfully he caught himself in time before making some dumb decision to not help his loved ones based on vague doubts and fears about keeping the timeline intact.

The true tragedy would have been not even making the attempt to save his loved ones. Letting people he cared about die due to some idea of letting fate play out as it should have would be incredibly stupid.

With his decision firmly made, Carl closed his hand over the Time Turner for a moment before putting it away in his dimensional storage for the time being.

Spending a few minutes to fly back to Riverrun, he cast his senses down to his rooms and saw they were empty at the moment. He apparated to his empty rooms and began his preparations.

After forging some messages from certain people to use as a cover and excuse for some specific actions in the morning, Carl pulled himself into the Time Pearl's inner world under time dilation.

He had made the decision to go to the past, but there were some preparations he needed to do first. If he was the first Carl to time travel, he wanted to leave some contingencies behind for his family in the case that he disappears from the timeline.

If he wasn't the first Carl to time travel, then when he caught up with this time he could deactivate the contingencies if they proved they weren't needed.

Carl made his way to the massive facilities that had been built in all the time he'd spent in the Time Pearl in the Stargate universe. He logged onto the computer and started setting up designs and build queues.

The first thing he had the VIs make was a copy of the updated Yamato. The computer installed on the Yamato II had a completely updated repository and all the up to date technology, including a cloning facility. He then stocked the new Yamato's hold full of needed all the needed materials for a start up.

Carl observed his unconscious clone in a tank that the cloning device created. It was already physically a disciple class marital artist, had his profound veins induced, and all 54 profound entrances opened.

His clone would have to start all his training from scratch, which would be a pain in the ass for the clone. Carl was leaving the clone everything he needed to quickly train up again.

But compared to the rest of the inhabitants of Westeros, even the body of only a disciple class martial artist would make him a minor god of war. Once he trained up a bit, there was nothing that could stop him on this planet.

Carl's plan was to put the new Yamato in orbit with the clone in stasis onboard until 12 hours after he time turned.

If he was the first Carl to time turn and didn't turn up after 12 hours to shut down the automated process, then a copy of Carl's consciousness would be downloaded to the clone.

All of Carl's basic life memories would be downloaded to the mind of the clone, minus the repository of knowledge from the Stargate universe. Carl didn't want to burn out the mind of his clone the moment he woke up before he could get a handle of his situation.

If Carl didn't turn up, then when the clone woke up, the responsibility to take care of his family would be on his shoulders. If he wasn't the first Carl to time travel, then when he caught up with this time he would turn off the wake up alarm and dispose of the mindless clone.

This plan was a huge reason why Carl hadn't immediately started launching satellites into orbit to start inspecting the current situation of the planet when he regained his memories. If there was already another Carl sitting around while waiting for him to time turn, he didn't want to know about it. Avoiding even looking for that knowledge should keep the time loop de loop nice and stable.

To help the clone in case the clone was left on his own without a warehouse or farms to take care of business, Carl left many supplies in the ship's stores. He placed seeds and saplings of all the plants he would need. The cloning facilities could also create any of the plants or animals the clone Carl could possibly desire to populate his lands with.

Carl then placed all the cultivation resources needed to raise several dozen cultivators to the Sovereign Profound level. He crafted many weapons and armor that would help the clone Carl build a strong military force.

He also left a stockpile of various metals and several dozen Petes so the clone Carl would have everything he needed to build up his tech base and do whatever he thought was needed to help his family.

And finally he left a copy of the Philosophers stone so clone Carl could generate enough wealth to hire on more forces and get construction done if he wanted to keep things on the down low instead of simply taking over the world. Not to mention the ability to keep his family living as long as he desired.

If he himself was the one to wake up and realize he was a clone with no guarantee that he would continue on the Jump Chain, he would want to have as many resources as possible to build up the society he would want to live in for the rest of his life. And Carl didn't want to be a dick to his clone, so he was hooking him up with everything he could on the off chance that he really disappeared from this timeline.

Once his preparations were complete, Carl put the Yamato II in his storage space and then left the Time Pearl. He was back in his room only moments after leaving. Everyone but the guards were in their rooms sleeping, so Carl apparated back up into the airspace above Riverrun. Carl then pulled out the Yamato II with the clone and ordered it into orbit. The 12 hour countdown would start when Carl stopped transmitting a signal, which would happen when he time turned.

Without taking more time for thinking, or for doubts to settle in on his course of action, Carl flew south east towards Kings Landing. A short time later, he was hovering over the darkened city. Only a few torches were lit, here and there.

Carl frowned down at the Mad King in his castle, tempted to just end him right there.

Just one Ki attack, Fiendfyre, or Golden Crow bombardment would end the shit stain that was the Mad King.

Carl employed his occlumency to control his emotions so he didn't work himself up into anger and attack. He would hold off for now. He wouldn't want to deprive Clone Carl of the pleasure of snuffing out the damned thing.

As long as he survived his time travel experience he already knew he would get his chance to end the crazy Targaryen.

With that idea in mind, Carl flew down to the forests outside of Kings Landing. He didn't want to turn back time anywhere close to his past self to hopefully prevent any accidents. And outside this city was where he would intercept the impatient young Stark that was betrothed to his sister and replace him with a duplicate. Couldn't forget Lord Stark, or their bannermen either.

Being on solid ground was also a good idea in case something happened to his memories when he turned back time and forgot how to fly. That way he wouldn't be splattered upon his reintroduction with the ground.

Carl pulled out the Time Turner and placed the chain over his neck. He then firmly grasped a scroll that detailed what he had to do to save Brandon in the case his memories were sealed when going back in time past when the jumpchain had him 'waking up'. If that happened, he would just have to hope for the best that his memory-less self could accomplish anything and damn the timeline.

He began flipping the hourglass, counting out loud the number of turns needed for a week of travel into the past. Carl then watched the effect of turning back time. Since he was in the forest, he mostly only saw the movement of trees and grass moving oddly, with the occasional see through animal running backwards.

The world around Carl finally settled down.

After confirming for himself that the trip was over, Carl spent a moment laughing out loud, relieved that the world was still there and that he hadn't had his memories sealed up again. He looked around at the forest at night that he was in, double checking that no one was around.

He gave a sigh of relief at his successful gamble. Carl pulled off the time turner and put it away once more in its storage place in his Warehouse.

Flying up above the forest, he pulled out the Yamato from his storage space. Apparating inside his ship, Carl then launched the spy satellites into orbit to start tracking the comings and goings of people around Westeros, especially around the Seven Kingdoms.

It would take a while to fully catalog everyone of interest, but Carl started the task of tagging the various people of interest around the Kingdom to keep track of. He then set his ship to manufacturing various spy nano-tech that he directed to seek out and follow the people he was tagging so he could get video and audio recordings of their important schemes and plans. It was important that he be prepared for any schemes of enemies that would get in his way.

One of the things he wanted to learn while he was in the past was just what Rhaegar said to Lyanna to convince her to go gallivanting off without sending any word to her family.

And just what the hell was Rhaegar thinking when he set out to offend so many Houses?

Once Carl was finished detailing where to send the spybots, Carl sat back and started thinking over what he planned to do with Robert's Rebellion that was coming. Should he try to head it off? Or let it happen as it would have?

He knew he couldn't take any overt action until the moment when he had left. At most he could save some people while letting everyone think they had died. But once that point in time was past, he would have free rein to act as he thought best.

So once he reached that point in time where he would be free to meddle, how much should he interfere? Despite how furious and involved he was due to his memories and attachments, he was still determined to have a "vacation" jump. Which meant politics and cajoling nasty backstabbing politicians around to his viewpoint was right out.

He wasn't planning to take over the world. That would require too much politics. He may have to finagle a lot of things behind closed doors to lessen the amount of headache he had to deal with, but that was by no means politics! He was determined to have a vacation jump with as little work as he could get away with.

"I guess it all depends on what I find in Prince Rhaegar's head when I track him down. Cause I know from the story that Robert won't make a very good king. Robert is a fine warrior, but will make a poor king." Carl mused. "Well, time to get to work."

* * *

Brandon was so furious he wasn't capable of thinking straight. He had just gotten word that the bastard Targaryen Prince dared to kidnap and abuse his sister. He would kill the bastard!

He and his guard of 20 men who were riding ahead of his family on the way to Riverrun for his wedding changed directions and rode hard for Kings Landing. He would give that Prince a piece of his mind!

Brandon and his men only rested as much as needed so their horses wouldn't die on them mid-journey. Everyone they came across took one look at their grim faces and detoured around them while talking softly to not get his attention.

They were only a dozen miles away from the city where he would kill Rhaegar when thing went a bit strange for Brandon. Very strange, in fact.

It felt like he was no longer in his body. Instead he was watching from the air above and behind his body. The forced perspective change and the inability to do anything forced Brandon's temper to cool in shock and fear. What kind of dark magic was this?

While Brandon could do nothing other than watch, his body charged into the city and stopped before the closed gates of the Red Keep and began yelling for the bastard Prince to come out and face his death like a man.

Brandon could do nothing but watch as the archers on the walls shot and killed all of Brandon's men, and shot his horse out from under him, sending his body tumbling to the ground.

He had only barely gotten to his feet when he was set upon by Ser Barristan Selmy and Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard. They gave him no real chance to set himself, and disarmed and captured him. They let the guards tie him up and throw him in the black cells.

Brandon continued to float above and behind his body, able to do nothing but watch as his body was manhandled and thrown in a dank and dark cell. He could hear every word and insult that was thrown his way. He couldn't feel the beatings, or torture, thankfully. But watching everything happen was torture enough.

After some time, Brandon began getting even more frantic, but could do nothing but watch. Every time his emotions started getting too out of control, a sense of calmness would descend on him. The interminable time passed. The infrequent meals and the faint sunlight from a window at the end of the cellblock was all that told Brandon that days were passing.

Several days later, Brandon watched as his body's hands were bound and he was brought to the throne room, in front of King Aerys II himself. By this point Brandon's hot rage at Prince Rhaegar had long cooled, allowing him to, mostly, calmly watch the proceedings.

"Your father has demanded a trial by combat for your fate, young Stark." The thin and sickly looking king declared nastily.

Brandon felt some hope at first that his father would get him out of this mess. But the hope was quickly quenched. He was still hovering over the scene, being forced to watch but not being able to act. Even if his father could free his body, he wasn't in command of his body due to the foul sorcery.

His body was forced to kneel at the feet of the mad king while hearing the news that his father would soon be there. Even if he wasn't in his body, he hoped that his father could do something about the situation. But looking on the face of the Mad King, Brandon got a sinking feeling in his gut that it wouldn't be so simple to escape whatever the Mad King was planning.

"We have decided to grant him his request." The King cackled madly.

Brandon's body was then forced to the side and a rope was tied around his throat and tied to a pillar. He was starting to feel especially bad about the situation as he had a moment to look over the rest of the hall. There was a group of alchemists who were working on some kind of fire pit that Brandon couldn't help but focus on with a feeling of helplessness and despair.

But looking at the rest of the people present, Brandon saw that there were no allies of House Stark there. Only those yes-men of the King were present.

Soon enough Brandon's father, Lord Rickard Stark strode into the room, wearing his armor and prepared for combat. Brandon's heart sunk to see that his father was alone. He had no allied Lords or guards to support him.

"Lord Stark, welcome." The King sneered with a glint of madness in his eyes. The King made a signal, and the guards in the hall mobbed Lord Stark.

"What is this treachery?!" Lord Stark bellowed. "I was promised a trial by combat!"

"And you will be given it!" The King snapped gleefully. "And my champion, as a Targaryen, that you will have to combat is fire!" The King began laughing at his own wit, soon followed by the courtiers.

The guards that had grabbed Lord Stark tied him up to a post in the fire pit the alchemists had been working on. They soon started the fire.

Brandon, floating over the scene couldn't do anything but yell in his mind, going almost crazy at the scene in front of him while his body was yelling and pleading for the king to spare his father, that he would gladly take the punishment in his stead.

"Don't let the people say I didn't give Lord Stark a fighting chance." The king said as he ordered a guard to place a sword just out of reach of Brandon's body. "If you can reach the sword and free yourself and your father, boy, I will let you walk out of here alive." The king gave his offer with a sneering smile.

Brandon's body stretched out, fighting to reach the sword, strangling himself in the process while Brandon, floating just above, urged his body to fight! He was almost there! Just a little more and they would be free!

But it was not to be. Brandon's body died, strangling himself as he struggled to reach the sword. Brandon felt a huge shock, a jolt of fear, from seeing that lifeless and strangled look on his face.

If that weren't enough, he was then forced to continue watching as his father was burned to death.

Brandon, floating above the horrifying and dreadful scene, couldn't believe that his and his father's lives ended just like that. He realized he never even had a chance. From the moment he lost his temper when hearing the news and recklessly charged into Kings Landing, his fate was sealed.

His identity as the Stark heir and the next Lord Paramount didn't protect him from the King's perfidy one bit. It even seemed to make the king gleeful that he had such power over his life and death.

Brandon only then realized what a colossal fool he'd been to let his temper get the best of him, thinking that like so many situations before he could wriggle out of any real repercussions. Looking down at grizzly remnants of his death, Brandon wondered what was next? If he couldn't affect anything, why was he still here?

The world around Brandon started to dissolve into blackness.

* * *

The next thing Brandon knew, he woke up back in his body, lying on the ground. He sprang to his feet, looking around desperately. He was on a road, surrounded by forest and men. Looking closely, he saw that they were Stark men around him. They too were just now waking up and springing to their feet with curses and exclamations of being surprised they were alive. And more importantly, he saw his father in front of him, unharmed!

"Father! You're alive!" Brandon yelled out in joy.

"Brandon! My boy! How do we live?" Lord Stark called out as he grabbed Brandon in a hug. He then looked around at the 220 men that were standing off to the side. "All of our men are alive too." Lord Stark said in wonder. "Captain Tarlae, what do you last remember?"

One of the men stopped gaping around at the scene around them and stepped forward. "I remember riding with you to Kings Landing, my lord. But just as we were about 12 miles away, suddenly I wasn't in my body no more. Some magic had me floating along behind and watching the scene. You had just entered the Red Keep to go to the trial by combat when archers ambushed us and killed us. We tried to charge the gates, but they was closed before we could get inside, and then a troop of the kings men had us trapped against the walls of the keep and slaughtered us. Then after a bit, we woke up here, my lord."

"We didn't fare any better inside the keep, Captain." Lord Stark ruefully admitted and told everyone what had happened inside to him and Brandon.

"That's exactly what happened to me too." Brandon stated while all the guards muttered agreement and started worrying about witchcraft.

"What are we going to do now, father?" Brandon asked. "Going to Kings Landing is a suicide mission, I see that now. I was a fool to charge off like that. Did none of that happen? Was it just a vision?"

"I have no idea, son. But whatever magic allowed that to happen, we survived. Remember that! We're alive!" Lord Stark answered and encouraged his son and men at the same time. He spent some time observing their surroundings. "We no longer have our horses, so something definitely happened. It looks like we're in the Riverlands, judging by the terrain. But where exactly?"

Brandon and the rest of the group then heard the sounds of horses approaching from just out of sight further along the road they were on. The group didn't have any weapons, but they were still fighting men. They grabbed up any rocks or sticks they could find, and settled into a defensive formation.

A group of 12 riders came around the corner, and in surprise at seeing the men in front of them, pulled their horses to a halt. The lead rider squinted at Brandon and Lord Stark in surprise, before nudging his horse forward.

"Carl Tully! What are you doing here? Do you know how we got here?" Brandon exclaimed when he recognized the rider before he could talk.

"Brandon Stark. Lord Stark." Carl nodded to the men. "I could ask you the same question. And what's more, I'm most interested in finding out just how you are alive, when just a day ago we received word that the Mad King had killed you." He dryly stated.

"What?!" More than a few exclamations came from the large troop of men in front of Carl as they became restless.

"Indeed. We even received word from Jon Arryn that the Mad King demanded that he send Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon to Kings Landing to be turned over as traitors and executed." Carl reported. "Jon refused and began calling his bannermen for war. Eddard and Robert also immediately set out back to their lands to gather the Stark and Baratheon men as well, to resist the King." Carl explained, ignoring the constant yells of excitement from the men as he recited the news. He too would have been discombobulated by their situation if he was in their shoes.

"My father, Lord Tully has already begun rallying his bannermen." Carl admitted. "Although, I must say you chose a decent time to come back alive, Brandon. My father has been demanding that the marriage agreement between the Tullys and Stark be honored before he will join the rebellion. So if you had come even a week later, you may have found Catelyn married to your brother Eddard." Carl exaggerated a bit to give Brandon a bit of a shock. Who told his brother-in-law to go get himself killed and leave his sister crying?

"What!?" Brandon exclaimed, shocked at the speed at which things had gone crazy.

"We are only about two miles away from Riverrun at the moment, Lord Stark. Could I interest you in a mount to ride there, while some of my guard guide the rest of your men there, since it seems you have misplaced your own mounts?" Carl offered.

"Thank you, Carl. That would be most appreciated." Lord Stark solemnly nodded in thanks.

Carl ordered half his men to dismount and offer their horses for Lord Stark, Brandon, and a few of their guards so they could ride to Riverrun, while Rickard Stark gave orders to his men. They soon set out in the direction Carl had been riding from, back to Riverrun.

"In truth I am glad you're not dead, Brandon. My sister has been most upset at the news, and I'm hoping by bringing you back to Riverrun, that her tears will finally dry up." Carl mentioned as they were riding along the road.

"Really?" Brandon looked a bit happy at the mention that Catelyn had him in her heart, despite the dire circumstances they had found themselves in.

"Aye. I still think she's crazy. I don't know what she sees in you myself!" Carl jested.

"Hah! It's the wild wolf's blood in me!" Brandon boasted.

"Oh, I guess she just wants a little doggy, then huh, mutt?"

"There's nothing little about this wolf!" Brandon bragged.

"Sounds like you're all bark there, little pup!" Carl laughed as he spurred his horse into a gallop.

"I'll show you little!" Brandon yelled back as he too urged his horse to a run.

"So you do have something on the small side to show me? No thanks, I don't swing that way, Little Stark!"

"You better keep running there Tully! When I get my hands on you!" Brandon howled in anger, accompanied by Carl's laughter.

* * *

Carl dismounted and handed off his horse to a servant to take care of. He then ordered his men to prepare to house the 200 plus men of House Stark that would be arriving soon. He then turned to Rickard and Brandon Stark, smiling at the two men. They swiftly completed the guest ritual of sharing bread and salt.

"I'll have a servant show you to your rooms while I go break the good news of your survival to my family. Expect to have a visitor soon. I'm sure Cat will want to verify your survival for herself Brandon. And I imagine that my father will want to meet with you soon, Lord Stark."

After a few more words exchanged about plans for the evening, Carl departed for his father's solar after sending a servant to gather Catelyn, Lysa, and Edmure.

When he arrived at Hoster's solar, his father and the Maester were going over reports from their bannermen. Hoster looked up, surprised to see him.

"I thought you wouldn't be back for another day, Carl." Hoster said in shock.

Carl chuckled. "I ran across something strange on the road, father, and brought it back home to show off."

After a few moments when it was obvious that Carl wasn't going to say anything without more prompts, Hoster snorted impatiently. "Well, out with it, then."

"I ran into a troop of men who were surprised to still be alive. Lord Rickard Stark and Brandon and their 220 men were standing on the road without horses or weapons, as if they had just been placed there. There were no tracks leading to them. Both they and I have no idea how they got there. But it's truly them."

Hoster and Naet gaped in shock for several moments, their brains rebooting from the unexpected news.

"The Will of the Seven…" Hoster trailed off. "If it's truly them, this changes very little in the grand scheme of things. And yet it changes a great deal." Hoster started thinking aloud. "The king has already gone too far and won't stop unless he destroys House Stark and House Baratheon. And since House Arryn joined them in rebellion, he's in it too. With the impending marriage between Brandon and Catelyn, we're in it too, no doubt. The only thing we can do is go all in and make sure our family survives."

"Father, there is one thing that could really turn this war our way. So far, the madness of King Aerys II has driven this conflict to grow larger. But what about Prince Rhaegar? He's been out of sight for some time. No one knows what he thinks of these matters, despite what he supposedly did in kidnapping Lyanna."

"If we can get to him before King Aerys' men do, and convince him to overthrow his father, then it would be much better for us." Carl continued explaining. "It wouldn't be us rebelling against our rightful King. It would be the proper heir deposing the unjust and mad King. We would get a lot more support from not just our banner men, but from other houses too. At the very least it would split the pro-Targaryen forces from being fully against us. They would have to decide who they support, the Mad King or Prince Rhaegar."

"What Carl says makes a good deal of sense, my lord." Maester Naet added in. "But where would you go to find him, Carl? And how would you persuade him? No one has seen him for some time, as you yourself pointed out." Hoster nodded, waiting to see what Carl's answer would be.

Carl simply chuckled. "Aye, the Prince has not been seen for some time. But I've had word from a friend who swore he saw the Prince not far from Harrenhal. I was on my way to check the area and see if it was true when I ran into Lord Stark and his men. So now I must hurry if I hope to catch up to the prince and convince him to join us."

"Do you really think you can do that, son? Going against his father like that…" Hoster asked intently. "Even if he thinks his father is wrong, he would likely not want to lessen House Targaryen's authority and legitimacy in a fight like that."

Carl smiled full of confidence, thinking about what he had done over the previous week after time turning. "I'm very confident, father. I'm certain that once the Prince knows the stakes, he will choose the correct side."

Hoster nodded, smiling at his son's assurances. Even from a young age his son had been beyond excellent. Even if he failed in a task, he kept at it until it was done, and done properly. Hoster wasn't completely sure how, or if, Carl could convince the Prince to take up arms against his own father, but like Carl had said, it was a chance to seriously curtail the war. It was something worth attempting.

"Okay, son. I want you to take a good sized guard with you as you travel. War is stirring, and I don't want you to suddenly be captured and held hostage in these troubled times."

"I think it would be better if I only took a few men, at most a dozen, father. Speed is the key here. If he is found by those who support the king in his madness, then we will lose a prime opportunity."

"Very well. It's a gamble, since anyone who sees the Prince will likely have similar thoughts to yours. But moving fast may be the best choice at the moment. Gather your men and depart as soon as you can." Hoster agreed to Carl's plan after some thought. It was an important strategic move that would shorten the coming war.

The door to the solar banged open at that moment, with Catelyn, Lysa, and Edmure spilling in, excitement, hope, and fear all being present in Cat's face.

"Is it true?!"Catelyn demanded of Carl. "Is Brandon really alive?"

Carl got to his feet and in a few steps was in front of his twin. He held her shoulders, looking in her eyes and letting her see his sincerity. "Yes, it's true. He and his father appeared on the road near here suddenly. Your fiancé is alive, Cat."

Cat swayed a bit, finding the emotions running through her almost too much to keep herself steady. Carl guided her to a seat.

"That's wonderful news!" Lysa almost squeed in happiness as she latched onto Cat joyfully. A smile bloomed on Cat's face as the reality finally sunk in.

Carl chuckled a bit. "I'll go find Brandon and his father and send them here so you can have a proper reunion." Carl promised. "After that I've got some things to do." He then departed the solar and noticed his brother had followed him.

"What are you up to, brother? You just arrived and already ready to depart again?" Edmure asked as he followed Carl through the halls. At Carl's questioning look, Edmure elaborated. "You have that 'Things Need Doing, and I'm About Business' look on. I figured you would be leaving soon to do…whatever it is."

Carl chuckled at the evidence that he was still himself if his younger brother could still read him like that. Yet more evidence that the family bonds they had were real and not manufactured.

"You're right. I've got to leave immediately on some errands. I'll only be away for a couple days, but with the completion of my task, we'll be in a much better position in this troubled time. I don't want to say more about it where there are ears to hear, though." Carl warned Edmure against asking more questions.

The two brothers arrived outside the apartments set up for Lord Stark and his heir. After knocking and being bidden to enter, because it would be impolite to do otherwise, Carl greeted the two men.

"My father knows about your survival now, Lord Stark, and is eager to get some planning done, while my sister is eager to reunite with her future husband." Carl passed on. "Edmure here will escort you there, while I have a task to fulfill. I must depart hastily to accomplish it. I'm sure my father will tell you more of it when you have your meeting."

With a few more suitable exchanges of pleasantries, Carl departed. He gathered several of their skilled guards to accompany him on his journey to meet up with someone who had been impatiently waiting for some time.

The group of men were soon galloping out the gates of Riverrun on their way. It was just past noon, so they had some travel time still left in the day, and a fair few miles to go.

As they were traveling, Carl thought back to what he had been doing the past week to set up his actions for this day. It had certainly been a busy week in the past, given that he wasn't supposed to do much before he caught up in his time.

After a bit of thought Carl had realized that he hadn't necessarily needed to be too circumspect. There was a lot happening that his past self wasn't aware of, due to the pitiful information passing ability of this world. So he had had a lot more leeway than he originally thought he did.

The first thing he had done was to break into…


	62. ASOIAF 05

The first thing he had done was to break into the Citadel and make a copy of all the knowledge of the Maesters. There was no way he wasn't stealing all those books!

Carl still remembered how, when he was younger, Maester Naet had tried to convince Lord Hoster to send Carl to the Citadel to become a Maester. While he respected Maester Naet and felt the man was loyal to his father, Lord Tully, Carl also felt like the man held dual loyalties to his Lord and to the Maesters.

Maester Naet _knew_ how much Lord Tully valued his heir, Carl, but he still tried to convince Lord Tully to "donate" Carl to the Maester's order when he saw how smart and quick learning Carl was.

Before Carl regained his memories, he didn't think too much of it. That's just how the Maesters were. But now that Carl remembered the situation and how hard Maester Naet worked to convince Lord Tully to pass Carl on to the Maester order, he held a bit of a grudge against the Maesters.

That inherent greed for Carl's talent to "belong" to the Maester order irritated Carl to no end. That arrogance and hubris of the Maesters to believe that they are the only people who should have control over talented people, and control over who was educated, was so incredibly offensive to Carl's sensibilities.

He also saw it as a form of power control. The Maesters controlled who could be educated, who could pass messages through their crow network, and they controlled what people could learn.

Even though many Lords and noblemen could go to learn from the Maesters and not join their order, in the end they would incur a debt to the Maesters for the privilege of learning. That debt would forever influence their decision making.

So Carl looked very disfavorably on the way that the Maesters controlled their power of education. He felt no guilt in the decision to steal knowledge that the Maesters crouched over more jealously than a dragon guards its hoard.

From the comfort of the Yamato's bridge, Carl plotted a course for Oldtown.

He already had eyes on Brandon and Lord Stark through his spy satellites, so he would be able to return in time to intercept them before they got themselves killed in a week's time. Carl shook his head ruefully. The things he does for family.

Since he had a week of time to spare, Carl had some items on his list to do in the meantime.

Carl left the Yamato in orbit and teleported down to the airspace above Oldtown. Oldtown was a harbor city in the south-west, on the coast of the Reach. Carl could still smell the sea air from his height above the city. It was still night when Carl arrived, which suited his purpose just fine, since most of the people would be asleep.

The city was mostly dark, lit only by a few fires, candles, and torches here and there. Some taverns and brothels still open and doing business. Some guard patrols wandering their "safe" routes.

The Citadel itself was dark at this time, indicating that most of the Maesters were already asleep at this late hour. That just made the already easy job even easier.

Carl manipulated his profound energy and flew down to the Citadel's roof. Spreading his senses, he scanned the building for any active personnel wandering around. He could have done all this with his technology easily, but Carl found the idea of personally breaking and entering the Citadel, home of the Maesters, to be much more enjoyable than teleporting the books up for scanning from his ship.

There were still a few young people awake in their rooms, studying late into the night. They seemed really determined to earn their links.

Earning their links, forging their links, forging their chain were all phrases that were used to indicate that someone had proved their mastery in a subject. Each link of a different metal represented mastery in a different area of knowledge, which they proudly wore around their neck to show their abilities.

Aside from personally offending Carl by trying to convince Hoster to force Carl to enlist, Carl's issue with the Order of Maesters didn't only have something to do with them being concerned over their power and influence.

By this point after having been the husband of the leader of an Empire and a leader of an Empire himself, he understood the politics and jockeying for position that humans do in the halls of power. He understood the methods that people will employ to keep their power, so he wasn't surprised by the actions of the Maesters.

No, his annoyance was that the Maesters were so bloody stupid in how they jealously hoarded their knowledge and only served the lords and nobles. They claimed to be knights of knowledge, but they never worked to push the boundaries of what they knew, only jealously squatted on what little they already had.

Carl had just spent the last ten years / couple centuries working hard to learn everything he could and uplift the human race and their allies in a few _galaxies. _To then come here to this tiny kingdom and see how small minded these maesters were personally offended Carl on a deep level.

Carl flew down from the roof and landed in front of the Citadel's gates. He stood there for a moment, looking at the two large green sphinx statues on either side of the gate. After spreading his senses, he learned of the nature of the colored stone. They were large blocks of Aventurine, with a hint of blood and fire magic residue.

'Apparently the statues were shaped with the Valyrian magic.' Carl thought. 'There must be a reason the Targaryen's house words are _Fire and Blood_. It's probably a left over from when they were of Valyria. House Targaryen only came and started conquering the seven Kingdoms about a hundred years after the Doom of Valyria, which was not even three hundred years ago. So many mysteries to discover.' Carl thought as he used a bit of telekinesis and silencing spells to silently open the locked doors and entered the front doors of the Citadel.

Now that he had "openly" and arrogantly entered the Citadel by the front door, Carl decided to sneak the rest of the way. Pulling on his magic, he cast the standard triple S stealth spells on himself. The SSS stealth spells obscured him from detection by Sight, Sound, and Scent.

One of these days Carl was going to have to figure out how to use one spell to do all three instead of relying on the three separate spells he learned in the Harry Potter world.

Quickly orienting himself, Carl moved through the dark halls towards the largest collection of books. There wasn't even a lit torch in the halls to light someone's path. Carl figured that since no one was up, it was too big of an expense for the Maester's to bother with.

Carl was somewhat surprised there weren't guards inside the citadel itself. He knew there were some that wandered the grounds and the outer wall, but Carl had bypassed all those by simply flying directly to the Citadel doors.

The door to the library was firmly locked at this time of night when Carl arrived, but that didn't stop him for more than a second. He had too many methods to bypass such a simple lock. Deciding to use his telekinesis, the door silently swung open just as Carl reached it, before swinging closed behind him.

Carl spent several minutes idly looking around the large library. Despite himself he was a little impressed at the sheer number of books he was seeing. The Maesters must have been busy gathering, hoarding, and copying the books over the past few centuries.

There was no way he would be able to personally peruse their library in a short time. But he had some cheats available to him.

Now that Carl was here, he decided to hand off the hard work to someone else. He contacted the Yamato's VI and added the job of scanning all the books while he looked around for any hidden caches of secret magical items, knowledge, or dragon eggs that speculative fiction told him should be here.

Small flashes of white light told Carl that the VI had the job well in hand. It was teleporting up the books, scanning them, and returning them in a matter of seconds. Much faster than Carl could do on his own even with magic. That was the benefit of technology.

The Vi would create a database and virtual library, organized by author, title, and subject matter. A report would be generated for Carl, informing him of the general gist of the knowledge base the Maesters had, and anything of interest that Carl didn't already know would be highlighted for his later study.

Carl figured that most of that knowledge would consist of history. But after seeing those two statues in front of the Citadel, there was a decent chance of the Maesters having some magical knowledge that came from Valyria that would be of interest to Carl.

As to whether there were still intact libraries and knowledge in the ruins of Valyria after the Doom destroyed it, that was something that Carl would learn later, after a detailed survey of the area.

In the meantime, Carl wandered the halls of the Citadel, the largest center of learning on Westeros. It was admirable in its own way. They really had collected a large amount of interesting things to study. With the Lords as their sponsor, they had enough standing and power in this medieval world to do some interesting things.

Carl found one hall that had skeletons of various creatures on display. The giant's skeleton was most interesting for the remnants of magic that were still present in the bones. The 10-14 foot tall giants of Westeros were only half as tall as the 25 foot tall giants of the Harry Potter world.

So while they were on the small side, the remnants of magic in the Giant's bones intrigued Carl. He decided that he would have to meet the Giants in this world at some point. It would be interesting to look them over.

After some time, Carl arrived in the room where the Dragon glass candles were kept. Dragon glass is what the common people called obsidian. The glass candles that the Maesters kept were 18 inches tall and twisted looking. Carl cast some diagnostic spells on the candles and raised an eyebrow at the results.

Apparently these candles could be used to communicate with other candles as well as scry far off places. The distance viewing aspect of the candle's magic was interesting, since it dipped more into prophetic visions than any other magic type that Carl knew.

Carl was glad he had visited the Citadel personally. Aside from studying this intriguing magic, he could tell that someone would be able to spy on him with these candles, if they knew to look for him. But now that he knew how they worked, he could easily block their ability.

Carl pulled out the materials he needed from his Warehouse and in 15 minutes had crafted an amulet that would block the candles from being used to spy on him. He smiled at the amulet he had crafted, before putting it away in his Warehouse.

He then pulled out some materials and crafted a duplicate of the Dragon glass candles. His duplicates did nothing more than look exactly like the ones the Maesters had. Switching them out, he put the real Dragon glass candles away in his Warehouse.

Even though he had the impression that none of the Maesters practiced magic, he wasn't going to leave the real candles behind on the off chance that they could be used against him or his people.

After exploring for some time through the Citadel, Carl was a little disappointed he didn't find anything really interesting. Like a hidden cache of dragon eggs. Or the secret to crafting Valyrian steel. Or some other fun hidden magical trove.

'Ah, well. I know there are at least three eggs out there somewhere. It's only a matter of time before my spy probes find them.' Carl consoled himself. He would get some local style dragons to play with somehow.

It was getting close to dawn, and Carl had somewhere to be later that day, so he cut off his rather unfruitful exploration of the Citadel. Opening a window, he flew out of the building and closed the window behind him. After orienting himself in the air, he flew off in the direction of Harrenhal. He had a meeting to crash.

* * *

Carl was riding his newly cloned horse through the forests outside of Harrenhal while whistling a tune, acting completely nonchalant. He didn't want to bother with purchasing a subpar horse from some out of the way place, so he'd had the Yamato clone him a strong mount. And compared to the unenhanced horses around Westeros, his was leagues ahead on strength, endurance, and speed. Just one of those little bonuses of having advanced technology and knowing how to enhance a horse's physique.

After a few minutes he rounded a bend and came upon the sight of a familiar 16 year old girl waiting next to a large tree, nervously pacing back and forth. Her horse was contentedly munching the surrounding grass.

Carl put a surprised look on his face when he saw that Lyanna saw him. "Why, what a surprise!" Carl called out. "I didn't expect to see the Northern Rose out here, without guards and looking like she's doing something shady!"

"Carl! What are you doing here!?" Lyanna exclaimed, looking a little frustrated at his presence.

Carl chuckled a bit at her cross expression. "What? Am I not welcome in your lovely presence? Are we not friends, Lyann?" Carl put a comically tragic hurt expression on his face to tease the girl.

Lyanna stamped her feet in frustration at his jesting. "Who else knows you are here, Carl?" Lyanna angrily and intently asked instead of answering Carl's question.

"We would like to know the answer to that too." A tense voice called from off to the side.

Carl looked over and acted like he was surprised to see the three men that he had expected. He had been tracking them and decided to arrive just before they did. Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and two knights of the Kingsguard, Ser Arthur Dayne and Ser Oswell Whent. Surprisingly the two Kingsguard in white cloaks had their swords drawn while glaring at Carl.

"Hello there Prince Targaryen, Cousin, Ser." Carl cheerfully greeted the three men, ignoring the drawn swords. The amount of threat from the three men were negligible to Carl.

Ser Whent was a cousin from his mother's side. He hadn't had much interaction with him, but he had met him before, so Carl greeted him as a relative, to see if their resolve faces would falter.

Sadly, Ser Whent didn't seem to care one whit for his relative. He cared a great deal more for the opinion of his Prince, if the increased glare was anything for Carl to judge by.

The two Kingsguard spread out to bracket Carl and not allow him the chance to escape before their Prince got his answers. As if Carl was going to run anywhere when he spent so much effort to make sure he arrived at just this time.

Ser Arthur Dayne on Carl's right was a famous knight known as the Sword of the Morning. He was considered to be one of the most chivalrous warriors, and very good with the sword. He was considered nearly unmatched if he wielded his house's greatsword Dawn. Dawn was a sword made from a falling star that was tracked down by the founder of House Dayne over 10,000 years ago.

Carl noticed that Ser Dayne was in fact wielding his greatsword Dawn. This just got a bit more interesting, seeing how serious they were.

Ser Oswell Whent was wearing his well known helmet emblazoned with a black bat to show himself as a proud member of House Whent. He too was considered to be excellent with a blade, which is why he was part of the kingsguard, no doubt.

"Rhaegar!" Lyanna called out excitedly upon seeing the Prince.

Carl sighed. It seems like Lyanna really did come of her own volition. Looking at the attitude of the Prince and the Kingsguard, they weren't planning on letting anyone interfere with their mission.

"Lyanna." The prince smiled warmly at Lyanna. Carl felt quite annoyed since he could see that the Prince was acting and putting on a play for Lyanna's affections.

While Carl may have had many relationships in the past with a large number of women and would probably have many more, he never got involved with anyone unless the feelings between the two were genuine. He was always open and honest in their relationship, and always kept true. Never to cheat the feelings and sincerity of the other party.

So seeing Rhaegar being false and deceitful right in front of Carl's face annoyed the hell out of him.

Rhaegar nudged his horse, intending on riding forward to "romantically" meet with Lyanna, secure in the knowledge that Carl was check and mated by the presence of his two Kingsguards.

"So, what brings the prince and his two guards here on such a lovely morning?" Carl asked while maneuvering his horse to intercept the prince before his horse could take two steps. He had drawn Blue Orchid that was in the shape of a Valyrian steel bastard sword, making his intent to get in their way plain.

"It's no business of yours, boy." Ser Whent spat. "Now step aside before you get yourself gutted like a trout."

"I'm hurt at your attitude, cousin." Carl sardonically laughed. "But I'm afraid your joke Whent a little flat there. Besides, it is quite improper of your Prince to be meeting up here with a lady without her having a guard or chaperone. So I volunteered my services, being a good friend of her and her family. Don't you know how badly this could affect the Prince's reputation, let alone the lady's in question?"

Carl's chastisement wasn't taken well by Ser Whent, if his grinding teeth were any indication. The Prince's calm expression finally changed, his eyebrows scrunching up in annoyance. As the Prince and heir of the Kingdom, there were very few that dared interfere in his business. Ser Dayne had a completely expressionless face, but his eyes never left Carl's, always prepared for combat.

"Carl Tully!" Lyanna almost growled at him. "I won't put up with interference in my affairs from my brothers. What makes you think you can tell me what to do?"

Carl sighed at the stubborn young woman. Was she so eager to get away from Robert that she willingly allowed herself to be deceived by the Prince? Was she fooled by the romance of it all, and hoped for the fairy tale ending?

"What happens between the Prince and Lyanna Stark is the Prince's business. Not yours." Ser Dayne coldly declared, his eyes never leaving Carl's.

Carl sighed again at the man who seemed to almost worship the Prince. Whatever the prince decided would be what Dayne thought was right. What could Carl do when people were so stubborn they wouldn't listen to reason? He could only introduce his ideas forcefully remonstrate with them until their minds were changed.

This was a huge reason why so many people subscribed to the might is right attitude. It helped them avoid arguing with idiots that wouldn't bend no matter what was said. Might as well skip the blather and get right to the dance.

"And what does our esteemed Prince say on the matter, hmm?" Carl asked airily. He already knew the fight was going to happen. Even if he didn't interfere with the Prince's business, it was highly likely that he would try to use force to shut Carl up. Or at the very least take him prisoner so he couldn't spread news.

The blond haired purple eyed prince in black and red looked deeply at Carl, as if judging his determination. Carl simply raised an eyebrow while smiling steadily. He would not be swayed from stopping them here. Maybe once their heads were softened and they were willing to listen to reason, he could play nice with them.

"As the heir to House Tully, you owe allegiance to my family. Step aside. I have an engagement with the lady." Rhaegar stated, attempting to use the threat of the kingdom to force Carl's behavior.

That threat might have deterred Carl before he turned 18 and regained his memories. He would have had to think twice about whether taking action would be worth the risk of bringing trouble back to his small family.

But now that Carl had access to his full memory and power set, that was a pitifully small threat.

Lyanna, still on foot under the tree, watched the confrontation anxiously. She had a good friendship with Carl and didn't want to see him hurt for stubbornly interfering with her business. But the Prince was her best bet at getting out of marrying that Baratheon oaf that had nothing but fighting, drinking, and whoring on his mind. And not necessarily in that order.

"Well, then. Our course is set." Carl laughed wildly and spurred his horse forward.

The two knights on either side of Carl also sent their horses forward to intercept Carl before he could reach the Prince. Carl maneuvered his horse to the left, putting Whent out of position as Carl passed on the left of Dayne. As they were passing, Carl swiftly knocked Dayne's greatsword out of position and smacked him with the flat of his blade, knocking him off his horse, and with lighting fast sword moves blocked Whent's strike, knocking him askew.

The Prince sat his horse calmly, positive that the combination of Ser Dayne and Ser Whent could subdue the Tully heir. Even if he had proved talented in the melee of the Tournament of Harrenhal, there was no way he could match the skill of the Kingsguard.

But seeing Ser Dayne being de-horsed in just one strike caused his eyes to go wide in shock. He pulled his own sword, in preparation for joining the fray.

Carl pulled the reins, causing his horse to loop around and face the unbalanced charge of Whent. Carl's last blow had shocked him, numbing the hand and arm that he wielded his sword right down to the shoulder. Whent felt like he was moving through molasses as he saw the incoming attack from Carl, unable to move fast enough to block.

Carl easily used the flat of his blade to knock Whent off his horse. He crashed heavily to the ground, unconscious. Carl looked around Whent was on the ground, unconscious. Dayne was flopping around on the ground like a fish, unable to shake the dizziness from Carl's strike.

"What do you think you're doing Carl!? You're messing everything up!" Lyanna called furiously as she charged him on her horse, her light blade held aloft with the intent to stop Carl from interfering more.

Looking the other way, Carl saw that the Prince was charging him too, with a determined look on his face.

Carl knew that Lyanna was quite skilled from their time on the training grounds, as well as watching her masquerade as the Knight of the Laughing Tree, so he didn't allow himself to underestimate her. But she was the target of this morning's intervention, so he would first subdue the Prince.

He spurred forward to engage Rhaegar first, and with a swing of his sword had knocked aside his strike and hit him with the flat of the blade. He watched in satisfaction as the Rhaegar heavily fell to the ground with a crash.

Looping around, he saw that Lyanna was still charging at him. He shook his head. He just couldn't treat her the same as those men, since he was trying to wake her up and prevent her from being cheated.

Reaching for his magic, he cast a sleep spell on Lynna. He knew he would have to be rough on her with sword work to subdue her, so he went for the soft approach instead.

He caught her sleeping body with telekinesis before she could fall off her horse and hurt herself. With a bit of telekinesis on the reins, he guided Lyanna's horse to a stop near him.

He then levitated the three unconscious bodies along behind him as he rode over to the tree that Lyanna had been waiting under previously. Lyanna's horse obediently followed behind him with her sleeping body draped over the saddle. He smirked a bit when he heard her snort in her sleep.

Carl spent a moment to divest the three men of their weapons before healing up the three men he'd knocked down, making sure they stayed unconscious for the time being.

Thinking for a bit on how he wanted the coming talk to go, he pulled out a wizarding tent and set it up. He set up five chairs in a circle, and tied the four unconscious people to their chair. It just so happened that four chairs his guests were sitting on were inscribed with truth and babbling runes to highly encourage the people under their effect to tell the truth.

If that didn't work he would directly administer veritaserum to get the Prince talking.

The following conversation should prove…enlightening.

Carl cast silencing charms around his interrogation victims so their voices couldn't interrupt the one he was questioning. They could still hear everything happening outside of their circle of silence, but their voices wouldn't pass outside the circle unless Carl temporarily disabled it. He also put a recorder underneath their chairs if they let slip any interesting information while he was interrogating the others, he wouldn't miss it.

With the scene set, Carl woke the four individuals up. The three men still had some traces of blood running down their faces and staining their armor from where Carl had knocked them out. The three men jerked around frantically, trying to free themselves.

Lyanna meanwhile stopped as soon as she realized she was tightly bound and sat glaring at Carl. If looks could kill, Carl would be roast by now.

But since her looks couldn't kill, Carl simply watched her adorably petulant pouting with a grin on his face.

It took the group a few minutes to realize that despite their yelling, they could only hear themselves and not the others. Carl savored the look of unease that crossed the men's faces when they realized that something strange was happening here.

Especially the look of unease on the Prince's face gave Carl some happy thoughts. It wasn't quite to the point where the Prince gave up on the idea of being able to pressure Carl into releasing him with the threat of the Kingdom, but it was a realization that all was not well.

Rhaegar may have also been thinking of the Defiance of Duskendale, where his father was held captive for over six months. Rhaegar firmed his will, determined that he wouldn't lose his dignity if something similar happened to him.

Carl meanwhile just sat casually in his chair, looking at his four guests while sipping on some Root Beer. He was waiting for the moment when they finally calmed down so he could begin, but it was taking some time for the two kingsguard knights to stop trying to free themselves. Even Prince Rhaegar was becoming impatient because it had become obvious to him what Carl was waiting for.

Rhaegar assumed it was because Carl was playing power games, and he wouldn't be far wrong.

Rhaegar wasn't completely right, though, since Carl really just didn't want to deal with shouting men who didn't _listen_. Carl was waiting for the moment where all of his prisoners realized they didn't have any power in the situation and calmed themselves down so they could have a conversation.

Several minutes later Dayne and Whent finally calmed down and sat panting, glaring holes through Carl. Carl so wanted to condescendingly pat them on the heads as if they were puppies, but he manfully refrained. He would have to wait at least another half an hour for them to calm down if he insulted them like that.

"Well, glad to see everyone is finally paying attention." Carl finally said, the first words he had voiced after the four woke up. "I was hoping to have this conversation the easy way. But it seems everyone here was quite stubborn and wanted to fight, instead of talking. So, I can only use this method to force a conversation. I should mention that there is a silencing spell around each of you. Your voice won't go beyond that circle, so cursing me out won't do you any good."

The four suddenly started, only now realizing that they had only heard their own voices cursing Carl, but hadn't heard the others, even though they could see their mouths moving.

"We'll start this question and answer session with our esteemed Prince Rhaegar." Carl turned off the silencing charm around Rhaegar.

"What do you hope to accomplish from this foolish assault on our person, Carl Tully?" Prince Rhaegar immediately demanded.

Rhaegar was completely flummoxed at Carl's reaction, which was to chuckle in amusement. Rhaegar had expected for Carl to shout defiance, or demands, or some rebellious platitudes. Of anything he expected, for Carl to simply _laugh_ was beyond his expectations.

The two kingsguard seemed to take great offense at Carl laughing at their prince. Which is exactly why Carl had them silenced, so they couldn't interrupt.

"That's not how this works, Rhaegar Targaryen. I'll be asking the questions here." Carl looked over at Lyanna and saw that she at least was able to hold herself back and wait to find out just what Carl was up to, if only because she recognized that she couldn't get out of the ropes. She'd already found that her hidden blades were gone, and the ropes seemed to move on their own to keep her from wriggling out. She was well and truly stuck.

Carl looked back over to see the sour expression on Rhaegar's face, which amused him greatly. For some reason, Carl had decided he really didn't like Rhaegar, even if he wasn't sure just why. He didn't particularly hate Rhaegar, but he definitely didn't like him. Maybe he would meditate on it later to figure out just why that was.

"Okay, first question. Why were you meeting Lyanna Stark today in such a remote area?" Carl asked Rhaegar.

"I was going to take her away to marry her." Rhaegar was surprised that his mouth ran off without him, even though he had no intention of answering the questions Carl posed him.

Even though the babbling and truth runes caused them to speak, they didn't have to elaborate too much as long as they answered the question. So Carl would have to keep asking more detailed questions.

"How were you going to marry her? Don't you already have a wife?" Carl asked.

"We were going to wed in a Weirwood grove. Yes, I am married to Princess Elia Martell." Rhaegar answered.

"Hmm, interesting. How can you justify marrying a second woman if you already have a wife?" Carl probed.

"Only in the North is marrying in a Weirwood grove considered a legitimate marriage. The rest of the Kingdoms would accept that our children were legitimate, but would not really consider Lynna a proper wife, especially with my marriage to the Princess Elia."

Carl noticed Lyanna's eyes narrowing at the Prince. Apparently she wasn't liking where the direction of the answers were going.

"Oh? And what did you think about Lyanna not being considered a proper wife?" Carl asked.

"It was very necessary, since that way Dorne and the other Lords wouldn't be too bothered by my 'youthful indiscretion', and wouldn't cause too much trouble. It would also allow me to continue controlling Lyanna if she thought she was an honorable and proper wife according to her people's customs. Besides, I needed her to bear a legitimate child for me."

Oh, yes. Lyanna was quite upset with Rhaegar's cold blooded answers that had nothing to do with feelings and romance.

"Oh? Why did you need any children you had with Lynna Stark to be considered legitimate?" Carl wondered aloud while watching the growing anger in Lyanna's eyes.

"For the prophecy and because Princess Elia cannot bear any more children for me."

"But you already have a daughter and a son. Enough to secure the succession. Why do you need more children for the prophecy?" Carl asked. Rhaegar looked like he really didn't want to answer that question, wanting to hid certain information.

"I needed another child because of the prophecies I found. I was hoping my son Aegon was to be the promised one. But he wasn't born under the proper signs. The prophecies spoke of a three headed dragon, as well as a Promised Prince, born of Ice and Fire; born under certain signs. I knew I needed at least three children, but my wife could no longer bear children, so I was seeking a solution. And then I saw Lyanna Stark at the Tourney of Harrenhal. The realization struck me that she is of the lineage of the Northern Kings, or Ice, while I am of the lineage of the Targaryens, or Fire. Any children we have would meet the conditions of the prince being born of Ice and Fire. So I needed her to bear that child to fulfill the prophecy."

Rhaegar was very verbose with that answer, but Carl saw that he was holding something else back. Carl didn't want Rhaegar to get away with not being completely honest. "What were all the conditions of the prophesied prince?"

"There would be a bleeding star and much smoke and salt that would herald the birth of the Promised Prince." Rhaegar's jaw snapped shut as soon as he got those words out, looking furious that he was forced to answer.

Lyanna had a look of confusion on her face amidst the anger. His words didn't really make much sense.

"What was your interpretations of those signs of the prophecy, and what were you doing to fulfill them?" Carl zeroed in on the matters that Rhaegar didn't want to confess to.

"The Bleeding Star is a roaming star that only comes about every several hundred years. It will be back in a little more than a year. I simply had to get the timing right for Lyanna to bear a child at the proper time." Rhaegar was trying hard to keep from speaking, but he couldn't stop himself babbling his answers out.

Carl saw out of the corner of his eye that Lyanna was no longer paying any attention to him and only glared at Rhaegar. Apparently the idea that Rhaegar was simply using her for a broodmare didn't sit well with her.

"And the smoke refers to war. I was going to instigate a war. I've already spread the rumors that I've kidnapped Lyanna Stark to have my way with her. With the hotheaded nature of her brother Brandon, I'm sure he'll rush straight to Kings Landing seeking to avenge her honor on me. My father has been increasingly paranoid lately, so he will likely kill Brandon, and he won't stop with just him, once his paranoia is inflamed. War will come because the great houses will not put up with their lords and heirs being executed for no reason. That will fulfill the smoke part of the prophecy."

"The salt means tears. Great grief is needed at the birth of the Promised Prince. Once I am sure that Lyanna is pregnant, she will be locked up in a tower while being fed information on how her family was slaughtered, how the realm is at war because of her. The great guilt and grief she feels will cause her to shed many tears in her grief, thus completely fulfilling the prophecy as the promised prince is born."

Carl saw that Lyanna's confusion had completely turned to anger and rage at hearing Rhaegar's plans for her. Especially as she thought about how naively she had accepted his sweet lies previously. Any amount of affection she had for Rhaegar died, shriveled up in her fury.

Carl coldly sneered at the Prince's confession of his plans for Lyanna. He knew that leaders and rulers had to make hard choices sometimes because of circumstances beyond their control. It was the nature of the job. Sometimes a ruler can't make a good choice; they could only make a less bad decision.

But here was a prince that deliberately sought out the bloodiest and most heartless things to do in order to fulfill some nebulous prophecy. In his great pride and hubris he acted like it was naturally up to him to fulfill prophecies. Of course some prophecy that he read about in a book that had been sitting there for hundreds, if not thousands of years, applied to him, and only him.

If someone tried to convince Carl that Rhaegar didn't have some of the madness that his house was known for, he would have laughed in their faces. Planning to rape some girl so she gave birth at the time a comet was passing by, planning the cold blooded murder of some loyal lords and heirs. Plotting the whole rebellion and war to fulfill such a nebulous thing as prophecy.

If that wasn't madness, Carl didn't know what was.

And of course the idea that the prophecy didn't need mortal help to fulfill it never occurred to Rhaegar. Of course the prophecy wouldn't be fulfilled in 700 years the next time the comet came. No, in Rhaegar's mind it could only apply to him and right now.

"You're a bloody idiot and a mad man, Rhaegar." Carl put up the silence ward around Rhaegar once more and spat at his feet in disgust.

Carl then noticed that Lyanna was back to looking at Carl, but not in an angry manner. She was asking him to let her ask Rhaegar a question. He swiftly made a decision and waved away the silencing charms. "Go ahead and ask your question, Lyanna." He gently said.

She looked back over to Rhaegar with a mix of almost tears and hard faced anger. "Did you truly mean the words you said to me, Rhaegar? Or were they just a way to deceive me?"

"I don't feel anything for you. Well, maybe a little bit of lust, you are good looking after all. I only told you I fell in love with you at first sight to use you to bring the Promised Prince forth." Rhaegar confessed.

The angry tears began to fall from Lyanna's eyes. Carl felt for the girl. He remembered his own heartbreak back in his original world. Just because he was a stupid teenager didn't mean he didn't feel the crushing hurt and betrayal. It may have even amplified the feelings much more than normal because he was a stupid teenager back then, the same as Lyanna was now.

Carl waved and the ropes binding Lyanna let her go. Before Carl could get up to comfort her, she gave a huge cry and threw herself at Rhaegar and started pummeling him.

Carl could have stopped Lyanna's attack at any time, but he thought she deserved to let out her anger a bit. He just made sure that she didn't permanently damage or kill the Prince just yet. She was strong enough to defeat three experienced knights in the joust, after all. She was easily able to beat a man to death. But Carl did chuckle darkly at seeing the frantic struggles of the two Kingsguard Knights where they were tied up because they couldn't protect their Prince from his well deserved beating.

After a few minutes, when she finally wound down, Carl pulled her away and brought her up to a room in the tent. He spent some time simply holding her to comfort her. He was letting her know that even though she felt betrayed, the world wouldn't end for her. She still had family and friends to support her.

He then set up for her to have a bath and a cup of wine. Not that cheap rotgut stuff that they served at tourneys, but some proper wine fortified with magic and profound energy. That always seemed to help his girls in the past settle down their emotions.

Once Carl was sure she was doing okay, he went back downstairs and looked over his prisoners for a bit, shaking his head at what the Prince had confessed. There was no way he would work with a Prince that induced a civil war just to fulfill the nebulous requirements of a prophecy.

At least not while said Prince was a free agent.

The sheer amount of stupidity and underhanded deception in Rhaegar's decision making killed any possibility of Carl ever letting Rhaegar go free. He couldn't ever trust that in the future Rhaegar would actually be able to recognize what was good for the realm. Not when he easily let himself be suckered into some prophecy that he had read in some thousand year old scrolls.

Carl ignored the glares he was getting from the three men and levitated them out of the chairs and down to the cells he had in the basement of his wizard tent.

Carl may or may not have had a lot of fun playing with the tropes of the Harry Potter world.

A sweet wizarding tent with all kinds of bells and whistles was definitely one of those must have items. And yes, he did have quite a few special trunks with huge amounts of land inside. He just didn't have House Elves to manage his Trunkland, because he would have needed stasis pods for them.

Once the prisoners were secured, Carl returned back upstairs and began preparing a meal. He figured that Lyanna would eventually wander back down when she got hungry.

While he was cooking, he wondered what he was going to do with Lyanna for the next week. At the very least he had to keep her and the three stooges out of sight of the gossip channels of the Seven Kingdoms for the next week to keep the timeline stable. But how to explain that to someone with only a Westeros education level?

And he was once more faced with a choice. Should he enslave Rhaegar to act his part? Should he replace the three stooges with HFRs while keeping them locked up? Should he only replace Rhaegar with an HFR, Obliviate the two knights, and let them follow the Robot Rhaegar?

Thinking back on what Rhaegar had planned for Lyanna, Carl suddenly didn't care what his fate would be. It was like the situation of traitors back in the Illusory Demon Realm all over again. Why should he agonize over their fate, and over his morals in dispensing punishment? Why should he torture himself with indecisions over people that deserved to die?

Whether they were imprisoned for the rest of their lives in a jail cell, which was apparently the "humane" thing to do, or if they were imprisoned in their bodies for the rest of their lives, or if they were just executed. Carl was just so done with agonizing over the decision and moral quandary. They deserved whatever their fate was.

Carl decided that he would let Lyanna decide Rhaegar's punishment. It might help her get over the betrayal and sense of being used. But whatever Rhaegar's fate would be, Carl didn't particularly care.

He returned his attention to the pizza he was making. Pizza and Root Beer. Yummm…

* * *

Carl and Lyanna were sitting at the tent's dinner table, having just polished off the last pizza. One of the things Carl enjoyed about cooking was seeing how much people enjoyed his food. And while Pizza wasn't considered exotic in most of the worlds Carl had been too, in this one it was.

He had made some basic sandwiches to make sure his prisoners didn't starve, but otherwise ignored them. They deserved the Spam he fed them. He also ignored when Lyanna took the sandwiches down to them and took the opportunity to yell and beat them with a staff through the prison doors. Carl figured it was cathartic for her, what she needed.

He and Lyanna hadn't talked about important things at dinner, mostly about superficial things like foods and such. Carl was debating in his head how much of what was going on that he would tell Lyanna.

On the one hand, she had been an easily fooled 16 year old girl just a bit ago. But on the other hand, he could see the steel in the silk glove of her personality. Especially when she realized how much she had been fooled, she seemed to be taking on a much more cynical air lately.

"Carl, are you going to tell me now what is going on, or are you going to use your magic to silence me too?" Lyanna asked out of the blue, staring over the dinner table at Carl.

Carl didn't answer right away, looking in her eyes to judge her sincerity and temperament. He felt like he could trust her now. She wasn't going to be flighty and go off blabbing secrets. She wasn't going to let herself be fooled by promises made of air. Lyanna felt nervous over his silent contemplation, so she started explaining herself.

"The main reason I trusted Rhaegar's word so much is because it gave me a way out from my betrothal with Robert. I see how Robert looks at me, and how he's infatuated with my looks, but he doesn't really know me, or respect me. The moment I'm not around, Robert goes looking for the nearest whore to lay with. He doesn't care that I hate it. He doesn't respect our betrothal enough to stop. I hate it." Lyanna was clenching her fists tightly, as if she wanted to throttle someone, or several someones. "And I know he would continue doing it even after marriage. Even if I chastised him for it, he would just blow me off. I just can't allow myself to marry a man like that."

Carl looked at her contemplatively for a moment more. "Tell me, Lyanna. If you had the power to control your life without anyone to order you around, what would you do?"

Lyanna gazed away from Carl, her unfocused gaze staring off into space, thinking on the question. The idea was so appealing. Just leave all the expectations and betrothals behind. Just live her life...doing what exactly? Without the food, shelter, and gold of House Stark, what would she have? How would she live? But if she had the power…

"I would want to marry a good man, one who loved me. I would want to travel and see the world with him. I would want to enjoy life with my new and old family. I would want to gallop my horse across the Dothraki Sea. Figure out a way to see Valyria. Climb the tallest mountain. Sail the seas. I want to _live_." Lyanna had a light of life inside her as she extolled her desires.

Carl noticed just how beautiful she looked at that moment.

She then slumped back into her seat. "Instead I'll be relegated to a house wife while my oaf of a husband goes whoring every night." She finished, with her head drooping down, already half convinced of her eventual fate.

"Perhaps not." Carl murmured, causing Lyanna's head to raise abruptly so she was staring at Carl.

"What do you mean?" She demanded, pleaded.

"I mean, Lyanna, that I can help you gain enough strength to live your life as you want."

"Yes!" Lyanna exclaimed.

"It won't be easy." Carl warned her in a serious tone of voice.

"I don't care. I want it." Lyanna demanded.

"There are conditions to this offer." Carl chuckled at the accidental innuendo before warning her once more.

"Whatever they are, they are worth it. I know you, and trust that you wouldn't hurt me." Lyanna gazed expectantly at Carl.

"Okay then. Remember your words. Now, take my hand." Carl offered his hand. The moment Lyanna grasped Carl's hand, he shifted the both of them into the Time Pearl.

Lyanna gasped in shock and wonder as she looked around her. They were in the middle of a plaza that was set up as the arrival and departure area. There were tall buildings on three sides, raised up more than 10 stories. The fourth side led to one of the practice fields that went on for as far as her eyes could see.

The buildings were made out of a strange metal with large glass windows. They were the most clean and fascinating buildings she had ever seen. Everything looked different, strange. Even the walkways were made out of stone. But it was all smooth, as if the stone had been poured instead of the normal cobblestone.

She looked back at Carl, wide eyed. "What is this place?" She asked in wonder.

"This is where you will learn, sweat, and bleed to gain the strength you wish for." Carl answered. "Now, come. I'll show you were you will sleep." Carl led her off to the dorms. It had been a long and trying day for her. "Tomorrow very early we will start with your training." Carl warned her with a sadistic smile. "So get some decent sleep."

Lyanna warily looked at him while following behind. She didn't like the look of that smile one bit…

* * *

Lyanna collapsed to the ground, completely exhausted from running miles with a tire tied to her waist, while a "robot" whipped her. If it wasn't for the amazing physical prowess and the ability to fly that Carl had shown here, she would never have put up with such treatment! His amusement at her pain and suffering just made her angrier!

* * *

Lyanna was lying almost boneless face down on the massage table. The few "ki" pokes that Carl had done to her had gotten rid of most of the aches and pains from the day's training. And now she was being massaged by Carl, which felt heavenly. Just the massage alone was almost worth the pain of the day's exercise.

But Carl's knowing smirk still pissed her off! The jerk!

* * *

Lyanna looked over her computer terminal to see what lessons she would have today. There had been a download the previous day of knowledge about a topic called Algebra. She still wasn't sure exactly what applications the complicated math had. But looking at the worksheets on her screen, it looked like she would be solving problems on the subject to really cement in her mind the topics.

So many of the things that Carl was introducing to her was beyond the knowledge of anyone on Westeros. If asked before she entered the time dilation, she didn't think just a few months would have made such a huge difference in her outlook and life.

But that was before she was introduced to so many new things. Brand new knowledge. Movies. And chocolate. And chocolate ice cream. She supposed she could forgive Carl some of his amusement at her expense, as long as he kept providing her with chocolate.

He was still a jerk! But a chocolate bearing jerk.

* * *

It had been over a year since Carl began training her, and Lyanna was missing her family quite a bit. Carl had explained to her how he had blindly made the jump back in time to save her father and brother from the Mad King. She had nearly cried herself to sleep that night, thinking about what the consequences for her family would have been if not for Carl. She could only blame herself for listening to that bastard Prince.

So she was willing to forgive Carl for a lot. But he sure pushed the edge of what she was able to forgive with his damned knowing smirks and jokes! Especially because she hadn't been able to defeat the training memory of Carl back when he was just as far along. She was so close, though!

* * *

Lyanna was so ecstatic! She had finally beaten memory Carl! She had been so excited she'd jumped into Carl's arms and kissed him. Then immediately punched his shoulder. That damned smirk again!

* * *

Lyanna was proud of her progress. She had already reached the Martial Master level. Already she could walk a wide path across Westeros if she so desired. And that wasn't even including the amazing knowledge and technology that Carl had available.

Her view of what she wanted out of life had changed completely in the past five years. She still loved her family, but there was so much more that she wanted, too. No way was she going to let Carl with his damned smirks that fired up her blood get away from her!

* * *

Carl smiled down at Lyanna where she was cuddled up to him in their shared bed as she slept off their bout of lovemaking. They were eight years into their training session. Before going back in time and saving Lyanna as well as her family he hadn't had any idea or expectation that he would grow so fond of the wild girl. But spending so much time with her here, alone together, had given him them time to get to know each other. Her excitement and joy in life were very endearing and refreshing for Carl who had lived for quite a long time by this point.

Carl was pretty sure that his idea to just chill for the next 10 years as the heir of Riverrun wasn't going to happen due to Lyanna's influence. At the very least he was sure to spend most of his time exploring their world together, when they weren't building up the North and Riverrun to be the best Kingdoms around. Maybe they would even travel around the galaxy to see what was out there and only visit home on special occasions.

They still hadn't had a discussion of what she wanted to do with Rhaegar when they left in two more years. Carl wasn't fool enough to open that topic. Either she would bring it up herself, or it could remain unspoken until they exited the Time Pearl.

She knew about his capabilities so she could decide the most appropriate punishment for Rhaegar when the time came.

And since she knew about the Jump Chain and that he only had 10 years in the world, not including time dilations, then he was sure they would be spending lots of time together exploring, instead of attending to boring administrative duties. Carl snorted. He would probably have to unload the heir duties on Edmure so they would have more time to enjoy themselves before he was off to another world.

He would have to see about sneaking in some training downloads into Edmure's head at night so his younger brother could take over the heir duties. That way Edmure wouldn't feel overwhelmed with the sudden extra duties.

And he wouldn't be surprised if Lyanna asked for the training session for her family at some point. He was sure that if she did ask for her family, then he would drag his own family in with them as well. He really wasn't sure if he could convince his two ladylike sisters to participate in the martial training. He would have to work on his persuasion skills. But at the very least they could benefit from the profound cultivation if nothing else.

Carl decided to stop thinking about future possibilities and just relaxed into a pleasant and content sleep in bed next to his girl.


	63. ASOIAF 06

Carl and Lyanna landed in the wizarding tent that he had set up prior to taking them into the Time Pearl. He looked over as Lyanna took a big breath of air, and dashed outside, laughing at finally being back home. Carl followed a bit more sedately, enjoying her enthusiasm.

He sent out his profound senses, and followed her profound senses as she spread her awareness around and simply exulted in being back home, and being in control of her fate. Finding out that the Prince she thought would take her away from her loveless arranged marriage had only planned on using her as a broodmare and sacrifice for a prophecy had really hurt her. She had worked hard at her training, almost like she was possessed, so great was her determination to get strong so she could control her own fate.

Carl also spread out his senses beyond what Lyanna was capable of at the moment to examine the surroundings and found that there hadn't been any changes while they were inside time dilation. They had only been gone for a night on the outside, so not much could have changed, really.

There was still not anyone in the immediate vicinity. The wards he had set up around the tent would insure that no one would be able to approach, or even see the tent. So Carl pulled out a couple Petes that would see to the feeding and care of their three prisoners for the next week. He and Lyanna were going to travel to the shattered peninsula that used to be Valyria for the next several days to avoid time travel shenanigans.

They had already discussed what to do with the Prince when they finished their training, but that would wait for a few days. During their time in training Carl had explained to Lyanna all about how he had traveled back in time, and how they needed to not disturb how thing had gone so that the time loop would remain stable.

She wasn't particularly happy about how she couldn't stop the Mad King from killing the analogs that would be in place of her father and brother to prevent them from having to watch their deaths. But in the end, since they were going to prevent those deaths, she was at least content with what they could do.

"Carl! What are we waiting for? Let's go!" Lyanna called out excitedly.

Carl chuckled and swooped in, embracing Lyanna for a kiss. While distracting her with a kiss, he pulled out her battlecruiser sneakily. It didn't work, since her senses "saw" the ship as soon as he pulled it out. Her amused laughter as she broke away from him was a good enough reaction that Carl just chuckled as he followed her into her ship, which she had named Dauntless.

They swiftly traveled along the halls of the ship, Lyanna smiling proudly at her ship that she kept touching and caressing in passing. Like the rest of the people he trained, he didn't gift her the ship until the very end of her training, so she was still very excited about having her own ship.

They arrived on the bridge, where Lyanna took the Captain's seat, bouncing up and down in the chair excitedly. She pulled up the hologram interface, and did a quick look through of the systems. There were any number of ways they could control and interface with their ships. Voice commands, mentally through the interface chairs, profound energy transmission, hologram interface, or the old school: keyboard interaction.

Carl sat back for the moment, enjoying watching Lyanna discover and enjoy the experience. Currently they were concerned about affecting the time line, so they would stealthily depart the local area to avoid the temptation to meddle too much and spend some time inspecting the ruins of Valyria to see what they could discover.

They would return in time to prevent certain deaths, replacing them with lifelike HFRs that would convincingly fake the deaths of the originals. Carl once more paid attention to his surroundings when Lyanna engaged the ship's cloak and brought them up into orbit.

He looked over Lyanna's shoulder as she brought up the scans on the ruins of Valyria. It was once a whole peninsula, but now it had been shattered into dozens of islands that no one could penetrate by sailing in. Anyone who sailed a ship close to the cursed islands was never heard from again.

"Look at the amount of poison gas that is just sitting in the area." Lyanna commented while she continued to read the scans. "No wonder no one can explore the ruins."

From the ship's scans, Carl saw that a big reason no one could get close to the ruined land was because of the incredible amount of volcanic activity. Poison gasses were continually vented from the ground and water, which would make it deadly for anyone to venture near without some kind of breathing aid or protection.

"Look at those energy readings." Carl pointed at a particular report. "It looks like there is also plenty of lingering dark magics from whatever the Valyrians did to cause the Doom." Carl frowned in thought. "A cursed land indeed."

Lyanna looked up at Carl in question. While she had learned quite a bit about magic, she was nowhere near the expert Carl was. "Is it going to be a problem for us while we explore?"

He smiled reassuringly at her, confident in their ability to protect themselves. "I'll have to craft some special wards for us, but it should be fine. I'll get started on that if you want to come up with a plan for what and where we explore?"

Lyanna smiled at him, kissing him enthusiastically before pushing him off her bridge so he would get started sooner. Chuckling, Carl made his way to one of the labs and crafting stations where he began working.

Carl spent the next couple of hours working on a computer to design the wards he needed to counter whatever lingering magics were infecting the land around Valyria. With the calculating power of the advanced computers, it didn't take very long at all for Carl to design and begin crafting the needed wards.

His time in the Stargate Universe had certainly been well spent. Carl thought back to when he had been breaking into Slytherin's vault, and how it had taken him years of effort to do the calculations by hand. But with the computer those calculations took barely any of his time. And it only took so long because he didn't have enough useful information on blood magics.

He had gathered what books he could from the Harry Potter world that dealt with the Dark Arts, but that by no means meant he knew everything there was to know on the subject. From what he could gather from the Harry Potter world's history there had been any number of busy body wizards that had gone on crusades for the Light to destroy knowledge of Dark and Fel magics.

Carl couldn't even really fault those people for their desire to fight against evil practices like human sacrifice, torture, murder, and many more dark practices. But he thought they were short sighted in many ways. How could they be sure they had destroyed all knowledge of the dark arts? Wizards by nature were a secretive lot, so it wouldn't be surprising if they had many stashes of their books hidden away, specifically to ensure they survived.

A few generations after the book burning took place, a dark wizard could pull out one of those hidden books and use the magic they learned inside to go on a rampage. The wizarding police would have no idea how to counter those dark arts found by ambitious Dark Lords precisely because there was no record of those arts. Which would make the job of countering the wannabe dark lords so much more difficult.

Carl shrugged the issue out of his mind. Ultimately, it wasn't his problem. And the society in that world had continued to run, more or less unconquered by Dark Lords. So their actions in burning those Dark Art books must have had some effect in the end. Who was he to say for sure they were wrong in their actions, even if he was frustrated from not having more knowledge?

Once Carl had finished building the ward necklaces, he commed Lyanna and joined her in the armory where they both put on hardsuits for their exploration of Valyria. The hardsuits were a combination armor and space suit that ensured they had their own air supply and protected them from various contaminations as well as bullets, knives, swords, and energy weapons. Carl may or may not have cheated by adding in expanded spaces where Potentia were used to power the defenses of the suit.

The specially designed ward necklaces may not actually be needed for their excursion, but Carl wanted to be doubly sure they didn't get cursed by any remnants of the Valyrian's magic. A little extra protection never hurt.

After suiting up, Lyanna had her ship fly down to land on the outskirts of the Valyria Freehold Capital. As the two of them exited, they finally laid eyes on the ruins of the city. It was a different feeling to see the ruins in person, compared to watching video feed from satellites.

Despite the incredible damage done from the Doom to the land, most of the buildings in the city itself were still standing, even though superficial damage was done. Most likely it was a result of the protective and foundational magic used to construct the city that allowed the buildings to survive the Doom.

Carl looked over the city architecture that made liberal use of towers, bridges, and parapets. The buildings were designed to exhibit the owner's grand powers and great wealth. Despite being covered in great amounts of ash and being damaged and empty of people, Carl could picture in his head the majestic look the city would have had several hundreds of years ago at the height of its power and civilization.

Dragons would have flown over the city, finding plenty of perches. The slaves would have been busy working in the streets and running errands for their masters. And the great amounts of goods and people that daily flowed into the city would have been a great sign of wealth and power.

Carl's magical senses also told him that there was a great deal of blood sacrifice magic still lingering in the very stone that made up the streets. For the traces to still be there after nearly four hundred years, and the great disaster, meant that the amount of lives sacrificed wasn't small.

The discovery of remnant blood magic lingering in the roads, more than anything, told Carl about the Valyrian Freehold. Power was the most important thing in their society. If one didn't have power, their lives were only a cheap commodity. The best they could hope for was to live as a slave, because otherwise their life's blood may even have been used as a blood magic sacrifice in order to build a better class of paved roads.

A slave's life and blood weren't even worth the paved roads. Power and wealth determined status. That in a nutshell was the old Valyrian Freehold Empire.

As Carl and Lyanna easily strolled and leaped over the fallen rocks and cracked streets, pointing out thing to each other while they trudged through the volcanic ash, and made their way from building to building along Lyanna's planned route, Carl really couldn't find it in himself to mourn the fallen empire. An empire that was so steeped in blood sacrifice that just walking down a normal street caused a reaction in his bones due to the remnant blood magic couldn't elicit much sympathy from Carl. He certainly wouldn't want to raise a family in such an environment.

The day passed by swiftly as Carl and Lyanna made their way from building to building, exploring and looting. From desolate mansions to public markets to guild halls. Carl was somewhat surprised to find many books still intact in various private libraries around the city. The magic in the libraries and books kept them from decaying in the toxic and poisonous air. It was a pleasant surprise.

While Carl didn't especially want to reproduce the civilization of Valyria, he was interested in learning what he could from the dead people. He and Lyanna packed up all the libraries so they could study later. They also found hoards of gold, gems, and various precious metals, including Valyrian Steel.

When Carl later went through the libraries he found, he would discover the secrets to producing Valyrian Steel. He would also learn that there were various grades of the quality for the precious metal. All the various Valyrian Steel swords in the Kingdom Westeros were actually of the lowest grade of the metal, surprisingly enough. The lords of Valyria had been jealous in guarding their power and privileges.

Unsurprisingly the secret to crafting the metal was blood and fire. Dragonfire, specifically. But surprisingly enough, the method to craft the highest rated Valyrian Steel wasn't by sacrificing other people's blood and lives. It was necessary for a lord to voluntarily give their own blood. They would continually donate blood to their swords. The magic imbued in their blood would soak into the sword so that as time went on, the sword would continue to grow stronger as the magical bond between the lord and sword grew.

These methods were naturally kept secret from outsiders so they could only buy, at great expense, the cheapest and weakest forms of Valyrian Steel.

When Carl learned those secrets, he began to ponder whether or not he could use his own blood on Blue Orchid to enhance the blade with a blood link. He had made the purchase at the beginning of the jump to integrate his sword with Valyrian Steel, after all. It was something he would look into after a great deal of study. It wouldn't do to jump into unknown magic before he fully understood it.

But all that was something that Carl learned much later, after the time Carl and Lyanna spent ransacking the city. The other item of note that Carl obtained in the city was dragon eggs that were still viable to be hatched. The dozens of eggs were maintained in spell warded rooms that kept them safe from the destruction of the various Lordly houses.

Carl wasn't surprised that the secrets of the dragons were being kept by the various lords of the Freehold, since that kind of power, control over dragons, was likely what had made the Lords as powerful as they were in the first place. It wasn't something they would easily share.

As the two explored the city, Carl came to the realization that many people of the Freehold had survived the initial disaster. They had been in the various protected areas, the libraries and dragon egg hatcheries for example. Most of those people were slaves, as evidenced by the collars and slave magic still lingering in their bones.

They had been in the warded areas, performing their daily duties, when the disaster had struck. They had watched while the volcanic activity and outpouring of poisonous gasses had enveloped the city and killed nearly everyone.

Carl had no idea how long they had stayed inside the warded areas, protected from the gasses. But eventually a lack of food and water would have meant their deaths in any case. So they tried to leave and were overwhelmed mere feet from the warded areas.

Only after seeing the same scene repeated three times had Carl come to the realization of just how the skeletons that were lying, curled up on their sides, a few feet from the warded areas had met their end. When Carl had shared his theory with Lyanna, she had been horrified on behalf of how those slaves met their end. The fear and despair must have been nigh unbearable. So the two of them gathered up the remains of the slaves and buried them, hoping that their afterlife was much better than their lives had been.

A few days later Carl and Lyanna left the city in the Dauntless to carry out their plans. After the first day of exploring the ruined city, when Carl had a good idea of how to handle the lingering protections and various materials, he had unleashed the Petes to continue the work of exploring and looting, gathering everything into cargo containers that would be picked up later. There was just too much in the city for two people to finish gathering everything in the few days they had before Carl caught up with his time.

The ship's holds were already full of treasure, which Lyanna was most pleased with. The Petes were busy scanning the books into the database, which Carl was pleased with. And the Tully and Stark youths were on their way to Kings Landing to replace and save certain family members who were recklessly charging in to a dangerous situation.

* * *

Carl and Lyanna watched the video feed from the spybot inside the throne room as the Mad King sentenced the HFRs of Rickard and Brandon Stark to death. They watched the replacements for the Stark guards being slaughtered. Carl made sure that all the people they saved would have the footage from the spybots imputed into their memories so they would know the fate they avoided. It would keep them from foolishly charging in once more.

Carl could see that the scene hit Lyanna hard. Even though she knew it wasn't really her family suffering in the video, the HFRs were very accurate and lifelike. She had to work hard to force herself to not to flinch from it. Even though she still flinched from the scene, she seemed to have a need to see the gruesome scene; to remind herself that if it wasn't for Carl, then that would have been the fate of her father and brother. And she would have been taken by Rhaegar to be impregnated and held captive in order to fulfill his gods be damned prophecy. She couldn't forget what fate would have had in store for her.

With his arm around Lyanna's shoulder, Carl could feel her tremble in reaction at watching the scene.

"I've finally made up my mind what to do with Rhaegar for manufacturing this fate for my family." Lyanna whispered, her eyes bloodshot, tears leaking from her eyes. She had been debating for some time between putting the slave seal on Rhaegar to make him suffer more, or simply replacing him with an HFR and sentencing him to death for what he had planned and done.

"He was planning on causing a war for his prophecy. He planned on causing my family's death." Her eyes didn't waver from the grizzly scene on the screen in front of her while she talked to Carl. "And I'm sure that once I had finished my usefulness, he would have disposed of me too. But not before he tortured me for a year to make sure his Promised Prince would be born in 'Smoke and Salt'." She gritted her teeth, hate for Rhaegar evident in her face.

Carl didn't interrupt Lyanna. He knew she needed to get it out of her system. He simply offered his support. He still didn't know what madness possessed Rhaegar to believe he could seek out prophecies to fulfill. More often than not, those who sought out prophecies to fulfill ended up being run over and destroyed by them. Prophecies were fulfilled _despite_ the actions of people like Rhaegar, not _because_ of them.

"At first I was planning on just killing him and replacing him with an HFR. But not now. I want him to be alive and suffer. I want him to be locked in his mind like he would have locked me up in that tower. I want him to see that his prophecy will never come to pass. I want him to realize that he won't be the big hero saving the kingdom by sacrificing everyone but himself. And after a few years, when we've shown him how useless he is, how pointless everything he did was, I want him to die an ignoble death with the realization that nothing he did mattered in the end." Lyanna finished.

A phrase came to Carl's mind right then, as he listened to Lyanna's desire to torment Rhaegar for his part in trying to kill her family. "Kindness to the enemy, is cruelty to the innocent." But a more appropriate quote to describe Lyanna mindset might be "Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd".

Being softhearted to the Mad King and not putting him down would just lead to many more deaths of innocent people as his paranoia ran rampant. He would just continue to attack and kill people because of the madness of paranoia in his mind. And his unstableness would lead to many schemes by people seeing an opportunity to seek power in the chaos, which would lead to more deaths and misery among the people.

Allowing Rhaegar his freedom so he could enact his plan would see many decent men being killed in the war he started for some damned prophecy. Plunging the realm into a war just to have the conditions to give birth to some supposed prophesied child.

Carl knew that the opposite corollary wasn't necessarily true. Being cruel to the enemy wasn't necessarily being kind to the innocent, but he still found he couldn't find it in himself to be sympathetic to Rhaegar's fate. He had no desire to try to convince Lyanna to change her mind so that she would offer Rhaegar a swift death instead of slavery.

Because while Rhaegar would never again be free to act on the lesson he was about to learn, using a cruel method to punish him would help Lyanna vent her feelings and get past the psychological shadow on her heart that was a result of Rhaegar's betrayal.

After seeing Carl's look of concern at her pronouncement, Lyanna knew what Carl's concerns for her were. They had talked it over the past couple years enough. Lyanna gave Carl a reassuring but faint smile while explaining. "Just him. I need Rhaegar to suffer for his plan so I can get past this issue. I won't be going torture happy anytime soon." She promised with a small laugh that Carl joined in on.

Carl didn't belabor the point, they were already on the same page. Before the end of their training, they had already talked about the topics of revenge and justice, and the effects of letting certain feelings fester inside. He had already said what needed to be said, and he had long decided to trust that his girl could vent the hate she had and not dwell on and grow the poison inside her.

"I know you won't let yourself get swept away in bitterness and hate. You're so much better than that." Instead Carl offered support while hugging Lyanna in comfort. "And we can influence how his innocent siblings and children grow, so hopefully they don't fall into the same craziness that he and his father fell into." Carl offered, which caused Lyanna's face to break out into a much more sincere smile.

A day later, after monitoring the situation in Riverrun, Carl put all his technology and satellites that he had deployed into sleep mode. He didn't want to chance accidentally notifying the past Carl about his presence. Just as Carl felt a pulse of energy radiate from Riverrun, his passive scanners notified Carl of a figure that flew up in the air above Riverrun, hovering there for some time before he Apparated away.

Carl kept an eye on the time, and just as expected the past version of him reappeared and launched the Yamato II into orbit before flying off towards Kings Landing. Carl didn't relax until his systems registered the signal from his past self cutting off, indicating that the past version of him had just time turned.

Carl let out a sigh of relief. It appeared as though the time loop had been implemented smoothly. "I'm going to go shut down the clone backup and store the Yamato II." Carl and Lyanna had made their plans, but it never hurt to communicate instead of assuming the other side knew what he was doing. "I'll drop your father and brother off in the morning, and I should be back in Harrenhal in just a couple days to pick you up."

"If you delay anymore than a couple days, who knows what I'll be bored enough to go find to occupy my time with?" Lyanna suggestively said. "I might just go find some trouble to get into."

Carl just laughed as he planted a kiss on his playful girl. "Well, if you get bored and feel the sudden urge to teleport all the slave masters of Pentos onto the bottom the ocean on a whim, for example, I wouldn't be too terribly hurt that you didn't wait for me." He joked back at Lyanna. "As long as you record it, of course."

"Of course." Lyanna smirked a bit, her grey eyes dancing in mirth as she once more pushed him off her bridge, apparently eager to get started on whatever she was planning while Carl was gone.

Carl simply shook his head resignedly at her playful ways before Apparating down to Riverrun to start his part of the plan.

* * *

A day later, Carl had already guided Lord Stark and Brandon Stark back to Riverrun, and now he was on his way to Harrenhal with his guards. His father thought he was going to try to convince Prince Rhaegar to join them and rebel against the King. But that didn't need any work on his part, really, to accomplish. A few seals, a bit of energy, and the Prince would never naysay his plans.

As Carl galloped on his horse with his troop of guards as they approached the area around Harrenhal, he thought over what he had done over the past couple of days. He had "found" the Starks and brought them back to Riverrun, reuniting his sister with her soon-to-be husband.

And now he was about to reunite with Lyanna and bring Rhaegar and his two Kingsguard back with him to Riverrun. Carl figured there would be more than a bit of a reaction from Brandon when the Prince arrived, but he knew it wouldn't get too out of hand with him there.

Prince Rhaegar was already under the control of the slave seals, meaning that he would do what Carl and Lyanna told him in the future. Originally Carl was only going to memory charm Ser Dayne and Ser Whent of the Kingsguard to make them think nothing special had happened. But that was before he grew to care for Lyanna and before he found out what their part in Rhaegar's plan had been.

They would have been Lyanna's guards, insuring that even after the Prince left to win the civil war that he stirred up, that Lyanna would remain trapped at the Tower of Joy. The loyal dogs of the Prince had been willingly going along with the plan to kill Lyanna's family, start a war, keep her imprisoned while their prince raped her and made sure she was pregnant, depressed, miserable, and heartbroken while giving birth to the "Promised Prince". Those two dogs had certainly not deserved a simple memory charm. So they too were put under the slavery seal to ensure their compliance in the future.

Carl thought if there really was a thing such as Karma, then Rhaegar, Dayne, and Whent were certainly suffering it due to their despicable plans and actions. They were now imprisoned in their own mind, being "raped" of their free will. It was already a more gentle end than Carl would normally plan for rapists, even if the mental trauma and punishment would continue for many years to come.

And with Rhaegar under his control, once the rebellion was cleaned up, and the reign of the Mad King Aerys II was ended, Carl could easily direct the kingdom through the future king. So there was absolutely no need for Carl himself to take on the role of leader. He could enjoy the next 10 years exploring the world with Lyanna while his puppet made sure the kingdom ran properly.

It might take some time to get the rebellion cleared up, but within a few days of Rhaegar joining the Tully's, the whole kingdom would know that the rebellion wasn't just some of the Lords rebelling against their rightful King. It was the rightful Heir who was taking a stand to depose his mad father from the throne before he could do anymore damage to the Kingdom. Carl was quite pleased with his ability to ensure that the rumors he wanted were spread. It should help them sway opinions in the coming conflict.

Popular opinion was always important to legitimacy in ruling, maybe even more so in a society where each of the Lords had so much individual power over the lands they ruled and the people on their lands. Each Lord could be a power in their own right, and many of them had their own ambitions. Lord Lannister for example was a wildly ambitious man who had tried to marry off his daughter to Prince Rhaegar so he could have legitimacy to the throne through his grandchildren.

The previous day as Carl had been riding, he had watched through his satellites as the battle at Gulltown had occurred. Gulltown was an important port town in The Vale, formerly controlled by Lord Marq Grafton.

When the Mad King had passed orders to Lord Jon Arryn that Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon were to be executed for treason due to their relations with House Stark, Lord Arryn had refused to comply with the order to execute the young men he had fostered for so many years. Lord Arryn had called his bannermen to prepare for war, since he refused to accept the Mad King's orders. The only way to survive directly defying the King was through battle.

But not all of the Lord's who owed fealty to Lord Arryn agreed with him, and Lord Grafton had rallied together a number of them and their men to prevent Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon from using the port to escape The Vale back to their own lands where they would rally their bannermen for the coming war.

It was an attempt to end the rebellion before it began.

So while Eddard Stark snuck in and started sailing North in a fishing vessel, Robert had joined Lord Arryn in attacking the Lord's men gathered at Gulltown. After hours of desperate fighting, Robert managed to gain the wall and slew Lord Grafton, which signaled the end for those who opposed Lord Arryn.

Jon Arryn then spent his time consolidating his hold on The Vale, convincing the various Lords to follow his lead, while Robert sailed south to go to The Stormlands so he could rally his own men to fight.

Carl's mind was a little distracted thinking of the battle he had just watched the previous day, and testing ideas for future plans, so he was a little unprepared to be suddenly attacked just as he dismounted outside the camp he and Lyanna had prepared.

The first Carl knew of the attack was when a pair of soft lips pressed against his own, and a very familiar body pressed herself against him.

'Looks like Lyanna had a change of plans.' Carl ruefully thought as his guards were wolf whistling behind him. 'I guess she wanted it established in front of witnesses who she chose, and who she didn't.' Carl thought as his senses caught the three under the fate of being slaves greeting the Tully guards.

'And I suppose she wants her family and Robert to realize at the earliest opportunity that she won't be fulfilling the betrothal with Robert.' Carl realized. He thought the idea was probably a good one, since it would likely give Robert a chance to get used to the idea long before Carl was forced to beat the idea out of him.

"Well, I too am happy to see you again, my wild wolf." Carl teasingly said when the kiss finally ended. He enjoyed the laughter of his men as evidence that he was well liked among them. And that they would soon be spreading word of his relationship with Lyanna to everyone, in accordance with Lyanna's plan. Bored guards tended to gossip worse than housewives, after all. And guard duty was very boring.

"You know us wolves, we do like the taste of trout." Lyanna flirted back at him. Carl barked a laugh, before giving some orders to his guard to help break the camp down so they could depart and return to Riverrun.

Within a half hour they were on the road, making their way back home. Lyanna sat her horse next to Carl, and they occasionally chatted about various things aloud for the benefit of his men. Behind him rode Rhaegar, Dayne, and Whent. And following behind them was the dozen guards of House Tully, keeping an eye out for any ambush or attack.

They traveled swiftly that day, making good time on the roads. Not many people were traveling at this time. Word had already spread around that war was looming. That kind of atmosphere was bad for traveling carefreely. Once was likely to be accosted on the flimsiest excuse.

Speaking of which, Carl faintly frowned at seeing the eight horses tied up outside the inn they were planning to spend the night at. The horses were adorned in House Darry colors.

House Darry's seat of power was at Castle Darry, just south and east of where the Trident split into the Red, Green, and Blue Forks. As a result of their place along the Trident and the Kingsroad, House Darry was one of the houses of the Riverlands that were more prosperous than House Tully. House Darry barely concealed their contempt for House Tully and their ambitions to one day be named as Lord Paramount of the Trident. As a result, Carl didn't have any good feelings for the house that always opposed his.

House Darry was one of the Houses on his list to do something about in the future in order to ensure the security and prominence of House Tully in the Riverlands. The road wasn't narrow, but enemies were bound to meet anyway.

Carl mentally shrugged at seeing them there. They really shouldn't be much of a problem for them. Not only were his guardsmen more numerous, but he or Lyanna could take them all out solo. Since he wasn't worried about the danger the House Darry guards represented, he followed the plan to stay the night. He and Lyanna dismounted and passed their horses to their guards. Two of his guards came inside with Carl and Lyanna while Carl was meeting with the owner to arrange sleeping bunks for his men for the night.

The moment Carl looked on the Darry men drinking wine at their table, he knew they were up to no good. They were restless and looking for something exciting to do. Their leader, who Carl recognized as a cousin of the Darry's who had his knighthood, looked upon the beauty of Lyanna and Carl could see the desire tremble inside him. Carl sneered a little inside. This would give him the perfect excuse to do something about the man, when he pressed his luck with Lyanna.

"Hey there, beautiful." The man had greed all over his face as he looked at Lyanna. "The times, they aren't all that safe nowadays. Especially with such a small escort." The man, his name was something that started with a D, if Carl remembered right. "Why don't you join me and my men, and we'll protect you right nicely."

Lyanna rolled her eyes at the posturing git, but looked over to see how Carl would handle it when he sent her a message that he wanted to take the man down a peg.

"I can't quite seem to remember what – oh yeah, that's the name. Dunkel Darry. I remember you."

"That's Duncan!" The man growled at Carl, glaring.

"Pfft. Whatever you say Dinkel." Carl chuckled. Out of the corner of his eye Carl noticed that the Darry men continued their drinking, but they were paying a great deal of attention to what was happening between their leader and Carl. "Now, what is it you want, there, Dongle Darry?"

The man narrowed his eyes at Carl. "I know you."

"Congratulations. You must be proud to be so astute." Carl interrupted.

"You're the Tully heir." The man continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. Truly the dimwitted man was set on his path of destruction.

"And? What's it to you, Dimble Darry?" Carl asked. He was somewhat annoyed that the owner of the inn ducked away in the back when he saw the tension between the two men. He wanted to arrange their bedding for the night, and the Darry men were being a right annoyance in carrying out those plans.

Ah, well. Can't really blame non fighters for not wanting to stick around brewing trouble like this.

"Your family better make the smart decision in these troubled times. Rebellion. Men fighting against their rightful king. You know there is a lot of chaos in times like these. Who knows what might happen to an heir of a prominent family who only has two guards, wandering around with a beauty like this one." The Darry cousin said in what he thought as a menacing manner as the seven men behind him stood up, their hands on their swords.

Carl glanced dismissively at the Darry men at their table, before turning his attention back to the man standing in front of him. Carl was still only just inside the open tap room. A sharp whistle would bring the rest of his men inside to take care of the trash. But 12 versus 8 would make the melee quite chaotic, and he couldn't guarantee that his men wouldn't get stabbed to death before he could do anything for them, unless he used his magic in a very obvious way, which he was trying to avoid.

"You know what you and a dairy cow have in common, Dundle Darry?" Carl sarcastically asked. "Both of you produce an awful lot of shit. But at least the cow is useful for something." Carl could see the man was reaching his boiling point, especially when Lyanna laughed at him due to Carl's blatant insult-joke. "So, other than spewing shit from your nasty mouth, what good are you?"

Duncan's hand went for his sword, which was his last mistake. Without any fanfare, Carl rabbit punched him in the gut, causing him to collapse, unable to breathe for the moment. Carl left him for his guard to handle, as he pulled his sword and faced the seven other men. Lyanna pulled her own sword and was right next to him.

Carl could hear his guard piling into the inn behind him, but he was too busy playing with the men in front of him to pay too much attention. The inn's tap room's small size really didn't lend itself well to a fight between such numbers, so Carl was making use of the crowded conditions to have the Darry men trip all over each other.

A redirect of the sword here caused one man's sword to smash, flat of the blade first, into his neighbor's face. A sweep of the foot there caused one man to trip and roll into another man, causing the second to collapse on the first in a heap, arms and legs entangled so they couldn't get up easily.

The third man Carl faced left a really nasty taste in Carl's mouth. He could tell the man wasn't anything good, so he didn't waste effort on him and simply parried his overhand chop, and sliced his throat open. The blood spurted into the face of the fourth man, causing him to be blinded for a moment, enough for Carl to easily run his sword through his heart.

By that time Lyanna had finished the three men on her side. Each of them lay in a pool of blood as they died. Carl gave Lyanna a proud smile at her actions. The both of them had kept to slightly above normal human reaction speeds, which was sometimes really hard to do in a fight. But it kept their incredible abilities secret for the time being.

Carl had only kept the first two Darry men alive because he was interested in their answers as to exactly what a Darry man was doing here, so close to Riverrun. Carl could of course simply pull the memories out of the men's heads, but he wanted to have the men available for questioning back in Riverrun so his father, Hoster, could see what the Darry men were up to and that House Darry shouldn't be trusted in this Rebellion since they had designs to supplant House Tully.

As far as the deaths of the men, Carl didn't care one bit. He had long ago concluded that the idea of fair play when it came to life and death battles was ludicrous. The idea that he should handicap himself just because he was more powerful, in order to give the other side a chance to win was the epitome of stupid. In battle, the idea was to kill the enemy so his side wouldn't die.

This wasn't a sporting event where fair play was encouraged. These were people who wanted to kill his family and replace them as Lord Paramount of the Trident. Such people didn't get the benefit of fair play from Carl.

In the aftermath of the simple fight, Carl gave orders to his men to strip the equipment from the Darry dead before having the villagers take care of the bodies. The owner of the inn finally returned and Carl arranged lodgings for him and Lyanna, and his men and prisoners, and the three slaves. The guard duty was set, and dinner was served.

The food was bland and abysmal. Carl could see that Lyanna also barely tolerated it. Carl made a note to start up certain industries to improve living standards. Growing spices and establishing cooking schools seemed to be high on the list. At the end of the evening, Carl and Lyanna retired to their room together. His men's amused looks and joking didn't escape either his or Lyanna's notice, but he didn't care.

The next day they would return to Riverrun, Lyanna would reunite with her father and brother, and they would go North to call their bannermen and let them see that Lord Stark was still alive. A crow's message was one thing, but seeing him in person was another.

And while Lyanna's family was doing that, Carl would consolidate his family's hold on The Riverlands. First order of business was making sure that the greedy and bitter Lord Frey's hold on The Twins was broken. He really didn't like that bitter old man or his backstabbing ways. And since the North's Army would need passage over the Green Fork, it was only right for him to arrange it so that they didn't have to spend their valuable time negotiating with old Frey.

It was what a good host should do.


	64. ASOIAF 07

Carl led his small group through the gates at Riverrun and into the castle yard. He dismounted and handed off his horse to the stable hands, dismissing his men to their normal duties. He paused for a moment to give Lyanna a confident grin before leading the way. Rhaegar, Dayne, and Whent followed along behind Carl and Lyanna on the way to Hoster's solar to report the success of his venture.

They were just passing by the banquet hall when Carl noticed the Starks gaping at him, or more specifically at Lyanna next to him.

"Lyanna!"

"Sister!"

The loud calls at the same time from both Rickard and Brandon rose above the general din of the hall eating their midday meal. Once the calls had brought everyone's attention to his small group, Carl redirected his movement to join the meal.

Just before Carl could greet his family where they sat at their meal with the Starks, he was interrupted by the sound of steel being drawn, and a loud angry cry.

"You Targaryen bastard! I'll make you pay!" Brandon yelled as he charged.

Carl sighed in exasperation and eyed Lyanna to see if she wanted to handle her brother or let him do it. Seeing that he was elected, since Lyanna defending the Prince would absolutely drive her brother crazy, Carl pulled his own sword and placed himself between Brandon and Rhaegar. He couldn't allow his slave to die before serving his purpose, could he?

"Brandon Stark. I know you've taken bread and salt at our table." Carl loudly called. Seeing that Brandon at least paused at the invocation of sacred guest rights, especially at the shocking sight of Carl drawing his sword and standing in his way. "You are a guest in our hall. It is not right for you to attack another guest in our halls. Or do you throw away the sacred custom?"

"But you know what he did to my sister! I'll have his guts on the floor today!" Brandon yelled out.

"I know I heard a rumor only, Brandon." Carl scoffed with as much disdain as he could muster. He was pleased to see Brandon flush a bit in shame. "And I know I also heard rumors that you were killed by the king, yet here you stand. Are you so impatient and heartless that you won't even properly greet your sister and learn from her own mouth the truth or falsehood of such rumors?" If Carl could gather sarcasm as a liquid, Brandon would be liberally soaked in it.

Brandon looked over at his sister in question, who sighed and rolled her eyes.

"None of that was true, Brandon." Lyanna strode up next to her brother and slugged his shoulder for being so impulsive and stupid. "I was off riding and exploring as I usually do when my horse was startled by a snake and broke its leg. The Prince and his guard were riding by and offered assistance. Some busybodies probably saw it and spread the most lurid tale they could craft for their own entertainment."

Brandon gaped for a moment, looking back and forth between Lyanna, Carl, and Rhaegar. "So, you weren't kidnapped?" Brandon tentatively questioned for confirmation.

"I guarantee you nothing of the sort happened." Rhaegar smoothly interjected at Carl's prompting. "You have no need to be concerned about my intentions toward your sister. Unlike some others." He suggestively finished while eyeing Carl.

Carl visibly rolled his eyes and wandlessly cast a stinging hex at the Prince to punish him before moving to take Lyanna's hand in his own to show that the Prince's words were not just hot air. Maybe the reigns were a little too loose on the Prince, if he was trying any method, no matter how petty, to get back at him?

He would have to remonstrate with Rhaegar when he had a moment free, to teach him the proper attitude to have towards one of the beings who held his life in their hands.

Rickard Stark had been standing back, eyeing the group as he processed the information he heard and saw. Unlike his hotheaded son, he had been trying to gather enough information to make more informed decisions. But now he moved forward.

"And what of your betrothal to Robert Baratheon, Lyanna?" Lord Stark asked sternly.

"I never agreed to such a thing." Lyanna raised her chin and glared at her father, clearly showing how stubborn and unyielding she planned to be on the subject. "Whenever I told you as much before, you, Brandon, and Ned all waved it away as the tantrums of a young girl who would come to agree with you in time. Well, I'm telling you now, that I have never agreed to marry Robert, and I will certainly not agree in the future. My future is with Carl."

Carl's mouth twitched in amusement as he watched the various reactions of those in the hall. Hoster scowled very briefly, since he had been in negotiations himself with many houses for a marriage alliance with Carl. He already had a marriage set between Brandon and Catelyn, so Carl marrying Lyanna was redundant from a political perspective.

Catelyn and Lysa, on the other hand, were quite taken with the romance of the scene. A fierce young lady who they knew got on well with their brother, proudly declaring that she would marry no other. It was quite a fetching story.

Rickard scowled at being defied, and having an agreement that he signed previously being voided by what he still considered the romantic nonsense of a young girl. Carl chuckled inwardly at the dichotomy. A 'young girl's nonsense', yet that same young girl was expected to wed for political advantage, which was a decidedly adult activity.

"Lord Stark." Carl drew Rickard's attention to him. "I realize you're not best pleased at the moment with our relationship." Rickard's scowl told Carl that his words were inadequate to express Rickard's feelings of the matter. "But there are two things you should keep in mind at this time."

"And what are those two things, Carl Tully?" Rickard queried in a dangerous tone that was trying to say not to mess with him.

"Well, the first thing is that we have some other pressing business to attend to, namely what to do about the Mad King and his troops." Carl paused to let that slightly more pressing matter intrude on their thought processes. "And the second, is that you will be my goodfather in the near future. Damaging our familial relationship in the heat of the moment will just create bad feelings overall." Carl attempted to subtly warn the man not to go too overboard, since they would be related by marriage soon.

"Is that a fact, boy?" Rickard asked, glaring into Carl's eyes, testing to see his resolve.

"That is a fact." Carl steadily looked back in Rickard's eyes, showing him nothing but complete confidence that he spoke 100% truth. The two men seemed locked in a stare down for several minutes.

"Well, in that case, welcome to the family, son." Rickard finally broke the stare-down by grinning and changing his demeanor in a flash with a laugh. They both ignored Brandon's inarticulate cry from surprise at his father giving in so easily.

Carl was also pleased to see his father in this life become resigned and finally accept Carl's decision. He hadn't been getting far in his negotiations for a bride for Carl anyways. It might be better to bolster their alliance with the North than to continue seeking other alliances, especially in these uncertain times of rebellion.

Towards Hoster Tully, Carl had some complicated feelings. On the one hand, he had memories of being raised by him for 18 years, so there was a strong family sentiment.

But on the other hand, now that Carl had his full memories restored, the authority and reverence that Carl Tully previously placed on his Lord Father was decreased by a large amount. He no longer felt at ease submitting to someone else's rules and orders.

Even though in many people's eyes being the heir to the Lord Paramount of the Trident seemed like a very high position to be jealous of, Carl felt like the position was stifling and limiting. He no longer had any ideas of settling down for the rest of his life in such a small place as The Riverlands.

It would always be his home in this world, but he never forgot that he only had 10 years here. He really wanted to explore this world, instead of being chained down by paperwork for the next decade.

Once the initial chaos of the presence of Rhaegar settled down, the crowd once more sat down to the meal. By unspoken agreement of those present, they wouldn't speak of the coming conflict in the open hall where all kinds of ears could overhear. They would retire to Hoster's solar to continue discussions of what to do about the rebellion.

Carl was amused to see his sisters ambushing Lyanna and start gossiping with her.

Over their time in the Heavenly Time Pearl, Carl had introduced many things to Lyanna that she had never imagined before. How could she, having grown up in the medieval society of Westeros?

Aside from training and gaining an education, Lyanna had been introduced to many of the cultural things Carl had available. Which included movies and TV shows.

And while Lyanna would always be a very active person, she had found that she did have a somewhat girly side through the dramas and TV shows. She was no longer the consummate tomboy, yearning for _anything_ other than being relegated to the knitting circle. She had found that she could learn, explore, and participate in adventure while still retaining her feminine side.

Having more power and the options available to her, ironically, allowed her the freedom to choose for herself how womanly and feminine she wanted to be. Instead of running from her feminine side, the power she gained from the training gave her the ability to enjoy it without the fear of being boxed and controlled in the useless woman stereotype.

So seeing her engaging in "girly" gossip with his sisters wasn't as quite a shock as it would have been before the training. She had enough confidence in herself and her ability to control her life that she could afford to not be seen as powerful all the time.

Carl somewhat hoped that Lyanna's example could help convince his sisters to try out some activities that weren't completely feminine sometime in the future.

* * *

Shortly after the midday meal was complete, the Tullys, the Starks, Prince Rhaegar, Ser Dayne, Ser Whent, Maester Naet, and several Tully guard Captains were arranged in Hoster's solar to discuss what to do concerning the rebellion and dethroning the Mad King.

By this point in time, while Carl had been traveling to Harrenhal and back, messages had been sent back and forth between Rickard Stark and his son Eddard, nicknamed Ned, who had made it back to The North. Word was being spread to The North that Rickard and Brandon hadn't actually perished at Kings Landing, and that they would soon arrive in the North to continue to gather his bannermen to oppose the King.

Messages had also been sent back and forth by crow to Lord Jon Arryn of The Vale to coordinate between the Riverlands and the Vale. The initial conversation had been about how many houses of The Vale could be expected to heed Lord Arryn's call to arms, and how many would join the King. Some of the houses that had fought against Arryn at Gulltown surprisingly switched sides back to their liege lord after losing the battle. So the numbers were not looking as dismal as they were at first.

Rhaegar proved his worth at this time for his master as he, under Carl's orders, began composing letters to be sent to the various Lords around the Seven Kingdoms that the rebellion of the Stark, Baratheon, and Arryns wasn't just them against the rightful king. The letters detailed that he, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, announced that he was taking this time to end the unjust and cruel rule of his father, and would take his place as the King to ensure the security and prosperity of the Realm and all the Lords within.

Messages had been sent by crow to the Stormlands for Robert Baratheon, but it would still be some days before Robert landed in his lands and received the messages, let alone had a chance to reply. But messages had been received by Stannis Baratheon at Storm's End who was gathering what men were loyal to the Baratheon family to resist the Mad King's armies.

The messages from Rhaegar would also be sent to the Reach for Lord Mace Tyrell, the Lord of Highgarden and Lord Paramount of the Mander; to the Westerlands for Lord Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West; and to Dorne for Prince Doran Martell, head of the Martell family, Prince of Dorne, and Lord of Sunspear.

The letters clarified that Prince Rhaegar didn't actually kidnap Lyanna Stark or set aside his Dornish Princess wife. He went on to explain his position in regards to the developing madness of his father, the King, and that he was no longer fit to rule. The Mad King had allowed his paranoia to overcome his good judgment when he had ordered the unlawful arrest and executions of the Lords under his fealty.

Prince Rhaegar included a call to arms to the various Lord to join him in establishing the security of the Realm by placing him on the Iron Throne in place of his father.

At the very least the letters should instill some amount of caution in the Lords in how quickly they would act, even if it didn't affect which side they ultimately chose to join.

With the addition of Prince Rhaegar on the side of the rebellion, the question of which side to join to honor their oaths to the Throne was no quite so readily apparent to the various Lords. And while their decisions would no doubt be guided by their own self interest, at the very least the complicated matter would instill caution in them and cause them to think long and hard about the matter. The extra time and hesitance of the various factions would give Carl and his side more time to mobilize and act to influence decisions.

The difference between a rebellion that struggled to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the Lords, and one that had the backing of the heir of the throne, were vastly different. And while Carl's spy technology couldn't read minds, it was easily able to overhear the orders each Lord sent to his men. This gave Carl a huge advantage in knowing in advance what each Lord had decided to do and who they would join up with.

The "rebellion" had a huge advantage in the upcoming war.

The only difficulty Carl had to overcome was figuring out how to pass the information he had to Hoster, Rickard, and the other leaders of the rebellion. In the end he decided that he would have the Yamato build a few CFRs, or Crow Form Robots, that would carry various reports from Carl's "informants" to Carl. He would then send on the information to the Lords that needed to get the information to make a proper decision.

Carl would discover over the course of the short war that the simple deception allowed him a great deal of leeway on how to spread information around his allies. He could even spread plenty of disinformation among his enemies if he so chose. Who asked the Maesters to create a communication method that was so easily suborned? And who made the various Lords so reliant on that very method?

At the end of the meeting the short term plans had been set. The Starks would return North the next morning and finish gathering their men, before coming back south to join the Tully's army.

On a more personnel note, Brandon and Catelyn's wedding was to be delayed for a few months while they prepared for war. Hoster had at first wanted the wedding to be rushed through immediately, to show that there was a solid alliance between the Tullys and Starks. Carl had managed to get that plan derailed. Carl wanted his sister to have a much better wedding than a rushed affair on the eve of war. It could wait a few months while they fixed the kingdom.

It was also decided that Carl and Lyanna's wedding would be held in two years, after Lyanna turned 18. It would not be announced until after they had a chance to inform Robert that he was no longer to be wed to Lyanna.

Knowing what he did of Robert's character, Carl wouldn't be surprised if he would have to beat the big oaf a few times before he accepted that he wouldn't be marrying Lyanna. Thinking back on his memories of the man, Carl knew that Robert had some strong feelings for Lyanna, but that still didn't stop Robert from drinking and whoring it up around her, which is what drove her away from him to accept Rhaegar's proposition in the first place.

Ultimately, Carl didn't care if Robert could accept his and Lyanna's marriage or not. Robert couldn't beat Carl in a fight, even before he regained his memories. And while there might be some repercussions politically with the Stormlands, Carl had plenty of ways around any issues that might come up.

And if Robert got a little overly aggressive, he could always use a little application of inducing decency with his knuckles would help Robert get over it and live the rest of his life just fine. There was a reason he grabbed that decency inducing perk in the ATG world. It would be a shame not to use it here in Westeros.

* * *

Over the next week Carl was kept busy organizing the Tully men and liaising with the various nobles that answered House Tully's call to arms. There was a lot to organize for the army they were fielding. The logistics of feeding the army needed to be organized, and it was given to Carl to supervise the process.

Carl wasn't too surprised to receive a "punishment" duty from his father for his "impulsive" actions in regards to Lyanna Stark. It would be a surprise if a lord wasn't unhappy with his children for picking their own match, instead of what was best for the House politically.

While Carl had chosen in the moment to help Lyanna gain enough power to truly control her life due to his memories of being fond of her as a friend, the decision to be a couple had been anything but impulsive. Over ten years of training, learning, and living together had given Carl and Lyanna plenty of time to get to know each other and decide they could work as a couple.

So Carl just chuckled a bit at the punishment detail that Hoster assigned him. The old Carl Tully, before he woke up his memories, may have chaffed at the assignment. But he wasn't too bothered by the punishment. He knew how important logistics were. There was a saying attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. "An army marches on its stomach."

The importance of food and the proper tools and supplies to keep an army in fighting shape couldn't be underestimated. With the use of his technology, Carl was able to easily find and procure the needed supplies, when his people didn't have the answers for him. So the assignment was quite easy for him to complete.

By the week's end, Carl had the logistics settled with the right people in charge of supplies, the army levees had been gathered, and they were ready to march. Early in the morning the 4,000 man army was gathered and ready to set off. Another 4,000 would be left to defend the Tully lands from Riverrun under Hoster's command, so they would have the defensive fortification to overcome a larger army.

There were still large numbers of troops that were gathering, since even a week and a half wasn't enough to gather all their men. Another 2,000 men would gather at Riverrun while the first half with Carl was meeting up with the Starks at the Twins. After which Hoster would gather 4,000 men and meet the Starks and Carl at the Trident, leaving 2,000 plus men to guard Riverrun.

The general routine of the army wasn't particularly exciting as they traveled north to the Twins. In the morning they ate, broke camp and traveled. Scouts were sent out to make sure there were no large gatherings of troops that would try to ambush them. At the end of the day, they made camp, set up defenses, and ate. As they traveled they continued to perfect the methods of signals and communications among the army to make sure they weren't just a mob of undisciplined fools.

They were still a days ride away from the Twins, the castle crossing of the Freys, when word reached the army that old Walder Frey, the Lord of the twins, had died of a heart attack. Carl faintly smiled when the "unexpected" news reached him. Especially when he heard about the infighting among the sons of Walder Frey for who would be the next Lord Frey.

His one meeting with Walder Frey had not endeared the cantankerous man to him. At the time, before his memories had returned, Carl had been simply passing through so the old Frey lord hadn't had any leverage over him to force a marriage. But apparently he had been of the opinion that nothing ventured, nothing gained.

When Carl had made a midnight visit to the old man to see how much trouble he could expect from him, Carl had been quite disgusted by the old man's vile mind. Constant schemes and plans ran through his head, whether to bed and use his wives until they died, or plans to revenge himself against anyone who slighted him.

And the old man's list of who slighted him was long. Anything that someone did that Walder Frey didn't like got him added to the list. Carl was amused to see he was added to the list for being an uppity young man who didn't know he should have been happy for the marriage offer the old Frey proposed with one of his weak and timid granddaughters. And the girls were always so timid precisely because of the beatings and abuse they endured from Walder Frey from the time they were little kids.

When Carl had delved into the Frey's mind, he had seen all the plans Frey had enacted to raise the prices of transport between Riverrun and Winterfell in order to hurt the finances of the Tullys and the Starks. He saw the plans the old man had to demand exorbitant crossing fees for the Stark men in the coming war. If they wanted to be involved in the rebellion, they would have to make some large concessions, travel around the long way, or lose a great deal of men taking over the fortifications.

He also saw the plans of the old man to delay his levees from gathering up to fight for the Tullys until the fighting was already done, one way or another. Carl scowled mightily at that. That was the kind of treacherous actions that couldn't really be proved or acted on by the Tullys, not without giving them the reputation of being an unreasonable Liege Lord.

So in the interests of solving an issue before it became a big problem, Carl arranged for Walder Frey to have a health problem that ended his schemes and plans to backstab the Tullys. The reports of chaos among his descendents as they scrambled for the Lordship was just a bonus, since it meant they would be weak and unprepared for the coming siege.

The next day Carl's forces arrived outside the Twins, while the Stark army of 7,000 arrived on the other side. He had sent a large group of knights ahead to judge the situation, and saw that they had taken control of the defenses in the midst of the chaos following Walder Frey's death. The gates were left open for the Tully army to occupy the fortress. The way was open for them to join the Starks on the other side of the Green Fork, according to their plan.

The rest of that day was taken up by meeting the new Frey in charge of the Twins and organizing the combined army. Carl made sure that the new Frey Lord wouldn't give them any problems and would be loyal to House Tully. Carl noticed that he barely had to make use of any compulsion magic to do so, which likely meant that his leadership perks were working.

For a moment Carl pondered the idea that he didn't really have to arrange for the late Walder Frey's death, since the perks would likely have insured his loyalty. But then Carl shook that idea from his head as useless and naïve.

First of all, it was a useless idea. At this point Carl couldn't change what he'd already done without messing with time once more, and really screwing up the timeline. Which wasn't something he was willing to do for the old bastard Frey.

Second, he realized that from the wording of the perks, the loyalty perks he had wasn't 100% certain to work on everyone, especially in the case of the unlamented old Frey. He was certainly not a follower of Carl's, so the **Ludicrous Loyalty Enforcement** perk he got from the ATG world really wouldn't have been useful in the Frey's case.

And while the perk **A Quiet People **ensured that the people under his authority were unlikely to cause trouble and rebel, the wording didn't make it a completely sure thing. With how cantankerous and bitter of a cunt old Walder Frey was, he was likely the exception to the general rule of the perks. It was better that he be got rid of, and a more manageable Frey take charge of the crossing.

At the very least the cost of transporting goods through the Twins would drop for the Tullys and Starks from now on to a more honest and reasonable fee. One that wasn't designed to drain their funds and make them weak.

After a day of organizing everything, 2,000 Frey men joined Carl's army, and with the Starks, they started their march east to the Kingsroad. Carl sent word back to his father that they would be moving on ahead of time since they had less problems at the Twins than they expected.

As they were passing each of the noble's lands, they met with each one and gathered handfuls of men here and there, slightly swelling the numbers of their army.

After a couple days, they started south along the Kingsroad. The word from Jon Arryn was that he had the Vale well in hand. Not all of his nobles were joining him, but at least those who weren't joining him would mostly sit out the conflict.

After several days of travel they arrived outside of Castle Darry that was on the Trident. Their scouts came back with news that House Mooten of Maindenpool, House Goodbrook of the Red Fork, and House Ryger of Willow Wood had joined House Darry in Castle Darry, bolstering their defenses.

In other news from the scouts, House Lychester and House Mallister had joined Hoster Tully and arrived from the west shortly before Carl, Rickard, Brandon, and Eddard had arrived from the north.

Prince Rhaegar had stayed with Hoster at Riverrun while Carl had met up with the Starks. So now it was time to see how useful the Prince would be. Could Rhaegar talk the Darrys, Mootens, Goodbrooks, and Rygers into joining them? Or would the matter be resolved through battle?

On the open ground between the joint forces of the Tullys and Starks and the defenses of Castle Darry, a location was decided for parley to take place. Carl wasn't invited to the meeting, to make sure that the Tully Lord and Heir wouldn't be in the same place in case of treachery from the opposing houses. Naturally Carl had some spy bots stream the video and audio to him so he could watch how things went.

After some talk and negotiations by Prince Rhaegar, and plenty of promises, the various Houses in Castle Darry agreed to join Rhaegar's cause and help him depose his father.

Carl snorted inside in disgust. It had taken plenty of promises of benefits before those houses had agreed to join them. While Carl was sure the various Lords were just looking to maximize their houses benefits, he didn't think too much of their profiteering in this case. Especially because their assistance in this instance should be covered under their oaths of fealty.

But obviously they didn't put too much emphasis or stock in those oaths. Carl made a note in his mind that he needed to do something special to punish House Darry for their ridiculous demands. They were one of the houses that wanted to overthrow House Tully, so they were already on his list. But they just moved up it.

In the middle of the negotiations Jon Arryn arrived with his army of 8,000 men that significantly increased their negotiating position. So it only took another two days, instead of a full week, to finish negotiations satisfactorily.

Two days later, they marched south towards Kings Landing, but a few days later they split their army up into two. The larger portion continued marching towards Kings Landing to besiege it and tie up the King's forces.

Carl took 10,000 of the men, along with Eddard, and moved further south to relieve Robert and the Stormlanders from the siege they were suffering under Mace Tyrell's army. Rhaegar came with them in the hope that they could convince the idiot and blustering fool that was Mace Tyrell to join them.

The word they received was that the Dornish Prince, Doran Martell, was sending 10,000 men north to join Rhaegar. Apparently the messages Carl had Rhaegar send to reassure Doran that his sister Princess Elia and her children were still well and treated honorably had done wonders for the Martells decision of which side to join.

Carl had made sure that Princess Elia and her children, along with the Mad King's wife, Queen Rhaella, and other son, Viserys, were safely located at Dragonstone, and that they would stay out of the war zone for the duration. Carl received word that the Queen was pregnant once more, so there would be one more child of the Mad King.

Carl had decided that no one would be allowed to use any of the women or children as pawns or hostages in this little rebellion to convince Dorne to side with the Mad King, or as a threat against the Mad King. He didn't need to use such means to accomplish his goal, and he wasn't going to let any despicable characters use such means to complicate matters. So Carl had sent some invisible probes to guard the women and children to make sure they were kept safe.

Since Carl had no desire to openly take the Iron Throne for himself, he felt that this method was a good way to ensure that the succession of the throne was secure, and that the kingdom could be settled down quickly after deposing the Mad King.

In other news that Carl received via CFR from his "spies", Lord Lannister seemed to be testing the waters before committing himself to either side. He only started moving his own forces east when he had gotten news about who was on which side, and how the war had progressed. Since Tywin wasn't saying aloud his decision to anyone for his spies to overhear, Carl could only assume the Lannister Lord was playing it very cautiously so he could take advantage, and join whoever was the winner.

Carl knew that there had been a falling out between the former Hand of the King, Tywin Lannister, and the Mad King a couple of years previously when Tywin's heir, Jaime, had been allowed to join the Kingsguard.

Once a young noble joined the Kingsguard, they basically vowed to never marry, and they were bound by the duty to protect the king, so they could no longer serve as a lord. Tywin had been furious that the King had taken his heir away from him, and had resigned his position as the Hand of the King in to express his anger as a result.

Carl wasn't too surprised by the caution and political maneuvering of Tywin Lannister. His heir, who he no doubt still hoped to retrieve and make the next Lord Lannister, was right next to the King as a hostage. He had to think twice about joining the rebels, with his heir as hostage. So it was quite understandable that the Lannister Lord wouldn't be jumping into the fray eagerly, but going slowly in order to spare his son and heir.

The mad king had already blatantly killed Rickard and Brandon Stark in his throne room, even if the deaths didn't stick for whatever reason. So Tywin had no doubt that if he openly joined the rebels the very next news he received from Kings Landing would be the death of his son.

Several days of hard marching later, Carl's forces arrived outside Summerhall, where the Baratheon forces were being besieged by the Tyrell forces. Carl and Ned Stark saw that in order to get the Tyrell's attention, they couldn't just mosey on up and request parley. They wouldn't get any respect from such an action. They would just be ignored.

In addition, the Martell forces arrived from the south. With some communications through Carl's CFRs, the two armies planned and attacked the Tyrell forces. It was a blatant way of letting the Tyrells know they weren't the strongest force around, and that they had better agree to parley, if they knew what was good for them.

A several hour long battle was waged, with surprisingly few casualties, since it was a method of negotiations rather than killing off the opponent. But it was obvious that the joint Tully/Stark/Arryn/Martell forces came off the better in the engagement, even though they had slightly fewer numbers. Their men were just tougher and more stubborn than the men of the Reach.

The obvious drubbing the Tyrell forces took even forced the fool Mace Tyrell to being willing to listen and not bluster at the parley on the following day. Seeing the surprise and shock in Mace's face the next day when Rhaegar showed up to the parley on the side of the rebels really drove home to Carl just how big of an idiot the Tyrell Lord was. Apparently he hadn't put any stock in the missives Carl had Rhaegar send him. It wasn't until Mace saw Rhaegar face to face that he finally realized what was happening.

The idiot.

And Carl wasn't completely sure that Mace really knew the ramifications of what was happening with the rebellion. But thankfully Mace's commanders were able to work around him and convince Mace to join up with Rhaegar and the rebellion.

Carl received notice that the Westerland forces and Tywin was slowly making their way across the Reach, headed to King's Landing. So Carl sent out orders to be organized and ready to march in a day so they could head back up north to Kings Landing themselves to finish up the rebellion and depose the Mad King.

With the intelligence network that Carl had, in addition to the presence of Rhaegar, the rebellion hadn't lasted very long at all. And surprisingly few people had died in battle, even though that number wasn't exactly small. It was just surprisingly few for the nature of the war that was being waged. Usually the feelings and acrimonious anger on each side would lead to wanton slaughter. Thankfully Carl had been able to keep that to a minimum, which would be helpful in settling down the kingdom in the aftermath. There would be fewer grudges and hatred to assuage.

Later that night in the army's combined camp, Robert Baratheon greeted Carl with a punch to the face and an angry yell about stealing Lyanna from him. Carl was amused on the inside, but he decided to keep his abilities chained and only fight Robert with slightly above human abilities. Which didn't mean he got bruises or anything from Robert's punches, but the blunt and straightforward man obviously needed to vent, so a good fight was in order. So Carl faked the injuries with his medical skills as he fought in a knock-down, drag-out fistfight.

Robert was a mass of anger that needed to work itself out, so Carl obliged him, trading punch for punch, kick for kick, and bite for bite. He refrained from breaking any bones, but he kept going as long as Robert wanted.

The fight drew a large crowd of soldiers. The Tully men were about jump in and start fighting the Baratheon men in anger, but Carl's Captains and Ned Stark were able to calm the groups down and convince the Tully and Baratheon men to leave the fight between Carl and Robert.

Which resulted in Carl and Robert being surrounded by a group of men all egging them on and betting on the outcome. Inside Carl was laughing because of the resemblance to a group of junior high school students that would circle the fighters chanting "Fight! Fight! Fight!"

At the end of the fight, when both Carl and Robert were sprawled out on the ground gasping, blood oozing from cuts above their eyes, and bruises all over their faces, Carl congratulated himself in his mind on being such a good actor. He should totally win an Oscar.

"Is she happy?" Robert finally said something beyond incoherent shouting as he eyed Carl sprawled next to him.

"Aye, she's happy." Carl replied, keeping it simple but truthful. Robert wouldn't really want to hear any details of the woman's relationship with the man she ran away from Robert with.

"Well, that's good then. I'll bloody chop you up if you hurt her, though." Robert replied after some thought and probing one of his teeth with his tongue.

"Aye, I think you'd have to get in line, if that were the case." Carl said with a laugh, pointing at where Ned was giving the two of them frowns of disapproval.

"You might be right in that." Robert allowed with a chuckle. "Good fight. Now let's get some wine!" The big man stood, grabbing Carl's hand and dragging him to the mess tent to get drunk.

Carl chuckled as he followed along in Robert's wake. It was hard not to like Robert. Even though he wasn't the right man for Lyanna, he did care for her as much as he was able. And he was a bluntly honest and forthright man. He loved a fight, a drink, and a lay.

'Yes, it's hard to dislike the man', Carl thought as Ned joined the two for a night of drinking. 'Especially now that he's got the right idea in his head. Now I've just got to keep from laughing in his face as he tries to best me in drinking, since he couldn't win with fists.'

Carl was laughing inside because the army was leaving in the morning, and he wouldn't envy the headaches the other men were going to have when they were forced out of their beds to join the army in their march.

It didn't stop him from egging them on to drink even more though. Indulging in a bit of schadenfreude didn't make him a bad person, right?


	65. ASOIAF 08

Carl looked over from where he was staged with his family's troops outside Kings Landing. There were thousands of men in just the Tully section alone, and there were thousands more everywhere. The presence of so many men and horses had trampled any vegetation present in the fields into the mud. The din from so many armored men and horses created a continuous low grade sound.

Seeing such a large medieval army gathered for war was an impressive sight that couldn't be seen in his original world anymore. At most the number of people gathered here would have been going to a concert or sports game. The methods of warfare had long since departed from hand to hand combat, so seeing such an army equipped and prepared for war brought about an interesting feeling. Like his blood was being stirred up to action.

Modern weaponry ensured that any forces that tried to hole up in a castle would be in for a rude awakening as the explosives and artillery would make short work of the defenses, so it was impossible to see such sieges anymore.

But here he was, outside a large castle fortification manned by knights and other combatants, with an attacking army in the tens of thousands, ready to sack the city and depose a king. The stuff stories were made of.

The only group not represented in the joint army that was set on deposing Aerys II and installing Rhaegar was The Westerlands and the Iron Islands.

Tywin Lannister was still dragging his heels, hoping the situation would turn favorably his way before he arrived in a day or so. At the very least he was hoping that his men inside Kings Landing would be able to drag his son away from being held hostage by the Mad King as his Kingsguard. Unfortunately for Tywin, it seemed Jaime was trying his best to be faithful to the oaths he took on joining the Kingsguard, so he was sticking to the King and ignoring the efforts of the Lannister men to get him to flee.

Weeks ago Lyanna had been sent back North with a group of men to guard her, even though she really didn't need the protection. Her father and both brothers had ganged up on her and guilt tripped her into returning home instead of remaining with the growing army.

It had been quite a large family argument between Lyanna and her family that Carl wisely stayed out of. He would support whatever decision Lyanna herself made, but he wasn't going to stick his two cents in.

Lyanna had eventually let herself be convinced to return North for her father and brother's peace of mind. They could be at ease fighting the war without looking out for her.

So while Lyanna had at first grudgingly left for the North to appease her family, she had found herself quite enjoying her time by riding around with her own personal guards, attacking the Ironborn anywhere they attempted to raid.

The squid cunts of the Iron Islands had no real interest in anything other than "paying the iron price". Which was their euphemism for raiding and taking women as slaves, or as they called it, "salt wives". Since the useless squids had no real interest in getting involved in the succession war at this time, they were busy reaving and making nuisances of themselves all around the North while everyone was distracted by the succession war.

Carl was still scratching his head over how it was that the Seven Kingdoms included The Iron Islands as one of the Kingdoms, but not The Riverlands. A bunch of useless pirates got the title, but not his homeland?

The North, The Iron Islands, The Vale, The Westerlands, The Reach, The Stormlands, and Dorne.

The Iron Islands had no industry beyond piracy and raiding, but the Riverlands that was smack dab in the middle of the continent and produced plenty of goods in trade didn't get the prestige of being one of the seven kingdoms? It was surely a load of bullshit that came about because of politics. He would have to do something about that later.

Carl shook the thoughts of instilled pride in his house from his memories of growing up in Riverrun. He paid more attention to his surroundings as he continued his inspections of the Tully men as they made preparations for battle.

The attack on Kings Landing couldn't be carried out immediately, because they had to wait to see what the Lannister's stance was. There was no way they would start attacking a fortified position with an army of unconfirmed allegiance at their backs. If Tywin chose to join the Mad King, he could do a lot of damage attacking their rear while they were busy attacking the fortifications of Kings Landing.

As Carl was rebuking some of the men for sloppiness and not having taken proper care of their equipment, he thought about how surprised he had been that there were surprisingly few clashes of egos in the planning sessions of the commanders and lords. He had expected a lot more arguing.

But the various Lords had been quite professional. Everyone knew what they were doing, so they had gotten down to brass tacks, as the saying went. They all wanted the war over soonest so they could go back to their lands and continue their various ventures. Or maybe they were saving their arguing for after the war, when they would demand concessions from Rhaegar for their good deeds?

Carl finished his inspection and made his way back to his assigned tent. Alone in his tent, he pulled out his bastard sword and with a mental command it shifted once more to the more familiar katana shape of Blue Orchid.

He probed the sword with his mind, and felt a faint response. It was unusual, but Carl felt like his sword was becoming somewhat aware. Or at the very least it was more responsive to his powers. His sword had always felt like it was an easy medium to use his powers through, but now it felt like it was reacting and being more willing to respond. Feeling out his mental connection to his sword, it almost felt like it was sleeping at the moment. Like maybe it would wake up one day.

It was one of the strange things about the cultivation worlds, pretty much anything could gain intelligence and a spirit after being soaked in the energy of heaven and earth for a long enough period of time. Rocks, flowers, swords, heck even medicine pills have come alive in some of the stories.

After what happened to Feng Ra, Carl was somewhat concerned that one day his sword would become a person in its own right, and he would have to leave it behind if it really attained sentience one day. He was hoping that it would take a lot longer to happen, so he wouldn't have to worry about it anytime soon.

Chances were that because he got the sword through CP purchase, he wouldn't have to worry about leaving his sword behind in one of these worlds like he did with Rover who turned into Feng Ra. But Carl didn't have anyone to ask for a concrete answer on the subject. So he could only throw the concern into the back of his mind and continue as he was. There really wasn't anything he could do other than to put the Blue Orchid away and never use it again to stop whatever was happening. And he wasn't willing to do that.

With a mental command, Blue Orchid shifted back to the bastard sword shape. It still had the same sensation of responsiveness to Carl in its bastard sword form, although a slightly different feel to it. Carl wondered what would happen if he gained many more shapes for the sword in the future. Would it have a personality for every form?

"Heir Tully! I bring a message from Lord Tully that you are wanted in the command tent." A voice called to Carl from outside his tent.

Carl exited his tent, and saw 13 year old Raek. He was a squire for one of the Tully knights and was often sent with messages around the camp.

"Very well. Thanks for passing the message. How has your practice been of that move Ser Tully showed you?" Carl's uncle Brynden enjoyed seeing the enthusiasm of young squires and knights, and had taken to teaching some of them occasional moves.

"It's hard." Raek frowned. "I can't quite get the footwork down."

"Well, keep working on it. If you can't do it fast at first, do it slow until it becomes second nature. Then try to speed it up, once you've got the footwork down." Carl advised as they were making their way to the command tent.

"Thanks!" Raek commented with a smile. "I've gotta run now, and clean some armor."

"Off with you." Carl nodded as the young boy dashed off to his next duties as Carl continued on his way to the command tent.

When Carl entered the command tent, he saw the various Lords and nobles surrounding Rhaegar. Carl had long outfitted the prince with an invisible communications device that allowed Carl to pass commands to and receive information from Rhaegar. It was all done mentally, so that no one would notice the Prince talking to himself. The last thing they needed was evidence that the Prince they wanted to put on the throne was talking to invisible people. They were working so hard to get rid of one Mad King, they certainly didn't need another.

While Carl had been making his way over to the command tent, he had been mentally reviewing the information that caused the group of leaders to call an assembly. Tywin Lannister had recently increased his armies marching speed, and would arrive outside the city in just a few hours. They had received a missive from him that required a decision in a short time.

The letter had detailed how Tywin was planning a double-triple fakeout to end the siege as soon as possible. The rebels would act like they believed the Lannisters were with them, and pull back from one of the city's gates, letting the Westerlands army guard the gate for the siege.

Meanwhile, the mad king's men would believe that Tywin had faked out the rebels. They would open the gate for his army to join them in the defense, thus making it more difficult for the rebels to take the city due to their bolstered numbers.

But ultimately, Tywin would use the chance to attack. His army would take the opportunity blitz in and take over the Red Keep where the Mad King was, while part of his army would attack the other gates from the inside to let in the rest of the army that followed Prince Rhaegar.

In order to show his sincerity, Tywin had sent his second son as a hostage to the rebel forces to ensure they would believe him and go along with his plan.

The moment that Carl stepped into the tent, he zeroed in on the 10 year old Tyrion Lannister who was there as a hostage. The incredibly small 10 year old dwarf was being hovered over by two large guards while looking quite timid. A light scan of the boy's mind gave Carl all the information he needed.

Tyrion Lannister was half convinced that his father had sent him to die when he pulled his own ruse. Tywin did plan on attacking the King's forces and deposing Aerys II, but he didn't plan to open the gates to the other rebel forces. He wasn't going to let the rebel forces in until he had secured a victory on his own, thus putting himself in the preeminent position of having the greatest merit in striking the final blow of the rebellion against the Mad King.

Twyin believed that doing such a move would give him a much greater negotiating position and power in the aftermath of the rebellion to achieve his ends, namely more power for House Lannister.

Tyrion believed that his father hoped that the rebels would kill his useless and hated dwarf son when it was obvious that Twyin wasn't following the plan, thus ridding him of the hated boy.

Carl frowned on the inside at the mind and attitude of the young dwarf. He would have to get a read on Tywin to make sure of Tyrion's conjectures, but from an initial scan it seemed to Carl that young Tyrion had pretty much accepted the taunts and laughter directed at him as proof that he was useless. Especially compared to his older brother that was so physically perfect and good at fighting. Tyrion labored under a harsh inferiority complex.

While Carl wasn't aware of what exactly the dwarf had done in the original timeline, he was under the impression from many internet people that Tyrion was one of the finest minds in Westeros and that he was a stubborn survivor that made himself very useful to more than one ruler.

At the moment, Carl barely saw hints of the shrewd and brilliant mind he was known for. The stubborn will and survivor mentality was entirely lacking. Instead there was years of belief that he was as useless as his dwarf body that was dragging him down.

Carl ignored the arguing Lords and Nobles as they debated the merits and demerits of believing Tywin Lannister and following his plan.

He moved to a seat near the young boy as he pondered what to do about the situation. With the technology, magic, and other skills Carl had, a person's body was pretty much the last thing he looked at, as far as judging their worth as a person and ally of his. It was the most unimportant thing, since he could easily refashion the body, enhance it, clone it, boost it, and train it to great heights.

The quality of a person's body was immaterial. The most important things were their mind, will, and loyalty. Their ability to persevere, to struggle, to fight, and never give up. He knew that the young boy near him had those qualities of character hidden deep down. Apparently so deep he didn't even know he had them himself. It was only through living and struggling through hardship that he discovered those aspects of himself.

So Carl was currently pondering what to do about the boy. His first idea was to get the boy in his camp by healing the boy's body, which would definitely engender loyalty to himself in Tyrion.

In the Stargate world when he had expanded his empire, the key point of keeping the whole thing stable had been putting his own loyal disciples into positions of leadership and power. Their loyalty to Carl, their personal power, and their access to the best tech had ensured that his power and position as the head of the empire hadn't been shaken.

But if he simply gave Tyrion a new body, while it would ensure Tyrion's loyalty, it wouldn't do much for the character of the boy. Deep down inside, he would still believe that the only reason he was worth something was his new body. And if his new body could be given so easily, it could be taken away just as easily. He would never get over the knot in his heart. He would always be paranoid that he was one step away from being useless, all based on his body.

That knot in his heart, that poor mentality, would always fester in the boy's mind and hinder his development.

Carl decided that he would have to take a different approach to the Tyrion's development. It would take a lot more work to overcome the young dwarf's mental hang-ups than normal. But Carl wanted to do it that way, because the hints of a brilliant mind that he ran across made him eager to see what the boy was capable of when given half a chance to shine. If his father Twyin was so eager to throw the boy away as useless and not develop him for whatever reason, then Carl would be happy to take him in and rub his nose in it.

And Tywin himself had given Carl the perfect way to accomplish it. In his correspondence Tywin hadn't been so crass as to blatantly call his son collateral. He had used the excuse that he was sending him to be fostered with House Tully.

Apparently Tywin believed that with the poorer position that House Tully had among their peers, in addition to their close geographical position to the Westerlands, House Tully would have to think very carefully before doing anything to rouse House Lannister's anger. And that Tywin could easily bully House Tully into compliance whenever he desired.

Carl snorted at that idea. Even without his abilities, his father Hoster Tully was quite a stubborn man. There's no way he would kowtow to the Lannister Lord. He was too proud of his own position.

There was the additional fact that the presence of a hostage that Tywin didn't care for wouldn't be nearly as big of a preventative measure against Tywin as most would initially believe. If the hostage was Jaime Lannister, there might be some deterrent effect, but not his hated dwarf son.

Picking up those ideas from Tyrion's mind led Carl to believe that Tywin hated anyone having power or authority over him, and was willing to resort to underhanded and cruel means to attain his goals. Which matched up with what little Carl knew of the man from the Canon books and show, and what he had learned from his spy bots since arriving in the world.

Carl had introduced himself to Tyrion and started chatting with him as he thought over his plans for the boy. Carl was pleased that despite the young boy's timidness and inferiority complex, he did show his brilliant mind in conversation. He even showed hints of a stubborn will and refusal to give in on the points that Tyrion knew to be true from his reading when Carl would contradict his statements to test him.

Carl was pleased that the basic enthusiasm and stubborn will was there inside Tyrion. He just needed to use some methods to bring it out.

The meeting ended up being a short one, since the machinations of Tywin had given them very little time to debate. Which was probably what Tywin was counting on. If they didn't make their decision in the next two hours, the window for acting would disappear.

After Tyrion was questioned by the group of Lords, the decision was quickly made to take a chance on the Lannister Lord's plan. It was their best bet to end the siege quickly, with the minimum amount of bloodshed.

Carl made his own secret arrangements. Tywin's plan to delay opening the gates for the rest of the rebel army until he had already secured a win were destined for failure. Carl's sent some invisible Petes, those handy spiderlike robots that he first made in the Stargate world, to ensure that the gates were opened at the same time as the Lannister army entered the city.

While Tywin would still get some credit for the plan, the rest of the lords would still be annoyed by the highhanded manner he implemented it, without consulting any of them. And since they would all be entering at the same time as Twyin's men, it would be readily apparent that someone other than Tywin had cracked the gates for them, thus lowering the man's credit in the battle.

Carl smirked a bit inside at being able to foil the man's ambition, even if just by a little. It may be petty of him, but who said that nobles weren't allowed to be petty? Who made the Lannister Lord such a dick that Carl wanted to mess with him a bit?

* * *

A few hours later, the rebel armies were ready for battle. The far gate that Tywin's men would "besiege" was cleared of their men so the Lannisters could take their place and enact their plan. The Petes were in place to open the gates the moment the Lannisters began entering Kings Landing.

Hoster had pulled rank and ensured that Carl wasn't going to be the first to charge in, since he didn't want his heir to risk dying in the fight. While Carl had plenty of methods he could use to override the man's orders, he decided that he would accede to his father's orders.

Mostly Carl did so because he found himself being put in charge of the 10 year old Tyrion, and ordered to stay out of the majority of the fighting to keep their hostage, and himself, safe.

Carl had no hand in making sure the young Lannister lad was his responsibility. Nope, Carl was completely innocent there.

From the time that Carl first began spending time with young Tyrion, he began working on the boy's attitude. Because of the years of heaped up abuse and scorn, the young lad pretty much eschewed all physical labor or exertions. He figured he wouldn't be good at it anyway with his stature, so he avoided letting people make a mockery of him.

Carl wasn't going to have any of that idea of avoiding physical exertion. Despite not having the best body, it was still his body. He could still accomplish many things, even great things with it, if he only worked hard. So Carl assigned certain chores to the lad.

Despite laboring under an inferiority complex a mile wide, the young boy did have a sort of pride of his own, as he stubbornly completed the tasks Carl set him. He was quite awkward at first, but with his intellect he soon got the hang of handling the gear that Carl put him in charge of.

Since Tyrion was convinced from a young age that, with his dwarf defect, he wouldn't ever be able to shine in anything physical, he had pretty much never worked on testing his body's limits, working, and learning to fight beyond the vary basics. If he wasn't going to excel, and he was going to be made fun of for it, why bother?

But Carl didn't accept any excuses from him as he immediately set the boy physical tasks that would push him. Whether it was to reach for things out of easy reach to make his mind work and come up with alternate methods of accomplishing the goal, or lifting and carrying heavier loads than he usually did. Carl was determined to make the boy learn his limits, and push past them.

It was exactly what he did in the martial arts training for everyone Carl trained. It was just that at the moment Tyrion absolutely hated Carl's guts for forcing him to do the work. Tyrion was convinced that Carl was forcing him to do such work in order to mock him and laugh at his expense.

The slight smile on Carl's face from watching Tyrion work probably wasn't helping the impression that Tyrion had of Carl. But the slight smile on Carl's face wasn't mocking, it was from watching Tyrion refuse to give up or give in. It wasn't to mock the boy as Tyrion was currently thinking.

Eventually, all the chores that Carl had set Tyrion were complete, and Carl had Tyrion on a horse next to him. He looked especially small mounted on a normal sized horse. And the scowl on Tyrion's face showed he was fully aware of how small he looked on the horse, and felt that it was another method of mocking him.

Carl strode up to where the lad was sitting his horse. As he stood there, he glanced sideways and slightly up at the scowling boy sitting his horse. Tyrion was currently looking down at the horse's neck to avoid the mocking looks he was sure he would see in the men's faces around him.

Carl nudged Tyrion's leg, and when the boy glanced at him angrily, Carl gestured around their vicinity. "Really look around you Tyrion. What do you actually see, as opposed to what you expect?"

Tyrion stared at Carl, unsure of what he was getting at. "What?" The young boy asked.

"Really look around you, Tyrion." Carl repeated. "Use that mind of yours. What do you see? Describe it for me."

And the boy took his vaunted intelligence and used it as he looked around. "The soldiers are busy packing up the camp. They are making sure their personal supplies won't be stolen while they are busy at the battle. Some of them seem nervous, like it's their first battle. But the veteran's seem to be keeping them too busy to think much on their nervousness."

Carl's encouraging look at the young lad's perception seemed to shock the boy.

Tyrion's face started losing the scowl that he had been sporting as he stopped thinking of what he probably was suffering under, and actually looked around at what was actually happening.

"Everyone keeps looking over at the gates, as if they are wondering if they will really open or they will have to fight while being bombarded by the arrows of the defenders. Everyone is so preoccupied with their actions, that they aren't even paying me any attention." Tyrion was shocked at the revelation.

"Yes, Tyrion." Carl replied. "It seems to me that the Lannister men have grown used to mocking their lord's son, because he doesn't have Tywin's favor. They are following their Lord's example. They use someone who is in a worse position than them to make themselves feel better. But our Tully men don't have that habit instilled in them for 10 years. To them, you are the Lord Lannister's son, and a valuable noble that will ensure your father's cooperation."

Carl wasn't surprised to see a scowl once more on Tyrion's face at the mention of his father.

"I had a few reasons for working you so hard over the last hour." Carl admitted to the boy, and was unsurprised to see the boy's scowl turn on him. "And none of it was to mock you for your stature, boy."

"Then, why?" Tyrion's face had changed from scowling to blank from feeling at a loss for lack of answers and uncertainty about just what was going on.

"A multitude of reasons, really. To keep you busy and keep from worrying, just like the rest of the men. To see what you're truly capable of doing." The scowl returned on Tyrion's face. "Unlike others, I'm not going to assume that just because you were born a dwarf, that you are useless. If a nine foot tall giant is chopped at the knee with an axe by a six foot tall man, or a three foot tall dwarf, it doesn't matter to the giant. He'll still be wounded, crippled, and easy pickings." Carl explained as Tyrion's eyes widened in shock.

"To the nine foot tall giant, the regular sized man was considered weak and puny. Just like a dwarf is to a regular man. Does that mean that the regular sized man should accept the mockery of the giant, simply because he wasn't born a giant? Isn't he still a capable man in his own right? So why should the dwarf accept the mockery of the regular sized man?"

Tyrion seemed to be in a daze, the words that Carl spoke to him echoing in his ears. These were ideas that he had never considered. No one had ever spoken in such a way to him. They never considered him a normal person, why would they try to help him gain perspective?

"Give the dwarf an axe, and he'll chop the regular sized man down to size just as well as any other." Carl finished as he pulled out an axe suited to Tyrion's stature and handed it up to the boy.

Tyrion grabbed the axe with both hands mechanically. He couldn't keep his eyes from staring in wonder at the axe. The new ideas kept floating around in his head. The new possibilities. He felt the weight of the axe, the solidity. The weight of Carl's words. He was growing to like that axe the more he looked at it.

While Tyrion was staring at the axe in wide eyed thought, Carl attached the holster for the axe to Tyrion's horse.

"There's the holster for you to put your weapon away when you're done fondling it." Carl stated while lightly slapping the boy's back, and started laughing at the red faced shock the boy had at the joke.

"What? But-" Tyrion sputtered.

"Just a joke among fellow men, Tyrion. Don't worry too much about it." Carl waved him off with a grin.

"Thank you." Tyron whispered too low for most to hear as he reverently holstered his axe.

Carl completely ignored the suspicious watering of the boy's eyes as for the first time he was treated like a man, like a comrade. Mounting up on his own horse, Carl threw a friendly smile Tyrion's way.

"Now, we won't be in the thick of the fighting today. My father doesn't really want his heir to be in the thick of battle, so we'll be coming up in the reserve forces. We shouldn't see too much fighting, but best keep your guard up and your axe handy. You never know what might happen."

Carl pushed down the voice inside him saying a 10 year old had no place on the battlefield. This was a different world from where he originally grew up in, and the children here grew up quick. He had experienced that first hand. And he wouldn't be bringing Tyrion directly into the thick of combat, he would be part of the forces that were in charge of organizing things after the main force charged in.

A loud banging sound was heard from the direction of the city, and when Carl looked over, he saw that his Petes had arranged the opening of the gates right on schedule. The rebel army's leaders saw the sight they were expecting and led the charge into the city.

Tyrion followed behind Carl as he finished organizing the camp and the men who would be doing the mopping up and organizing behind the main force.

The next couple of hours was both boring and bloody, at least for Carl as his group moved into the city. Carl kept up a conversation with Tyrion as he explained what was happening, why he was giving certain orders to his men, and also sought Tyrion's own opinions on matters. He took it as an opportunity to teach the boy and get him involved.

Carl was very pleased with the boy's swift progress. At first Tyrion had been incredibly hesitant when Carl asked his opinion, sure that a sarcastic quip or mocking joke at his expense was about to come his way.

But when Carl and the men around him failed to do so, and even listened carefully to him, either agreeing with him or correcting his thought process as appropriate, he began to really open up. Like a drought stricken plant, he soaked up the positive attention that he had only ever got from his older brother Jaime and one of his aunts and uncles. The experience of being listened to and taught without mockery was exhilarating for the young man.

Carl's group of men continued following behind the main forces, piling bodies out of the way, setting up guard checkpoints around the city, and generally keeping the city organized. He had to order some looters captured and rapists hung when they were caught. Apparently some people thought they could get away with that kind of behavior in the chaos of war. Some nobles may have ignored it, but Carl wasn't about to put up with that shit.

After some time, Carl saw that everything was organized, and so he made his way to the Red Keep, the castle of the king. As he and Tyrion were walking through the halls of the keep, Carl saw many soldiers guarding the various halls and intersections, making sure there wouldn't be any surprise attacks or retaliation.

Carl's senses were spread out through the castle, and saw the various servants and courtiers cowering in their rooms, hoping the battle wouldn't sweep them up in it. His various spy bots had already mapped out all the hidden passages, so Carl was watching to see if anyone was sneaking around. Carl noticed that something interesting was happening in the throne room, so he sped up his and Tyrion's pace.

While Carl was making his way over to the throne room, Ned Stark and several soldiers had broken into the throne room, intending to arrest the king. But they found the king dead on the floor, and Jaime Lannister sitting slumped on the Iron Throne. As the various lords were trickling into the room, Jaime had admitted to killing the king. Ned had then labeled him as "kingslayer" in disgust for the young man breaking his Kingsguard Oaths.

Carl saw the whole scene from the feed from his spy bots. So when he arrived at the throne room just after Ned labeled Jaime with the shameful title for breaking his oaths, he decided to make an entrance.

He slammed open the doors of the hall, creating a huge booming sound. Without breaking stride, he entered the throne room with all eyes fastened on him, little Tyrion just behind him.

"Tyrion!?" Jaime called out in shock at seeing his little brother there.

"Jaime! I'm glad you're all right!" Tyrion's face broke out in a genuine smile at seeing his older brother as he rushed to Jaime's side.

"Is that an axe? What are you doing with an axe?" Jaime asked in confusion, while the rest of the men in the room waited to see what would happen.

"Yes, it's my axe! I can chop any man down at the knees, to make them more fit to fight!" Tyrion proudly announced as he brandished the axe.

Tyrion noticed that the grins of the men around the hall at his words didn't contain the same contempt the Lannister men would, even if they didn't seem to have much respect. But now, his mentality had changed greatly. Instead of feeling embarrassed, or resentful, he simply smirked back at them, daring them to say anything.

If anything, the boy's proud stance and challenging stares earned him respect from those present. No one liked a mewling coward, and the Lannister boy was showing plenty of spirit, which earned him respect.

"What happened here, brother?" Tyrion asked, looking around and seeing the king's corpse.

"Your brother killed the king." One of the men nearby answered when it looked like Jaime hesitated to say anything.

Tyrion knew his brother's character, and knew how much he had desired to be a great knight. How much he cherished his honor and oaths. So the fact that Jaime, one of the Kingsguard, had acted against his king meant that _something_ had to have happened.

"What happened, Jaime. Tell me everything!" Tyrion demanded. Even at ten name days old he knew his older brother wasn't the best thinker, despite all his other good qualities. So he had to insist on hearing the whole tale.

Jaime seemed to slump a bit where he stood, no longer looking so defiant, only tired and slightly broken.

"I was guarding the King when he heard the news that the rebels had made it into the city." Jaime began his tale, looking only at his young brother. "We were in the throne room here. The King had me call the Alchemist Guild's master. When he arrived, King Aerys II was raving about how he wouldn't allow the rebels to win. That he was the Blood and Fire, and with fire he would win." Jaime paused, looking somewhat haunted, before continuing.

"The King asked the alchemist if he had carried out his order. The alchemist assured the king that the wildfire was placed all over the city, and with a single act, they would all burn. The entire city would burn."

Jaime's haunted words caused every man in the hall to gulp in shock and fear. If that was true, then every man of the army would have been burned to death in the most horrible flames. Every single one of them owed their lives to Jaime Lannister for preventing the wildfire from being lit.

"I couldn't let that happen. Aside from all the people in Kings Landing, I heard that Father, uncle, and everyone was already in the city. So…I killed the alchemist before he could leave the hall and then cut down the King. I broke my oaths so everyone wouldn't die horribly in fire. I couldn't let that happen." Jaime's voice trailed off.

"You did the right thing, Jaime Lannister." Carl firmly and loudly proclaimed. It was a hard decision for a 17 year old raised on tales of Knights and honor to do. Go against his oaths and honor to save so many lives. Carl moved up next to the young man and patted him on the shoulder in solidarity. "You saved us all from a horrible death. You made the right choice."

Little Tyrion also stepped up next to his brother, assuring him he did good. Tyrion had his axe brandished and glared around at any man who dared to say otherwise. Carl smirked inside at the show of gumption for the 10 year old. He was well pleased the young boy seemed to be progressing so fast.

"You did the right thing." Ned Stark also asserted in his stoic way, also going up and patting the shocked young man on the shoulder. Just a moment ago Jaime was being condemned by those same men, who were now thanking him and patting his back, smiling and friendly. The abrupt turnabout really threw Jaime for a loop for some time.

Just then the various Lords and commanders of the rebel army, along with Prince Rhaegar, entered the throne room. They had taken so long getting there because of the need to organize their troops and make sure everything was secured.

Rhaegar Targaryen, Tywin Lannister, Doran and Oberyn Martell, Rickard and Brandon Stark, Hoster Tully, Jon Arryn, Mace Tyrell, and Robert Baratheon strode into the hall, looking around at the commotion going on.

"What's happening here, then?" Robert loudly asked before anyone else could speak up.

The men who had heard the tale from Jaime's own lips hastened to tell their lords what had almost happened. Many of them were watching Rhaegar to see what his reaction would be. Even though the King had gone mad, he was still Rhaegar's father after all.

After hearing the tale, Rhaegar stood for a moment with his eyes closed, thinking over the revelation and mourning his father. At least in everyone's eyes that was what he was doing. In reality he was receiving his orders from Carl.

Opening his eyes, Rhaegar strode up to Jaime and stood in front of him. "Despite being my father, Aerys had long since lost the mental faculties to rule properly. You have done us a service in ensuring our loyal lords and people were not massacred in fire. In reward, we will release you from service in the Kingsguard to return home with a large reward. You have given us loyal service, but it is still a hard thing to have to make that choice. Go home with your family and come to terms with what you had to do. There are other ways to serve the realm than to be a Kingsguard. As your father's heir, I'm sure you will do great good in the Kingdom."

Carl could see Jaime straitening up, his spine once more straight and proud, at the words from Rhaegar, who he looked up to. Out of the corner of his eye, Carl saw Tywin looking stern but pleased to have his heir back, and not being shamed for breaking his oaths as a Kingsguard.

Rhaegar then turned to the Hall in general. "This has been a very difficult time for the Seven Kingdoms. War has wracked our land, but now justice will once more be had in the land. We thank everyone for their loyal service. The rest of the day should be used in securing the city and the surrounding lands. Tonight we will have a feast and memorial for our fallen brothers. On the morrow we will meet in council to ensure the running of the kingdom is back on track."

Cheers rang out at the Prince's announcement.

The men in the hall then broke up into various groups as they started organizing. Jaime seemed to be avoiding his father, but attached himself to his younger brother, Tyrion, who remained at Carl's side as they went about their duties.

Aside from organizing and ordering around the Tully men, Carl kept up conversation with the two brothers, getting to know them better. Carl also sent a message to Lyanna that the rebellion was over, but she already knew the details, having watched the streams from Carl's spy bots.

She had originally been furious at her father's announcement that she wasn't to participate in the war. But she eventually acceded to her father's demands. Family bonds were still a huge part of her life, even though she had learned and grown so much from her time with Carl. Since she couldn't participate in the war, she found something else to do, and was busy decimating all the rapist reavers of the Iron Islands.

Carl couldn't say he was sorry to see those squid cunts being killed. At least the more despicable ones among them. He would have to determine if there were some that could be weaned away from their culture of rape and pillaging, and be integrated more into the Seven Kingdoms which they were supposed to be a part of.

But that would have to be for later. For now, Carl had things to be doing, and people to be tracked down from where they were hiding in Kings Landing, having fled the Red Keep through the various tunnels.


	66. ASOIAF 09

The dark tunnel that Carl passed through was quite cramped and showed evidence of long usage. He noticed various alcoves that corresponded to rooms throughout the Red Keep. After a bit of poking around, he discovered spy holes that allowed him to hear anything going on in the rooms.

Apparently the paranoia of Aerys II wasn't just a recent thing. Kings in the past had been keeping a surreptitious eye and ear on anyone that stayed in their keep.

The noise from the raucous victory party drifted in through those listening posts for Carl to hear as he silently passed by. More than a few of the Lords and nobles seemed to be celebrating with various pretty young servants.

Carl wouldn't be surprised if a whole slew of bastards were born in 9 months time after this night.

He was also somewhat impressed at the sheer amount of secret tunnels that were fitted into the Red Keep and the city around it. It was no wonder that Varys, the so called Master of Whisperers, was able to get around so easily and have his spies check in with him unobserved.

Carl followed the secret passage as it exited the grounds of the Red Keep, under the streets of Kings Landing. Even discounting his excellent memory and magical abilities, his VIs had already completely mapped out the tunnels underneath the Red Keep and Kings Landing, so there was no chance of him getting lost.

After walking through empty tunnels for a quarter hour, he arrived at a particular set of stairs that rose up to a cleverly concealed exit inside a building located in the market street of the city. Carl used his magic to keep from being noticed by the single occupant of the room when he entered the room and sat down.

The bald and pale effeminate man was busy reading various reports from his spies while sitting at a large desk. Carl smirked at the man's overconfidence in his own security arrangements.

Varys seemed to see himself as a great intellect and manipulator that was indispensible to those in power. As such, he knew that he would be of use even to the new regime, who would welcome him back with open arms in order to be of use in strengthening their rule.

He was also confident that no one else knew the secret tunnels and passages like he did, which led to his absolute confidence that no one could find him unless he chose to let them. While the city was in the chaos of subjugation, he would wait it out while continuing to receive reports.

Once things settled down, he planned to emerge and make himself indispensible to King Rhaegar as his new Master of Whispers.

From where Carl had seated himself, he appraised the man in front of him without allowing Varys to become aware of his presence. What he saw as he delved into Varys' mind wasn't very promising.

The eunuch had come to Kings Landing only five years ago, in 278 AC. In such a short time he had gained the trust of the king, expanded his intelligence network from what he already had built overseas, and worked hard to make himself indispensable to those in power.

From the gossip Carl had heard about Varys from various sources, the spymaster had been known to very vocally proclaim himself to be a proponent of "order, stability, and peace in the realm".

From what Carl was reading from the eunuch's mind, what the eunuch vocally stated was far from the truth. Varys was in it for the money and power. He had found that King Aerys II's paranoia allowed him free reign to grow his powerbase as he pleased, as long as he continued feeding the King's paranoia and producing enemies for the King to "take care of".

And the Mad King's extreme paranoia was easy for Varys to feed and grow, making the king's reliance on his spy master even greater. Varys didn't care about who he threw to the King's nonexistent mercy at the slightest need to appease the ruler. He didn't care about the chaos he caused when he set up different factions to fight each other, as long as Varys stayed in power and profited off the conflict.

What Carl then learned from Varys' mind itself about how he trained the little children that he used as his spies really angered him. The system of abuse, starvation, and rewards Varys used to motivate the children he and his men trained for spying was monstrous. And once the little children that he abused and treated as his own property grew up enough to not be quite as useful in spying, he used them as broodmares or studs to provide him with even more little spies to train.

Even before coming to the Seven Kingdoms, Varys had been setting up his intelligence network among the Free Cities. He had moved to the Seven Kingdoms in order to expand his influence, power, and wealth.

Looking at the despicable face of the pale eunuch, Carl decided that he didn't need to keep the man alive for anything. While he still had a somewhat uncomfortable feeling over some of the expedient measures he employed to avoid even more conflict, war, and loss of life, Carl had long since come to realize that sometimes distasteful things needed to be done to accomplish his goals.

The morality and teachings of his childhood continued to cause Carl to question himself anytime he did anything "expedient". He felt it was a necessary series of checks and balances in his mind so that he didn't fall into being a completely amoral monster. He would make exceptions to "how things should be done" in order to stop the monstrously inhuman actions of evil people, but he never wanted to make it his default actions.

Carl paused for a moment to examine those thoughts. He thought through his time in the Jump Chain and realized that he had only started second guessing himself and his actions after he had gotten quite powerful.

When he first started out on this crazy adventure, he felt quite threatened by all the crazy powerful forces that were a huge threat around him. It wasn't even a question of if ambushing and killing certain threats was morally right or wrong. It was survival, cause he knew they would try to kill him and his people.

But now that Carl was powerful enough that he felt confident in being able to easily handle most threats, he actually had the ability and metaphorical space to think on concepts of morality and character.

'Which is where all this second guessing of my motives and what not comes from, I guess. Now that I'm powerful enough to mostly control the board in a world like this, I have the ability to leisurely think about concepts like "fairness" in my actions.'

Carl rubbed his chin in thought while staring at the bald eunuch that was reviewing reports and making plans. Varys was so focused and enamored with power that he would trample anyone in his quest.

As he sat there thinking, Carl began comparing his actions as objectively as he could with the various peoples he had met in his travels. Some of them were the protagonists of their stories. Some were the villains of the piece.

As he reviewed his actions, Carl began pondering just where these feelings of guilt or doubt in his actions came from. Why was he constantly second guessing himself and feeling bad when he did bad things to bad people?

'It seems like kernels of doubt were instilled in me when I lived with the masters of Ryozanpaku.' Carl realized. 'That was my fourth world. I had already killed in my first two worlds, and spent my time in the third hunting all kinds of animals. But in the HSDK world, my masters lived by the no killing rule. They felt that if they had to resort to killing, than they had lost.'

Carl, feeling a bit antsy as he was thinking through the topic got up and paced back and forth in Varys' chamber.

'I really looked up to those masters of mine. They put in an extraordinary amount of time and effort training me. At the time I only had some magic skills. Granted they were still some kick ass magic skills. But after living through a world of demons that could physically tear me apart as easily as tissue paper, then living in the world of Pokemon where they could also physically tear me apart as easily as tissue paper, I definitely felt vulnerable.'

'And then the Masters of Ryozanpaku came along and gave me the key to protecting myself. It would be weird if I didn't idolize them a bit in my mind and want to follow their ideals.'

'But as I think of it, their no killing rule should only be applied to the competition between martial artists. Don't resort to a killing move in order to beat your opponent. That takes less skill. It's a pride thing. Pride in your hard earned skills and power.'

'But that doesn't really apply to the majority of people. Most people don't have those power or skills; and they can't afford to have that pride when failure means death. In a life and death struggle, they must take hold of every opportunity to live. _Especially_ when they have something to protect that means more than their life to them. Like family.'

Carl's right fist pounded into his left hand at that thought.

'I think that's when the seeds were planted of me starting to worry more about some idealized morality than the actual results of what I was doing.' Carl realized. 'Even when I was in a cultivation world full of murder hobos, I was very hesitant to take whatever actions were necessary against my enemies. I wanted to hold to some kind of morality when my enemies were willing to completely wipe out even the family of their opponents.'

'Even now I'm doubting myself and my motives when I'm in the midst of trying to make this kingdom a better place.' Carl sarcastically snorted at his overly complicated mental gymnastics. 'Well, I'm done with that. If after all this time I can't trust myself, who can I trust?'

Once Carl had made that decision, he felt as if a weight had been lifted from his thoughts. He felt more free than he had in some time.

Even his magic, ki, and profound energy seemed to flow more easily through him. It felt really damn good!

It was only then that he realized he had somehow been holding himself back. His mental state had been hindering his own progress. It was good that he finally got over that mental block!

Carl looked over at the bald eunuch. Varys wasn't a good man, and deserved none of his consideration. He was an enslaver and abuser of children for his own profit. That's the kind of man that Carl could enslave and mentally torment without feeling bad about it. The eunuch's own actions had damned him.

But Carl didn't require a spymaster at all, let alone one who operated like Varys did, so he wouldn't be putting him under the slave seal. He had his own ways to gather intelligence, so he had no need to employ and make use of the so called Master of Whisperers who enslaved kids, cutting their tongues out so they couldn't speak, and used them to spy on everyone.

Carl only kept from killing the half man immediately so he could gather all the information needed to find all the "little birds", which was what Varys called his spies. Carl mentally fed the information on Varys' spy network to the Yamato, along with orders to begin rounding up everyone in Varys' "employ", including his friend and business partner Illyrio Mopatis.

Illyrio was currently a wealthy magister based in Pentos. He and Varys had gained their initial wealth by running cons on the nobles and merchants. Varys would steal their items, then Illyrio, who was a sell sword at the time, would be hired to retrieve their goods.

And the thing that put Illyrio on Carl's radar of those needing to be ended was that he was one of those who helped procure and train the child spies of Varys.

Carl didn't want any child slavers running around free. It would irritate the hell out of him. So he would end the threat of the two of them and their associates.

He was hopeful that most of the young children could be saved and redeemed from the life that Varys made them live. At the very least, he could heal and restore the children's tongues that Varys had cut out so the children could once more talk and have a normal life.

After having seen what a waste of flesh that Varys was, Carl didn't bother talking to the man. He had already gotten all the information needed from the eunuch. Pulling on his profound energy, he shaped his Golden Crow flames into a small crow shape that glided slowly towards the pale man.

Varys's saw the light from Carl's fire suddenly appear, and only had time to draw in a breath to shout, his features morphing to one of fear, before the crow shaped flames landed on him. His body burned to ashes in moments, not even giving him time to scream.

Carl then vanished the ashes left behind. Looking around the room at the paperwork, Carl ordered the VIs to gather all of Varys' documents and scan them into the system. He casually walked out the front door while flashes of white light indicated that all the documents Varys left behind were being teleported out.

Outside the building, Carl saw plenty fighting men entering various taverns, getting drunk and celebrating their victory over the Mad King's forces. He was originally intending to have a night walk back to the Red Keep, but he paused when he saw the busy parties still going on.

Carl smirked a bit as he saw how much fun the army men seemed to be having, spending all their gold on wine and women. Instead of joining in the revelry, Carl faded into the background, using magic to make sure no one paid attention to him. He changed his mind on what he was going to do that night.

A moment later with a flash of light, Carl was gone from the streets of Kings Landing.

Far to the north, in the North, there was a modest fortified manor that was the home of the minor nobles of House Moss. Carl appeared in the air above the ground. Looking around the land in the night, Carl spotted the manor.

He stretched out his senses and sent a mental message. A moment later, with a flash of light, Lyanna appeared in the air next to him.

"Oh dear. Look what the wolf dragged in." Lyanna smirked as she floated in the air next to him, assessing his mood that had him come in the middle of the night to her.

Carl took in Lyanna's gorgeous appearance. She was dressed in yoga pants and a loose shirt that accentuated her curves beautifully. Ever since Carl had introduced many of the marvels of technology and modern living to her, she had been obsessed with many of the comfort items that the society of Westeros couldn't produce.

And she knew what seeing her in those yoga pants did to Carl.

Carl flew closer to her and enveloped her in his arms, mock growling as he nuzzled her neck.

"You are such a tease." Carl accused her.

"No, never a tease." Lyanna laughed. "I would never leave you…frustrated." She moaned as Carl planted kisses along her neck.

It was a good thing it was night time, or everyone down below would have gotten quite the eyeful as the two made love in the air above the manor. Even without their profound cultivation, they made enough heat between the two to warm them up in the cold air of the North.

* * *

A few hours later, Carl and Lyanna were laying in bed onboard the Yamato as Carl told Lyanna about his day and finding out the horrible things Varys had done to the children he took.

"…and so I burned him to death." Carl finished narrating his evening before he sought out Lyanna's company.

"Good. He deserved it." Lyanna declared. And for her, it was that simple. "So, what are you going to do with the kids?"

"I thought I'd heal them and set up a school. Maybe something to overthrow the Maesters one day." Carl idly said.

"Hmm. A good idea. I'd like to be a part of helping those children adjust." She calmly said.

"Oh? What are you thinking of doing with them?" Carl asked. She never seemed the bookish type. He was surprised she seemed to want to be involved in a school.

"I'm thinking you don't want to be stuck in the Riverlands for the next 9 years doing paperwork." Lyanna laughed at Carl's expression. "And while I know time in the world is supposed to be frozen when you leave, it doesn't hurt to prepare for the future. Having a group of loyal and talented people that could work to increase the industry and economy in our lands can only be a good thing."

Carl hummed in thought. They already had plans to train their family and guards in Ki so they could protect their family better. He wasn't going to do like he had in the Stargate universe, where he ran many 10 year long time compression training sessions over and over. But they were going to start training their people in martial arts so they could be the best force to guard their family and lands.

A magical contract to ensure betrayal didn't happen would naturally be implemented before the training took place.

Training up the children in a profession and allowing them to live their lives in their lands while building up an industry seemed like it would hit two birds with one stone. The children got a new life to live where they could be in charge of themselves and gain wealth, while at the same time they built up the economy of their two families, which would help them maintain their status over all the Lords that had designs to take them down a peg.

After thinking about it for a time, Carl realized that the organization he builds here on Westeros didn't need to be as massive as the one he had created in the Stargate world. It just needed to keep track of things in Westeros and protect their interests on one planet, not several galaxies.

"That could work." He allowed with a smile as he fully relaxed back into bed with his girl in his arms. He would have to get up in a short time to return to Kings Landing, but for now, he would enjoy the moment.

* * *

The coronation of the new king, Rhaegar, didn't take very long, but there were endless negotiations and meetings in the following month.

If there was one thing that held true no matter where, it was that in chaotic times there were many who sought to profit and strengthen their position. Hoster Tully, Carl's father in this life, wasn't any different.

It really would be irresponsible of him to not seek out the most benefits for his family and lands as he could wrangle.

As his father's heir, Carl spent his fair share of time sitting in meetings and watching his father work. It was meant to teach him what he needed to know in the future for when he took on the role.

Despite his father's intent of helping Carl learn to manage their lands and the Lords in it, he felt it was mostly a waste of his time. He had been through many political meetings in the past two worlds, and he really didn't need the beginner lessons here.

So he spent some effort trying to stay out of as many of the meetings as he could. He was by no means immune to the common condition of humans, the need to fight for resources and position. But with his powers and the technology he commanded, the scrabble for the paltry resources of the Seven Kingdoms hardly interested him.

His possession of a Philosopher's stone alone could see to making him the richest man in Westeros in a very short time.

Let alone the technology he could employ to create technology beyond the imagination of the people of the Seven Kingdoms.

So he spent more of his time with the people around him than jockeying for position and power. He had plenty of fun in continuing to work with young Tyrion on his education and training. The young boy was as intelligent as he had heard people say he was, so it was fun to put ever more complex puzzles and problems in front of the young boy.

Carl spent plenty of time in the practice yard, training his young charge and getting to know the various heirs and knights that were still spending their time in Kings Landing. Networking was a useful skill to have no matter where one went in human society.

And of course, Carl spent his nights with his Northern girl. They talked about where they would begin travelling after they were married in two years. Those two years would also give them plenty of time to build up their family's guard forces with some Ki training so that they would not have to worry about things going wrong while they were out traveling.

Despite Carl's rocky start in the world and finding himself more emotionally invested than he had expected, he was still determined to simply enjoy the next ten years as a vacation time. Lyanna didn't completely share his desire to vacation, since she hadn't been world jumping like he had. She was 26 mentally, but only 16 physically, and she still had a lot of things she wanted to do to improve life for her people in The North.

Carl gave Lyanna complete access to the technology so she could run her projects and accomplish her goals while they were traveling. It was easy enough to teleport where she needed to get something done, or send an HFR to be her representative.

So while all the negotiating was going on, Carl continued to train and work with his people during the day, and sneak away at night to spend time with his girl in the North.

A few weeks after the Coronation and change in leadership, most of the army was sent back to their homes, since they weren't needed at present, and they were getting more restless and rowdy. Not to mention the enormous food expense they were incurring in the city was straining the cash reserves and supply chain.

Carl jumped at the chance to leave the city with the Tully men in order to avoid more meetings.

He was quite happy to avoid the long tedious negotiations. It was always good to avoid temptation. Temptation to use confounding and compulsion spells just because he didn't have the patience to sit through the long and boring blatherings of blowhards. He would rather speed read a summary made by his representative than to sit in on the meeting himself.

Besides, what was the point of enslaving a King if he was just going to torture himself with endless talks and politics? Rhaegar was supposed to be his buffer to keep the horrors of administrative duties out of his life!

Strangely enough, King Rhaegar assigned Lord Hoster Tully to be the Master of Coin on his Small Council of advisors. This would require Hoster Tully to spend a great deal of his time in Kings Landing, leaving most of the administration of the Riverlands to Carl Tully for the next few years.

No one expected that assignment, since Hoster wasn't generally known for his great mercantile skills. Carl made sure Hoster had a few able assistants in some HFRs that would do a great deal of the work for him. They were quite able to follow the money and find corruption and tax evasion.

As far as Carl could tell, his Tully father felt quite honored to be given the position, which suited him just fine. It allowed him more freedom from his father's supervision and at the same time put more people Carl could trust into positions of authority to assist his puppet King ensure his rule was stable over the Seven Kingdoms.

Once Carl left the city with his new little foster brother Tyrion, time seemed to fly by quite quickly. They soon arrived back in Riverrun where he introduced Tyrion to Edmure, Catylen, and Lysa.

Due to their previous experience with Petyr Baelish, Carl's siblings seemed to be a bit standoffish at first, but soon warmed up to the lad with Carl's reassurances. Since he was the one who was perceptive enough to see through Baelish's façade, his siblings have been putting a great deal of weight in his judgments.

And speaking of Baelish, Carl spent a few moments observing him in his jail cell from afar. His father had still not been able or willing to pay the ransom to free him. Carl smirked a bit at seeing how pitiful the prisoner was. Baelish could stay in prison all his life, for all Carl cared. The moment he was released was the day he died, since Carl wouldn't allow such an enemy to roam free while plotting revenge against him and his family.

Carl made an order for his VIs to keep an eye on the Baelish bastard and to alert him if he ever got free. It wouldn't do to lose track of him.

A few weeks later it was time to depart for Brandon and Catylen's wedding. He had rarely seen his sister so happy as when she was preparing for the event.

With the war over, there was no reason to have a rushed wedding to cement alliances. And since Catelyn would be joining Brandon in the North, it was necessary to travel up to Winterfell to have the wedding.

The preparations for the trip was ruled over by Catelyn, since she wanted everything perfect. She was often seen, with Lysa by her side, hovering over the servants as she directed their work and what to pack and prepare.

Even Hoster stayed out of Catelyn's way as she prepared. Carl just chuckled at his sister's excitement. If it made her happy, then he was happy to indulge her on her precious day. His family was in a good mood, which made him happy.

During the few weeks before they left for Winterfell, Carl started training Edmure and Tyrion both in the important lessons they needed to rule their lands. While Edmure was the spare rather than the heir, Carl didn't intend to have his brother be a landless knight. Even if Edmure never took over ruling the Riverlands permanently, he still had to have experience governing his own lands.

And Carl thought that with Jaime's lack of skill for politics and business, it would be a good thing to have his younger brother capable of managing the Westerlands for him in the future, if he didn't want their family to eventually fall in to ruin.

Carl planned to have the 14 year old Edmure get some practical experience governing Riverrun in the next couple years. And once he turned 18, he would start having him work on running the Riverlands by himself. With a little bit of guidance, Carl could then be completely free to wander around the world while his younger brother held the fort at home, with a bit of HFR help, no doubt.

The large group of people departing Riverrun for a wedding was quite a sight. There was a sizeable guard contingent, many wagons full of goods, and plenty of nobles that were traveling with them.

The lazy and meandering pace they set as they traveled north was a vast difference from when Carl had taken the same route on his way to take care of Walder Frey and join up with the Starks during the little civil war that had just happened.

When Hoster Tully was shocked at the cheap, practically free, price of passage through the Twins, Carl smirked a bit in amusement. It hadn't been hard to intimidate the new Lord Frey into giving them preferential treatment for the next 30 years. Carl saw it as simply making up for the years of ruinously high passage fees that old Walder Frey had levied against House Tully in his time as Lord Frey.

The travel went smoothly, with no unexpected bandit ambushes, or Iron Island pirates, or disgruntled lords attacking their enemies when they least expected it. Carl made sure the passage was clear. He didn't want his sister's good mood to be ruined by a bit of bloodshed.

Once they arrived in Winterfell, the seat of House Stark and the Lord Paramount of the North, they were met by the Starks. After the greeting, they were assigned rooms, the wagons were unpacked, and preparations continued for the wedding.

For the next several days many other nobles and Lords came trickling into the city to celebrate the wedding. Mostly it was those from the North and the Riverlands. Each of the Lords of the Great Houses also sent relatives to represent them at the wedding.

It was a curious thing that many of those from further south didn't really like traveling to the North. So even though the Lords should have shown up in person to the wedding of the Heir of the Lord Paramount, they begged off by sending a member of their family to attend.

After the wedding ceremony there was a huge feast and party all through the city. Inside the keep of Winterfell only the nobles and Lords could attend, while the rest of the commoners took the opportunity to party in the streets.

There was dancing, music, many foods at the feast, and troupe performances. Carl had a dance with each of his sisters, before spending the rest of his time with Lyanna. He kept an eye out for his younger sister, to be sure that she wasn't taken advantage of by overly amorous men who were drunken on wine.

Carl did take notice of the few young men that caught Lysa's attention. He mentally ordered his VIs to keep track of them to research if they would make decent matches as his younger sister's husband.

While he would like all members of his family to gain the strength to protect themselves, he recognized that his two girly sisters were too wedded to their idea of a woman's place to seek out strength and martial skill unless they were put in such horrible positions that they had no choice.

He found he couldn't bring himself to force them to live through such horrible experiences that they would change enough to desire martial skills. They would probably have to experience their entire family being slaughtered in front of them to reach that point. That would be a shitty thing for a brother to do to his sisters, even if it was just an illusion.

And since there really wasn't anything that would threaten his family during his time here, he shelved the idea of forcing his sisters to do something they would be completely against.

So, Carl was rethinking his approach. At least they were in minimal danger of actually dying in the 9 years he would be in the world. When he came back to the world later, he would work a plan to get them and their family to join him.

And if they ultimately refused to leave their life behind, then he would have to respect that that was their choice in how to live and let them go. At least he would know that they were happy in their life.

But for the time being Carl put those thoughts away and focused on spending his time dancing with his girl, Lyanna. Damn that girl's moves fired him up.

As was usual in such a feast with entitled asshole nobles, plenty of drunken and randy louts tried to muscle in on his territory and proposition his woman. Tried being the key word. Some of them seemed to have an urgent need for the privy, which caused a great deal of laughter at their expense when they pissed or shit their pants.

Others found their feet all tangled together as they tried to walk, constantly landing on their noses. Even their servants couldn't seem to keep them upright as they seemed to throw themselves face first into the ground.

And some of them seemed incapable of holding their drink and needed some servants to carry them to their rooms after they passed out. Lightweights.

Eventually the newly wedded couple were escorted to their rooms for the night. Carl and Lyanna escaped the feast before it wound down to spend some quality time together.

* * *

After the wedding, Hoster, Lysa, Edmure, Carl, and Tyrion returned to Riverrun. Carl continued his normal routine of training Edmure and Tyrion, spending time with his sister Lysa, and spending his nights with his fiery Northern girl.

His father stayed at Riverrun for a week to make sure Carl was up to the job of administering the lands before he departed for Kings Landing to take up the job of Master of Coins.

On the surface not much was different from how his life was before the big war that deposed a Mad King. But strangely enough, many of the Houses of the Riverlands were suffering from an unusual run of bad luck.

House Darry for example had to work very hard to protect any shipments of goods that traveled to or from their territory. For some reason a band of bandits had established themselves in the area around the Trident and were very good at evading the patrols of House Darry's guards.

Carl smirked every time Lord Darry came complaining to him about his lost shipments and demand that more guards from House Tully be sent to help patrol the area. He especially enjoyed the look on his face when he threw Lord Darry's own words from several years ago back in his face.

Back then it had been House Tully's goods that were stolen by bandits, and they were asking for help from the various Lords that were oath bound to them. But since House Tully was stretched thin between the various Houses that were attacking them, they didn't have any leverage necessary to force compliance.

"My guards are stretched far too thin as it is. I'm afraid you'll have to raise the levies yourself. It is your own lands, how can you not have control over them? It wouldn't be right for me to interfere in the governance of your own lands, after all. You seem to be a bit stressed out, Lord Darry. Are you sure you're up to the responsibilities of your station?" Carl insincerely asked with great concern for Lord Darry, silently laughing at the sound of grinding teeth as he was assured that he was just fine.

After interrogating those Darry men that had attacked him and Lyanna when they were on the way back from Harrenhal before the war broke out, Carl had discovered that House Darry had been quietly supporting groups of "bandits". The guards leaked the information that the bandits were really Darry guardsmen, ordered to steal Tully goods in order to damage their finances and weaken House Tully.

Needless to say, Carl wasn't very pleased with the underhanded methods House Darry had taken to undermine the Tully's position as Lord Paramount of the Trident. Just because House Darry was located on the Trident, they felt they were the ones who deserved the Lord Paramount of the Trident title, so they had been doing everything they could to undermine and overthrow House Tully.

Once Carl had found out the duplicitous actions of House Darry, aside from sponsoring his own "bandit campaign" in retaliation, he had launched an investigation into which houses of the Riverlands were actively undermining House Tully. The five houses that were actively acting against the Tullys were Darry, Goodbrook, Lychester, Mooton, and Ryger.

Riverrun, the seat of House Tully, was located along the Red Fork in the west, near the border with the Westerlands. Their location along the Red Fork gave them a good position to engage in shipping and trade. But their goods inevitably ended up going through many other house's lands before arriving at their destinations, which made them vulnerable to banditry and "passage fees".

House Darry was located to the east of Riverrun, at the Trident where the Red, Blue, and Green Forks met. Their central location in shipping gave them massive profits and also an inflated pride and ego.

House Goodbrook was located to the south east of Riverrun, near the God's Eye Lake, where the Isle of Faces was located. A tributary of the Blackwater Rush River runs from the southern part of the lake to the Blackwater Rush River, which runs east to Blackwater Bay, and west through The Reach and The Westerlands. They have plenty of options for shipping that allows them to earn plenty of gold crowns.

House Lychester was located east and a little north of Riverrun, in between the Red and Blue Forks. The Blue Fork runs northwest up to Ironman's bay, and south east to the Trident and on to the Bay of Crabs. They too have plenty of opportunity for profit in the shipping business.

House Mooton is located at the far east of the Riverlands on the Bay of Crabs near the border with the Crownlands. Their position on the ocean gave them access to shipping and easy access to the many goods that came out of Essos, the land that was on the other side of The Narrow Sea.

And House Ryger was located in the Willow Wood that was in the south of the Riverlands near the Goldroad that runs from King's landing in the Crownlands west through the Riverlands, and all the way through the Westerlands to Casterly Rock, the seat of House Lannister, which overlooked the harbor of Lannisport on the Sunset Sea.

Each of these houses that were working to undermine and replace House Tully were located in very strategic locations for shipping concerns, and their greed and pride drove them to desire to replace House Tully as the preeminent House of the Riverlands.

Once Carl was aware of the undercurrents and economic fighting over shipping that caused these Houses to undermine and attack his own House, he was more than able to direct his forces to counterattack effectively.

So anytime one of the Lords of these five Houses came to complain to Carl, he felt quite happy at their "misfortune". He also felt immense contempt for them. These hypocritical Lords were doing everything they could to attack and destroy House Tully, but when it happened to them they immediately came crying for help from the very House they wanted to destroy.

Carl was betting with Lyanna whether five years was enough to completely bankrupt these Lords and force them to accept direct supervision of House Tully's men to make sure their shipping could actually get to the destination, or if they would need more than five years to do so.

Meanwhile in the North, Lyanna was doing wonders for the loyal Lords and Bannermen of House Stark. She had "found" old tomes and books that described amazing farming techniques that enabled the North to begin producing surpluses of food. This allowed them to save enormous amounts of gold, since they could stockpile enough food to last through the winters that usually lasted for years, instead of relying on the shipments of food from other lands. The Reach was the biggest culprit of those who charged an arm and a leg for food during the winter, which allowed them to get rich at The North's expense.

The Stark's bannermen honored their Lord's daughter Lyanna for providing a way for them to tell be able to be independent and be able to tell the greedy southerners of The Reach to go fuck themselves.

During these two years Carl also corresponded with Jason Mallister, the heir of House Mallister of Seagard. House Mallister and House Tully were quite close, and Jason Mallister was a good and honorable man and talented knight. Carl had gotten close to him in the past, and their friendship had grown while they were working together during the war to depose the Mad King.

Now that things had calmed down, Carl was working with Jason to build up a fleet that would be based in Seagard that would patrol Ironman's Bay, keeping the Ironborn in check and protecting their shipping interests. Carl provided plenty of gold so they could build up enough ships and hire enough sailors and marines to make it happen.

Since the Mallisters were true to their oaths to House Tully, Carl was more than happy to see the House prosper and grow stronger, since they would be a strong support for his House.

Of course there were many people who were not happy with the changes that were happening in the Riverlands.

A weak House Tully that wasn't capable of taking charge of the Riverlands meant that the various Houses in the rest of the Seven Kingdoms were free to exploit the Riverlands and plunder them for all the gold they could.

The ones making the most profit off of exploiting The Riverlands were The Iron Islands, the Westerlands, The Reach, and The Crownlands. So the various Houses that were seeing a lessening of the amount of gold they could bleed the Riverlands of were all quite unhappy.

Not that Carl cared. Anytime those Houses sent a noble to complain, or wrote a strongly worded letter, it was music to his ears. It meant he was doing right by his own House, Lords, and bannermen. And he had no intention of stopping.

And anytime mysterious groups of "bandits" appeared anywhere near his lands or shipping concerns, they were swiftly dealt with in a brutal manner to serve as a warning.

His own oathbound and loyal guards were coming along quite well in their Ki training, which meant they could decimate any other force that crossed them. They were doing quite a good job of protecting his own House's interests while damaging the various Houses that were trying to exploit him.

Carl expected things to heat up in the next few years as the economic warfare escalated. He wasn't worried by anything the enemy Houses might do to attack him, since he would come out ahead.

But at the moment, he had other things to focus on. Both Lyanna and Lysa had turned 18. His wedding was going to be held in the next week, and a month later his sister Lysa would be wed to Lord Stefen Corbray. He was a relatively young Lord of the Vale of Arryn whose seat was located at Heart's Home, on the Bay of the Narrow Sea.

Carl had done an in depth investigation and scanned the young man's mind and found that he was a decent Lord that would treat his little sister right. And his sister seemed to be quite smitten with the young Lord, so it was a good match. He would definitely ensure that Stefen Corbray's economic situation continued to improve so that he could provide a good life for Lysa.

And now that Edmure was 16, Carl had convinced Hoster to give him the same chance at training that he had given Carl in how to govern Riverrun and The Riverlands. It was Carl's sneaky way of passing off his work to his younger brother and prepare him to rule his own lands.

One of the things that surprised Carl at first was that Lyanna had wanted King Rhaegar to come to their wedding. Something about showing the bastard just what he was missing out on so that he would be tormented more, thinking of how far he had fallen, and would never have her, and other such cruel things.

Carl just laughingly agreed. If she wanted to torment the crazy prophecy seeking Targaryen, he didn't mind. Even if Rhaegar ended up going crazy and becoming useless as a puppet king, there were plenty of others to sit on the Iron Throne in his place.

In the beginning of 284 AC Daenerys Targaryen had been born to Rhaella Targaryen. With the addition of the little Princess, there were now three children of the Mad King. Rhaegar, Viserys (who was 8 this year), and Daenerys (just born this year).

Rhaegar had two children of his own. Little Princess Rhaenys who was 4, and Little Prince Aegon who was 2.

Carl had arranged for the servants and tutors of the younger members of the Royal family to be HFRs that would teach the young ones well so that they wouldn't grow up to be mad incestuous crazies that he would have to do something about.

Viserys, at the beginning of the war, was only a 6 year old entitled little shit. He had tried hard to complain to his mother, his brother via letter, and anyone who would listen about the HFR servants that dared to tell him "no" or discipline him when he did something wrong.

Carl would laugh and laugh when he saw the reports about the little brat's whining. Eventually, after a year of discipline and ordered lessons, the little entitled prince was finally learning to grow out of it. Since no one ever took his complaints seriously, he had finally begun accepting his new reality. He was finally learning the lessons he needed to, attending the martial practice yard, and working to be a Lord that would do right by his people.

Of course those weren't his motivations at first. At first it was only to avoid being disciplined. But now, especially with the stories of admirable Lords and Knights that had livened up his life, Viserys had a goal to work towards. And he was shaping up into a decent human being.

Riverrun was lively the day of his wedding. The Starks had come down from The North to attend. Carl got to spend some time with his newly born nephew, Robb Stark, the fussy little wolf cub.

When Catelyn had given birth to the young Stark Heir and named him Robb, Carl was thinking that the world plot was still trying to arrange certain things the same as it would be in the original story. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but he would have to keep an eye out for random people trying to fill in the place of Varys or Baelish, since he had made sure those two players were out of the game.

So while his two sisters were enthusiastically organizing his wedding decorations and dressing his future wife up in finery, Carl's bride was simply tolerating her new goodsisters with good humor. In the past two years as Lyanna spent time with Catelyn and Lysa, she had come to enjoy their company, even if she didn't hardly share anything in common with them. They were family and that was the important thing.

Finally the wedding ceremony was held. The hall was filled with Carl's family, extended family, friends, and allies. Lord Hoster Tully stood on one side with Lord Rickard Stark. Brandon and Catelyn stood by with their son, Robb. Eddard Stark and his newly wed wife Ashara Stark nee Dayne seemed to not be capable of seeing anything but each other's eyes, if the way they gazed soulfully at each other was any indication.

Lysa Tully and her fiancé Stefen Corbray looked like they fit together quite well. Edmure Tully, Tyrion Lannister, and Benjen Stark stood together, whispering and eyeing the pretty ladies present.

Even Robert Baratheon had managed to show up to offer his honest respects. Carl could see a hint of regret in his eyes when the man looked toward Lyanna, but it was overshadowed by his friendliness and well wishes. Carl could only be happy that cp purchased perks seemed to work so well. From what he gathered, even 15 years later Robert would have still been mourning Lyanna in the original storyline. The fact that Carl could change so much of the people's lives here, and hopefully make his family and friend's lives better, was a source of comfort for him.

Carl smiled to see his beautiful bride walking up the aisle towards him. Lyanna really was a treasure to him. He had lived for quite a few years by this point. Seeing how fresh and enthusiastic Lyanna was about everything she learned was something that helped rekindle that sense of amazement and awe in the wonder of magic and technology in Carl.

Not to mention the fact that he had so many family members and friends present made Carl feel a pocket of warmth glow in his heart. This was a special time for them.

Soon the ceremony was complete and the feast and party begun. Aside from saving a dance each for his sisters, Carl only danced with Lyanna, as was proper as a newlywed man.

Later on some of the drunk young men in the feast called out for the bedding ceremony. It was a rowdy tradition where the men would pick up the new bride and strip her as they carried her to the bed chambers. The women would do the same for the groom.

But to the surprise of everyone there, and to the intense disappointment of the drunk young men, no one could find the bride and groom to carry out the bedding tradition.

Unseen to anyone there, in a corner of the banquet hall, Carl was hugging Lyanna from behind while they were under an S.E.P. field.

"None of them deserve to see my delectable wife on our wedding night." Carl possessively growled while he began kissing Lyanna's neck.

"Oh, is that so? And you think I would let any of those sows near my man?" Lyanna challengingly stated.

"They can only dream. My Northern Wolf will chase them away for me, won't she?"

Lyanna's response was decidedly non-verbal, which caused Carl to waste no more time in teleporting the two of them to their bed for a long night of showing each other how much they loved each other. How much they very enthusiastically loved each other. All night long.


	67. ASOIAF 10

Now that the two of them were properly and officially married, Carl and Lyanna began their honeymoon, which was as good an excuse as any other to get out and begin their travels around Westeros.

They traveled north with a troop of guards to Seagard where they boarded the boat that Carl had commissioned. As they travelled Carl and Lyanna would spend time in each of the noble's manors or castles as they passed by, to meet and greet people and maintain friendly relations. When they sailed from Seagard on their ship, they set off to the south west, sailing past the Iron Islands.

If they happened to meet any Ironborn ships that felt that a single ship was easy pickings, they easily disabused them of that notion before sending them to sleep with their watery gods. Carl didn't have any truck with rapist reavers, and wasn't going to play any games with them.

Now that Carl didn't have all the administrative duties to attend to, since he foisted them off on Edmure, he had more time to explore the magical tomes they had picked up from Valyria. He had left plenty of advisors and HFR helpers behind for Edmure, and he could be there in a flash if the need was great. But for now, he would let his brother get his feet wet in administrating their land.

He had read through the various magical books from Valyra already, but he hadn't spent the time needed to test out the new blood and fire magics that were in the books. So now that he had a lot of leisure time on board their ship, he decided he would spend some time practicing the new magics.

Carl began feeding his blood and spellfire in the recorded method into the Blue Orchid, which was merged with a Valyrian Steel sword, in order to strengthen his sword and bond to it. Even with his bodily regeneration abilities, he was still quite grateful for the blood replenishing potions from the Harry Potter universe, since it allowed him to feed quite a lot more of his own blood to the sword than the old Valyrian Lords could in the same time span.

The more blood the sword drank, the stronger the sense of magic in the sword was, as well as the stronger the connection he felt with the blade. After a week of feeding massive amounts of his blood to his sword, he could feel a qualitative difference in how he felt about his sword.

There was a level of swordsmanship that could be trained to where the martial artist wields the sword as if it was a part of them. Every little detail of the sword is known to the swordsman, from the weight, the length, how it reacts to being struck, and more. When wielding the blade, it's as natural as if the sword was one of their own arms. Carl felt that his link with the Blue Orchid had transcended that level. Even when the sword was on the other side of the room from him, he still felt like it was a part of him, and that it was simply brimming with power.

It was an interesting sensation, to say the least. It surely spoke to how the Valyrian Lords were so powerful they were able to hold such a huge empire for so long.

They continued sailing south along the coast of the Seven Kingdoms. They stayed a few days in Lannisport, which was a bustling harbor town.

After they left Lannisport behind and continued south, Carl was once more grateful he had access to technology that let he and Lyanna keep up with the happenings of their various projects. The snail slow speed of the sailing ship with nothing to do would have driven the two of them crazy and forced them to abandon the ship to fly on their own if they didn't have anything to distract themselves with during the day.

They eventually arrived at Oldtown and paid an official visit to the Citadel and met with some of the Maesters there. When asked if he wanted to forge any links, due to Maester Naet's suggestion, Carl declined. He felt absolutely no drive to want to prove his mastery to them and become in their debt for the "privilege".

A couple of years after saving all the little spies of Varys, the school that Lyanna was overseeing was developing quite well. It took some time for the young abused children to come to the realization that their fates had well and truly changed and they wouldn't be treated as Varys' people had treated them.

Even teaching them to properly speak, once they had their tongues restored, took quite a bit of work, but Lyanna was actually quite patient in that regard. It seems that a lot of her rebellion against her father in the past was due to the lack of freedom to pursue what she felt was important. With the power to have her freedom and the ability to set her own goals, she had settled down and focused on achieving her goals, instead of making a ruckus.

And she was doing quite a lot of good among the people of The North and The Riverlands especially.

Their voyage then continued, following along the coast of Dorne, and they eventually put in at Sunspear, the capital of Dorne and the seat of House Martell. The merchants that Carl employed for his House had been doing quite a lot of business in shipping all around Westeros, so Carl spent some time in Sunspear solving some of the small issues that had cropped up due to the economic battling of rival concerns.

With some judicious use of wards the warehouses that were the base of his shipping company in Sunspear was well protected from further theft and vandalism.

One of the other good things about having gone through the Monopoly Gauntlet as he had, was that every major city they visited had an Inn or property of some kind that Carl and Lyanna were guaranteed safe lodgings at.

It also made it easier for his people to set up their shipping business, since the managing VIs were able to pass on plenty of gossip and other intel to his people.

Once they were done in Dorne, they sailed past the Stepstones and continued north, pausing for some time in Storm's End, the seat of House Baratheon.

After a visit with Robert and his brothers, they continued north, staying at each of the important cities for a day or two. After a few weeks of travel, they arrived in the Bay of Seals in The North, where the island of Skagos was located.

There were tales of unicorns that lived on the island of Skagos, so Carl was interested in obtaining a few to add to his farms.

While their ship was anchored off the coast Carl and Lyanna spent some time flying over the island. The forbidding rocky mountains of the island had its own rugged beauty that they could appreciate easily because of their ability to simply fly over the dangerous terrain and not worry about their safety.

After some time playing around, Carl followed the directions of the Yamato II's sensors to find a herd of "unicorns". They were vastly different from the shiny white horse-like unicorns of the Harry Potter universe. These unicorns did have a single long horn growing out of their forehead, but they were more like shaggy brown goats, than glossy white horses. Carl was amused to see them climbing what looked like sheer cliffs easily.

While they were very different from the traditional unicorn, Carl still sensed some magical properties in them. So he stunned and gathered a few into the Farms.

After seeing how the goats, er….unicorns, were moving around the cliffs, Carl thought about the nature documentaries he had seen in his first life about the Snow Leopard and Golden Eagles that would hunt in such terrain. So he set out to look for any predators that lived in the area to determine if he wanted to add them to the Farms.

After looking though the satellite scans, Carl found that there were some large cats that looked like Snow Leopards that lived in the area that hunted the unicorns. It didn't take very long for Carl to find them and capture a couple for his Farms.

Before leaving the area Carl spent a day in his panther animagus form running around the area. It was exhilarating to be scrambling up nearly sheer cliffs with his claws. Even though he wasn't in any danger, it was still fun. And the goats were quite tasty.

Once they were finished at Skagos, Carl and Lyanna flew north past The Wall into the Land of Always Winter. They saw plenty of the Wildlings, or Free Folk as they termed themselves, while they were passing by the lands north of The Wall.

The Free Folk had a culture where they believed in taking what they could hold with their own power. They derogatorily called the people to the south of The Wall "kneelers", and claimed they were the only free peoples.

Carl didn't try to romanticize them in any way. They often lived short and brutal lives. If they didn't have the power to protect themselves, they would be killed or enslaved by someone more powerful. Just because they don't call it slavery didn't make the forced servitude not slavery. Especially when it was men forcing the women to be their bed slaves. And just because the women had grown to expect that, and even be proud of their sex appeal, didn't change the fundamental nature of it.

With the attitude of those people, Carl wasn't even going to bother visiting them or trying to change them. It would take a lot longer than the 10 years he had to do anything about their strange and brutal culture.

And his goal at this time was to pay a visit to the Night King. He was the leader of the horde of ice zombies. Just because Carl would be leaving the world in less than 8 years didn't mean he would wait for the zombie king to be ready and invade the lands of men and attack. He had decided to finish the undead scourge now, so it wouldn't be a problem later.

Carl decided to have a little fun, so when he arrived at the ice fields where the Night King and his ice zombies were located, he flew in low to the ground. Lyanna, with her own Valyrian Steel sword, flew several feet away at the same height.

As he flew along the ground, he was busy lopping off head of the ice zombies. Once their head was gone, they ended up shattering into ice chunks. Everywhere the two of them flew, explosions of ice zombies happened behind them like a wake in the water.

Carl and Lyanna were having a lot of fun, flying around in wide circular paths and mowing down the ice zombies. But Carl soon saw the Night King, who was glaring daggers at him. The head zombie honcho pulled out his sword and started chucking ice spells at Carl. Lyanna veered away and continued to behead the zombies, confident that Carl would be fine.

And thanks to the Water Seed that he picked up from the ATG world, the ice spells didn't even hurt Carl when he smacked them out of the air. The impact of the ice only tickled his fists a little from where he deflected the spells. Carl then swooped under the next attack and closed with the Night King swiftly, chopping him in two vertically.

The two halves of the body slowly fell apart. Once it landed on the ground, the Night Kings body immediately fractured into a bunch of ice. A huge burst of magic expanded from where the Night King's body once was. As the expanding ring of magic hit the ice zombies, they fell apart into ice, the magic that animated them being washed away due to the death of the Night King.

"Well, that was easy mode." Carl muttered with a grin as Lyanna flew up next to him.

"Good. Better that than the army of undead pushing our families to the brink of death." Lyanna replied with her own bloodthirsty grin.

"That's for sure." Carl agreed, thinking of how poorly his two sisters would handle fighting undead zombies and wights.

Even a knight might break and not have the bravery to handle fighting the undead. He had no doubt that under the circumstances of protecting their families, his sisters would fight. Especially if they were protecting their children, they would be quite ferocious. But since they didn't spend any time in the practice yard, their skills would be very poor and wouldn't survive an extended engagement.

"So, what would you like to do next?" Carl inquired.

"A shower and a hot bath. After killing a bunch of zombies I just feel dirty."

Carl chuckled in reply and sent an order for them to be teleported to the Yamato II so they could get clean.

* * *

"So, when are we going to hatch our dragons?" Lyanna asked as she draped herself over Carl's back while he was reading a book at his desk.

"I've had the Yamato doing some calculations based on the spell books we got from Valyria." Carl replied, enjoying the feel of his gorgeous girl pressing her assets into his back. "According to the book, we need to sacrifice a group of humans in a pyre to cause the dragon eggs to hatch."

"Sounds gruesome." Lyanna wrinkled her nose. "It's always blood and fire with them, isn't it?" Carl laughed in agreement.

"So after scanning the eggs themselves, we've detected a certain amount of spellwork in the eggs. It seems that since they were created via magic, they need some sort of catalyst to breathe life into them. Hence the sacrificing humans part. But according to our scans, it doesn't necessarily need to be humans we sacrifice. It just needs a certain amount of life energy."

Lyanna hummed in thought for a moment before getting a smile on her face.

"Are you planning on trying to inject Ki into them?" She asked.

"Indeed." Carl smiled. "I'm going to have some 'sacrifices' on standby to make sure that if the Ki injection doesn't work, then I can burn them down to hatch the dragons. I was thinking of having some large animals. Maybe a few of the slavers our people have captured over in Essos. Maybe Baelish, since it is kind of cruel to leave him rotting in the cell. It would be kinder to just end his miserable life."

"As long as I get my dragon."

"Of course." Carl promised.

* * *

A few weeks later, Carl had the ritual prepared. They chose to do it in a remote location in The North, where no one would be around to see. The wards around the site made sure of that.

While they had been north of The Wall, Carl had spotted the Giants and their mammoth mounts. He had snuck a couple of the mammoths into his farms and produced several as the backup sacrifices for his Dragon hatching.

Carl looked over the assembly of various animals that were bound in a circle around his Dragon egg. There were several species of animals from around Westeros. He even had some Dire Wolves. As a feline animagus, he really didn't care too much about dogs, but even he could admit that Dire Wolves are cool. It wouldn't stop him from using them as a sacrifice, but they were cool.

He also had several magical species from the Harry Potter world and several profound species form the ATG world. Carl completely ignored the thrashing and screaming slavers and Baelish that were strapped down. The silencing charms made sure they weren't a distraction.

Lyanna looked at him from her place to the side. After Carl went, she would have a chance to hatch her own Dragon.

In the middle of the circle sat the Dragon egg on top of a raised dais. Carl stepped up next to it. He cut his hand to get some of his blood on the egg and began channeling Ki into the egg. He could feel the hunger of the Dragon egg as it eagerly soaked up the Ki energy.

He could also feel his blood being sucked up. His body's regeneration was quickly replenishing it as fast as it left him.

After several minutes, Carl realized that there was still a missing component. _Fire_. Reaching into his magic and profound energy, he pulled up fire. The Golden Crow flames and Fiendfyre, specifically. He carefully controlled them so they didn't destroy the egg, but instead gently caress the egg, heating it up. Finally the egg got to the proper temperature and the heart of the Dragon inside began beating, after having a huge infusion of life energy via the Ki and blood.

Carl watched with his senses as the Dragon tried to uncurl, but found the shell in its way. It lashed out at it, cracking the egg, and pushing out. Carl smiled as his Dragon finally flopped down on the dais.

The deep bronze colors of the Dragon's hide was very good looking. Carl smiled at the little thing as it looked around for its first meal. Carl summoned one of the Westeros unicorns to him, snapping its neck and killing it instantly. He then began tearing off chunks of meat to feed his little Dragon.

Carl could feel the bond between him and his Dragon growing stronger. The Dragon didn't really think per se. But he was definitely aware. Eventually he ate his fill and lay curled up in Carl's arms.

"Cute little thing." Lyanna stepped up next to him once she saw he was done.

"You ready for your Dragon, love?" Carl asked when he saw her hugging a Dragon egg in her arms.

"Of course!" She smiled impishly at him.

After he passed on the information he had from when he hatched his egg, Carl stepped back and let her get to it. While she didn't have as good control over fire as he did, she was able to conjure flames just fine to heat up the egg.

A short time later, Lyanna was holding her own dark golden colored Dragon, while wearing a huge smile on her face.

"I named mine Ramoth." Lyanna announced to Carl when she had finished wakening her dragon and walked over to where he was waiting.

"Well, I guess I can only name mine Mnementh then." He replied before kissing her. He looked over at all the animals, slavers, and Baelish that hadn't been killed since using Ki and blood had been more than enough. "Well, guess I'll clean this mess up."

He used his magic to teleport the various animals back to the Farms, while the Yamato teleported the slavers and Baelish back to their jail cells. Guess Baelish was going to suffer a long and miserable life after all.

* * *

Over the next eight years, Carl and Lyanna spent very little time at home, officially. They were sailing all over the world of Westeros, exploring the cities, people, and cultures they found there while they were raising their Dragons and overseeing their various projects.

In all of the harbor cities they would set up a base for their shipping concerns, which was becoming a world shaking giant. Their ships were everywhere on the ocean, and traveled to every port.

Nothing on the seas could match their ship's speed, weapons, or their sailor's prowess in battle. And the slavers of the Free Cities soon found, to their dismay, that the ships of the Tully-Stark shipping concern absolutely loved to find their ships on the ocean. They considered it a prize and an opportunity to add to their numbers, since all the slaves would be freed and offered a job. Either as a sailor / marine, or they could be educated and work on the business side of things on land.

One of the best captains in their fleet was the young Tyrion Lannister, who joined at the age of 16. He found that even though his stature was growing to be like a normal man the older he got, he had no desire to return home anytime soon and try to win the affection of his father. He had already learned from his foster older brother Carl that his own self respect was enough for him. It was enough for him to believe in himself, since he had proved to himself just how capable he was. He no longer needed the respect or approval of his hateful father.

Eventually, after several years, Hoster Tully became resigned to the fact that his oldest boy had fobbed off the duty of being heir to his younger boy, Edmure. He was just glad that Carl had spent enough time and effort to make sure that Edmure was ready for the job. Occasionally he would think back to that year when Carl had used a clever stratagem to show them Baelish's true colors. He shuddered to think of how things would have ended up if Carl hadn't done what he did to expose the true nature of that rat. Baelish would have ruined his family in many ways, including giving Edmure bad advice and ruining his ability to govern their lands.

By the time that Carl was about to leave the world in the year 292 AC, House Tully had a firm grasp on the Riverlands. All the houses that had been opposing them had failed in their economic endeavors and had to petition for the support and help of their Lord Paramount to help them out of the pit they were in. Carl used the opportunity to wrest concessions and magical oaths from them that would ensure they weren't ever a threat to his family.

His sister Catelyn had given birth three more times to Sansa, Arya, and Bran. Looks like that World Plot had been working overtime there.

His younger sister Lysa had given Carl a nephew and niece who they named Timothy and Michelle. Cute little rug rats.

Edmure had married and his wife had given birth to a son, ensuring the succession of House Tully. Little Edmure jr. was a fun kid to tease. Instead of pouting and running to his mom or dad, he would try to come up with ways to get back at his uncle. Like dropping food in his lap "accidentally". He was of course disciplined by his parents for those acts, but Carl appreciated how the little guy would stand up for himself. As long as that energy was channeled properly, he would make a good Lord to watch after their House.

And while Carl hadn't taken charge of the world and conquered everything, his and Lyanna's influence were everywhere. The school they had founded was continually growing and had already overtaken the place of the Maesters in their society, since they were able to admit much larger numbers of people. Not to mention that their school of people actually researched advances that improved the lives of the people, which made them quite popular.

The Riverlands had also been added on as the Eighth Kingdom. The Riverlands and The North were tied for being the biggest economic power in the Eight Kingdoms due to their joint shipping business, so it wasn't hard to convince the other Lords to agree to the change of making The Riverlands one of the Kingdoms. Everyone would have been hurting economically if they tried to deny the petition, since House Tully would have retaliated.

And with a puppet King on his side, there was no one who could really fight it.

His shipping company had made slavery quite economically difficult to continue, since any ships that were transporting slaves were soon captured at sea. It was only a matter of time before the slavers were bankrupt and couldn't support their despicable "trade".

"All in all, it was a good vacation." Carl announced to Lyanna with a satisfied smile on his face as they were laying in bed the day he would leave the world.

"Lazybones made me do all the work." She replied with a mock scowl on her face as she pinched his waist.

"Ow! Ow! Okay, I give! You did a wonderful job!" Carl admitted, before he managed to pin her arms at her sides. He was just leaning down to kiss her when his vision went black.

He opened his eyes, looking at the familiar ceiling of the house he had inside his Warehouse. He was once more between worlds.

"Dammit. Couldn't wait another hour." He grumbled about the Jump Chain's horrible timing. "Even half an hour would do. Hell, would 10 minutes have killed you?"

* * *

The Story of Clone Carl in a Different Timeline

* * *

Carl suddenly woke up, unsure of just where he was. And why was he feeling so damn weak?

Sitting up, he noticed he was in the Yamato. Sitting in an open capsule. That just happened to be a cloning unit.

"Damn." He groaned out loud, realizing what was happening here. "I'm a clone."

He struggled to his feet, still feeling a bit disoriented and unused to his weak body. His body that was still only a Martial Disciple. Weak.

Spending the next half hour in the shower gave him some time to adjust, and hot showers just felt good.

Once he finished in the shower, he pulled on a bathrobe and slippers and walked to the bridge to commune with his VI and find out what was happening in the world.

A short time later, Carl sat back in his chair to think about his current situation. Something in the corner of his eye caught his attention though. With a smile, he walked over and poured himself a mug of Root Beer.

"I don't know if this keg will stay with me and be everfull, but at least my original self wasn't a dick." Carl laughed, amused that he was considerate enough of himself to leave behind the keg of Root Beer just on the off chance it would stay with him and help make his life easier.

"Cause chances are high that I, as the clone, am not bound to the Jump Chain and will be stuck in this universe for the rest of my life." Carl found it interesting that he didn't feel that sad about that fact. He still remembered all his past life, his girls, and his strong desire to return to them.

After searching his memory, he realized that the original Carl had adjusted the memories downloaded into the clone, into him, so that there wouldn't be as strong of an emotional connection to the past.

He realized that it was for his sake that original Carl had done it, so that he wouldn't be wracked with anger and angst being stuck in this universe and unable to return to his girls. That he could let go of the past and live for the future.

He almost got a tear in his eye at thinking of how Carl cared for Carl. It was like having an older brother.

With a bark of laughter, Carl put those thoughts out of his mind. He started thinking about his situation and what he would do about it.

Reaching inside himself, he could feel his weak magical core. Presumably it was so weak because he was essentially just born. As he grew, that magical core would continue to get stronger. Right now he barely had enough magic to light a candle!

From practicing a few martial moves, as well as his memories from original Carl, he knew his body was on the level of a Martial Disciple.

"Well, at least I've got the tools to train up quickly." Carl muttered while thinking about the Room of Requirement that could simulate a gravity chamber that would assist in his training, not to mention the time compression device that was powered by the Potentia from the Stargate universe.

"So, what have I got available? And now that I'm stuck here, what are my plans for this world?" Carl hummed in thought as he directed the VI in how to deploy various satellites and spies. He ordered a scan to be done of the solar system so he had an idea of what resources there were in the nearby planets, moons, and asteroid fields.

Perusing his implanted memories, he realized that original Carl had left a hold full of magically expanded storage with everything he needed to recreate a magical ecology as well as a profound energy cultivation world.

"So I've got magic, but it will take some time to mature enough to be useful. I'm a Martial Disciple, but with time compression I could be a Martial master in a matter of days. I've got no Profound Cultivation, and I haven't started using the Great Way of the Buddha technique yet."

Carl reviewed the memories of original Carl's making the clone. In the memories he learned that he basically had a diminished version of all the physical perks he had purchased before. For example he wasn't completely immune to fire like the original, but there wasn't a fire on Westeros that could hurt him.

Hot enough fires, like the sun, could still fry him. But if he raised his cultivation level high enough, he could protect against that.

Tapping the desk with fingers, Carl thought about what he should do first. There were just so many things to do!

He needed to develop his technology base. The original Carl was going to just spend his time in Westeros on vacation and relax. But Carl found himself stuck here. And if he was going to be stuck here, he wasn't going to put up with anyone telling him what to do.

He was half tempted to just grab a bunch of his people and start his own colony on another world.

But that wouldn't do just yet. He needed to get some revenge on the Mad King at least for killing his sister's fiancé.

The VI beeped, notifying Carl that it had finished the first rough survey of the solar system. A more detailed report would be generated in several hours when the probes had a chance to travel around and take detailed readings.

Scanning through the report, Carl saw that this solar system was similar to his original home, with either 8 or 9 planets, depending if one still thought of Pluto as a planet. Carl scowled at the results. In order to terraform any of the planets or moons, it would require a lot of effort and time.

If this galaxy is anything like the one in the Stargate universe, it would be better to start with habitable planets in the nearby systems. He would send out some probes to reconnoiter nearby solar systems and find him at least two planets that would work for creating a Profound world, and a Magic world to grow all his various plants and animals.

But first, Carl ordered the VI to start manufacturing the needed Pete spider robots to start mining the nearby asteroids for materials to build up their numbers.

Next, Carl ordered his ship's VI to start scanning the planet and find anything that was useful and teleport it onboard and into the holds. Anything like a shipwreck that had metals and gems that could be used, any magic books just sitting around, any dragon eggs sitting around, everything was to be teleported to the holds to be sorted.

Carl then made his way to the Room of Requirement onboard the ship. The time compression technology would give him a year of training time over the next 12 hours. Nowhere near as good as the Heavenly Time Pearl, but it would give him an edge.

It was time to start training.

* * *

After the first bout of training, Carl was close to the Master Martial Artist level. He had only reached the True Profound Realm. He was only on the 2nd level of the Great Way of the Buddha. And his magic had barely grown stronger. At this rate, he would need at least 7 years before his magic was at the level of a 1st year Hogwarts student.

It had only been a year of training, split up into several different training paths that slowed down his progress. He needed more time for training.

But events were happening fast down on the planet. His family was worried because they hadn't seen him for nearly a whole day. Eddard Stark, Robert Baratheon, and Jon Arryn were only just starting to fight the first battles of the rebellion. The Nobles around the Seven Kingdoms were already choosing their sides.

Carl decided that he needed to show up at home, but he also needed to spend the next week fully immersed in training. That would give him nearly 14 years of training in time compression, which would make him untouchable on this planet.

He had an HFR made of himself. It would placate his family until he was done training. Then he would bring a troop of HFRs to act as guards for his family, as well as working as an elite unite that Carl would bring into the war.

Now that Carl thought about it, the catalyst for this whole thing was Lyanna and Rhaegar. Looking over the report, it looked like Rhaegar and Lyanna had married, or at least pledged to each other in front of a Weirwood. Rhaegar was taking her south to the borders of Dorne where the Tower of Joy was located.

Carl still didn't know what the motivation of Prince Rhaegar was in all this, to have eloped with Lyanna. He could guess that Lyanna wanted to escape from her arranged marriage, but the way she went about it was pretty dumb. If only she had come to him! The good feelings he had for her from his memories of spending time with her and her family were in conflict with his frustration at being dropped in the middle of a crisis with not enough time or resources to fix everything right away.

His Legilimency wasn't good enough yet to rip answers out of people's heads. After this week long training, his magic should be good enough to do so. Alternatively he had Veritaserum to get truthful answers from people.

After sending out more orders to the VI, Carl returned to his training.

* * *

Carl finished his training. He took his place back among the Riverlanders, and had a large company of HFRs bolster his army that would totally tear up the enemy in combat.

He started his move to take control of the Riverlands. Strangely enough, his father never saw anything wrong with him taking control. Carl sent out the order to all the Lords and bannermen to gather and submit to him. Some of the Lords sent back messengers with snide comments about him and refused to join his rebellion.

Carl was seen to be smiling in a feral manner when he got those messages. It was actually exactly what he wanted. It was an excuse to act against certain families who had been going against House Tully for a long time now.

He and his elite company of HFRs were everywhere over the next week, completely defeating the Lords that didn't honor their oaths of fealty to House Tully and the Lord Paramount of the Trident.

Houses Darry, Goodbrook, Lychester, Mooton, and Ryger were the houses that rebelled and were put down hard. Carl threw all the offenders and their families into jail. He didn't have time to deal with them now. He had a war to win. The troops of those families were folded into the general army and were watched by units of his HFRs. If they set one foot out of line, it would not go well for them.

Some of the Lords didn't directly rebel, they simply dragged their feet so much that they would never reach the battlefield in time to make a difference. Walder Frey didn't even try to make it secret that he deliberately wasn't moving fast enough to mobilize at Carl's command, which led to his head being mounted on a pike by Carl.

Carl was not fucking around here or letting anyone try their sneaky ploys to maneuver behind his back or lessen his position of authority. The next Lord Frey was much more amenable to following his oaths.

Once the Riverlands was subdued and united under his banner, Carl turned his attention to the other Kingdoms. House Corbray and House Grafton were lucky they were subdued by Lord Arryn before Carl got around to them, or they would have found themselves in the jail as well.

The North was completely behind Eddard Stark due to the brutal killings of their Lord Paramount and Heir, and their army soon joined Carl's in the Riverlands.

The Westerlands army under Lord Lannister was actually hovering on the border with the Riverlands, uncertain where Carl's forces were moving to. They were protecting their lands in case Carl's forces attacked them.

Carl left enough forces behind to defend the Riverlands against the Westerlands in case they attacked anywhere in his lands.

Meanwhile The Reach army was besieging Storm's End, where Stannis Baratheon was in charge of the defense. Stannis' brother Robert had run off with a great number of the Stormland's men in order to fight the forces of the Targaryens when he heard that Prince Rhaegar had shown up, leaving his brother with inadequate food and forces to defend against the siege of the army of the Reach. Apparently Robert lost his mind when the kidnapper of Lyanna showed up, and wanted nothing more than to kill Rhaegar, even to the point of not paying attention to his own brother's precarious situation.

Carl shook his head in disgust. Robert was a great fighter and understood tactics just fine, but he had an average mind for strategy and a poor head for politics. Installing him as King in the original story was likely done because a lot of people felt they could control him or use him as a puppet.

He had Stark and Arryn move their armies in support of Robert, while Carl led his men and HFRs to break the back of The Reach's army and relieve the siege on Storm's End.

Carl's forces arrived behind the indolent army of the Reach without being noticed. They were partying and holding jousts like they were on vacation while holding the siege on Storm's End. Bunch of cunts.

He knew that Mace Tyrell was an idiot and wouldn't listen to reason without being smacked down. So Carl didn't bother trying to negotiate at first, he just turned his forces loose on the Reachmen.

A few hours later, after he had mauled them sufficiently, he pulled back his forces and signaled for Parley.

Carl met the blustering Mace Tyrell and his Lords in the middle of the blood soaked field. The idiot tried to bluster his way out of it, but Carl didn't let him get anywhere. In the end, he took their parole and stripped the army of their armor and weapons and sent them on their way back to the Reach under guard. He couldn't trust that they would behave themselves if he tried to fold them into his army to take Kings Landing, not with that idiot Mace around.

About that time Carl got word that Robert defeated and killed Prince Rhaegar in battle. The Lannisters were moving, but not attacking, as they made their way to Kings Landing.

Carl sent his forces to join in the siege of Kings Landing, but made a little side trip, assisted by the Yamato II's teleport function.

He arrived outside the Tower of Joy where Rhaegar had Lyanna imprisoned. There Carl found three members of the Kingsguard keeping Lyanna in her jail. Ser Arthur Dayne, Ser Oswell Whent, and Lord Commander Gerold Hightower.

The three fools refused to let Carl pass. He decided to let them live, but gave them a lesson in humility by utterly spanking all three. His Valyrian Steel Bastard Sword was fed with his blood and Ki for the 15 years he had been training in time compression. It was a powerful sword and chopped their swords to bits, before Carl thrashed them for following the stupid commands of their idiot prince.

He stunned them and threw them into a jail via the teleport of the Yamato II.

He entered the jail that the Tower of Joy had become for Lyanna. He could immediately see that she was a few months pregnant and she looked incredibly unhealthy. Looking at her, Carl felt his heart ache a bit at her plight.

His memories of growing up in Riverrun and interacting with her had left a strong impression on him, especially when the original Carl had worked to lessen the emotional ties to people in the previous worlds, it left him more attached to everything he had here. He cared a great deal for Lyanna. Seeing her in these conditions angered him greatly.

He scanned her memories and saw what Rhaegar had done to her. How he had tricked her and lied to her. How he gloated about her father and older brother dying in the Red Keep. How she would give birth to the Kwisatz Haderach, er…the Promised Prince.

Carl only regretted that he couldn't torture Rhaegar since he was already dead.

He teleported with Lyanna up to the Yamato II to be looked after by the medical VI so she wouldn't die in childbirth.

She was naturally stunned by the ship and what was available there. He promised he would spend more time talking about it after the war.

A few weeks later Carl was sitting on the Iron Throne, looking over the assembled Lords who were there in the aftermath of the battle in Kings Landing.

Lord Tywin Lannister had succeeded in his ploy to enter the city before anyone else and gain the most credit so he could gain the most concessions after the war. But Carl saw what he was doing and signaled his HFRs that were already in place throughout Kings Landing to act.

All the time while Carl had been following the Armies around the Seven Kingdoms, the Yamato II had been replacing key positions and guardsmen inside Kings Landing with HFRs, all in preparation for this day.

His forces opened the gates for the rest of the armies. Carl didn't bother fighting through the city with his HFRs this time, he simply teleported to the throne room and killed Aerys II when he was beginning to instruct the Alchemist guild master to burn the city to the ground.

Jaime Lannister was stunned to see Carl appear from nowhere, seemingly. And even more shocked to see the Mad King dead on the ground so quickly and simply.

Which led to Carl being in place to take control of the political negotiations, post battle. He made liberal use of compulsion spells to get his way, and at the end of the day he was crowned king.

Since this universe was to be his home from now on, he wanted to shape it into something he could stand. And he wasn't about to let Robert become a puppet king and order him around.

Carl had made sure that the remaining Targaryens were protected during the chaos of the battle. Two knights of the Lannisters ended up being killed when they tried to break into Princess Elia Martell's rooms and murder her and her children. He didn't bother to remember their names, it was some big knight and some slimy knight, that's all he remembered.

But it was fun to tweak Tywin Lannister a bit about it, since he seemed to be quite put out that he lost his attack dogs.

A couple months later Queen Rhealla Targaryen and her two children were returned to Kings Landing. She only traveled back to Kings Landing after she recovered from child birth and Daenerys, the new born princess, was old enough to travel.

Now that Carl was king, he began replacing the old Mad King's people with his own. He brought Lyanna down from the Yamato II and made sure her pregnancy and birth went smoothly.

Eddard and Catelyn didn't end up marrying to cement the alliance since Carl had convinced Hoster to forgo that and let Catelyn pick her future husband herself.

Along with cleaning up the corrupt officials in Kings Landing, Carl began the work of renovating the damned stinkhole of a city. He rounded up quite a lot of unemployed people in the slums and shipped them to various farms around the Seven Kingdoms. With a huge part of population draining out of the city, it made it easier to tear down and rebuild the city to a coherent plan.

Over the next several months the various Great Houses were jockeying for position to get Carl to marry their daughters so they could have someone from their House on the Iron Throne in the next generation. Carl chuckled about that because his lifespan was measured in thousands of years at the moment, and he didn't plan on marrying anytime soon. While it would make people nervous to not have a clear succession, having them petition for their daughters kept them hopeful that he would create closer ties with them.

Lyanna gave birth to the boy that would have been named Jon Snow in another life by Eddard Stark. Here, Lyanna named him Charles.

After spending a several more months with her, Lyanna became his first wife. It took her a bit of time to get over her bad experience with Rhaegar.

He then blood adopted little Charles so that the little tyke would be his own kid.

Not too long later Carl made a decision that hadn't been done recently in the history of the Seven Kingdoms and accepted a daughter from each of the Kingdoms as one of his wives.

There was some maneuvering among the women, but some of the benefits of the CP purchases the original Carl had made seemed to be in play, because they didn't actually fight with each other to much. After they spent time getting to know him and each other, the group of women seemed to get along better and better.

Over the next decade, Carl continued to make changes to the Seven Kingdoms. He was slowly bringing their technology forward while solidifying his rule. His VIs were busy terraforming several planets in nearby solar systems for future expansion.

And he was also expanding his family by having babies with his wives.

He didn't even bother to go up North to kill the Ice Zombies personally. He simply had his VIs teleport them to the sun. He was too busy making babies, practicing for making babies, and expanding his kingdom while fobbing off the paperwork on his subordinates.

A hundred years after he had taken the Iron Throne, he ruled over the entire planet of Westeros. All the lands had been consolidated under his rule.

He had long since stopped being simply the King on the Iron Throne. All of his wives and children had been taught the Ki and Profound cultivation techniques he knew, as well as how to control their magic, so they were all very long lived as well.

Carl sat back and acted like a proper boss and delegated. He didn't bother directly controlling any of the provinces of his empire, he let his children and wives take turns ruling the various lands if they so desired, including the many planets in the galaxy he had terraformed. He was still the head of the dynasty, but he didn't get bogged down in the minutiae.

Five hundred years after he took the Iron Throne, he took a step back from ruling the dynasty to spend time with his wives as they traveled around the galaxy. Each of his children were bored of ruling, so they had passed it down to their children, who had passed it to their children.

Even tens of thousands of years later, Carl Tully was still hailed as the Great Founder that had built their glorious Empire that had spread over several galaxies. His royal progeny were nearly as countless as the stars in the heavens. He left quite a legacy and legend behind in that universe.


	68. The Warehouse 6

Carl sighed in annoyance as he woke up once more in the Warehouse between worlds. He loved going to new worlds and meeting new people. Learning new magic, new technology, new anything. He loved getting more family in a new world, he loved getting to know attractive girls and spending time with them.

But he hated having no control over how long he was in a world, when he left, or the manner of his departures.

That wasn't the first time he had been cockblocked and blue balled by the Jump Chain.

And he was sure it wouldn't be the last time, either.

He got up from his amazingly comfortable bed that he barely used anymore and approached Spere 037's terminal. There were only a couple perks that he got from ASOIAF, but he made sure to add those to his base body and once more passed out when he finalized the process.

A short time later, he woke up once more after the process was over. Getting up once more, Carl continued his normal routine of taking a shower to clear his mind as he cleaned his body.

It was all part of the process of adjusting his mindset so he was prepared for the next world. Take charge of the things he could control. Don't worry about the things he couldn't control.

After he finished drying himself off with a towel, the old fashioned way, he made his way down to the kitchen. His kitchen had gone through several iterations and alterations as he made his way through the worlds.

In the Pokemon world he had installed the standard equipment one could find there. Since most of the technology developed was influenced by the Pokemon, there wasn't much innovation in the technology for the kitchen. So the equipment hadn't been much different from what he had in his original world or the BtVS world.

The Farmville game world actually had some magical storage items and cabinetry, to Carl's surprise. So he had his shelves replaced so that a large amount of food could be stored there for emergencies.

In the HSDK world, he had spent most of his time in Japan at the Ryozanpaku dojo, so he had added a lot of cooking devices that made cooking Japanese cuisine much easier. Good thing he already had the magically bullshit cabinets to fit the large amounts of pots, pans, woks, and dishes that were added in that world.

That world was followed by the SAO world. Surprisingly enough, when he was in the Matrix, er…the Sword Art Online game, the magic of the Jump Chain had made the in game items real for him. So he was able to store them in his Warehouse.

He had gotten various cooking utensils that added bonuses while cooking, sped up the cooking process, magically infused flavors, etc. It had been a fun thing for him to collect all the miscellaneous items from various quests, and he never threw anything away. He had magical storage options, why should he pick and choose what he kept?

After that he had gone to the Harry Potter world and had gotten the truly bullshit magical expansion charms that made it so he basically had whole warehouses in his cabinets. The magical fetching charms and runes made it easy to get what he needed from the cupboard whenever he was looking to cook. Various runes automatically adjusted heating, cooling, stirring according to instructions, etc.

The ATG world had seriously expanded on the idea of BBQ for Carl. That was a world where everyone was obsessed with cultivation. Even the animals cultivated. Every meal needed to be packed with profound energy in order to help a person's cultivation advance, even if only by a fraction. So they had many methods of grilling and barbecuing the meat of the profound animals that preserved the energy in the meat perfectly. His kitchen had been expanded once more to add a grilling and barbecue section, which made the most delectable meat.

In his original world there had been groups of people that had attempted to use chemistry to create new ways of cooking food that would be innovative, add new flavors, and completely alter what everyone thought of as cooking. They had mostly failed in his original world, since it wasn't transformative enough, or some such. Carl didn't really know.

But in the Stargate universe, the number of foodies in his Empire had not been a small number. When they had access to the amazing technology of the ancient Alterans, they had embraced it as if it was the Second Coming. The amount of craziness that had resulted from such ardently devoted foodies gaining enough technology and science knowhow to really play with their food had blown his mind. He had promptly added a lot of the innovation they created to his kitchen.

So now there was a station in his kitchen that was controlled by a VI that could create the most amazing looking and tasting food. Sometimes the people had gotten so overwhelmed with the creation that they forgot to make the food edible, to the detriment of some customers besides Carl. With his Metavore addition to his base body, he could eat nearly _anything._

But the food always looked amazing, at least.

So whenever Carl stepped foot into his expanded and enormously altered kitchen, with all the food items from several worlds and many cuisine types available, it was always a bit of a struggle to narrow down just what he was going to eat.

On this particular morning, Carl felt like having a simple meal. So he made himself a delicious bacon breakfast burrito. The potatoes were fried just right so they have a just a bit of crispness to them on the outside while the inside was soft. The onions were grilled just enough so they didn't lose their bite. The peppers added just that bit of a bite to spice it up. The mushrooms added buttery goodness. The eggs were bouncy and light, binding the whole thing together. Everything fused together into a pinnacle tier burrito.

And of course Root Beer goes with breakfast. It was just natural, Root Beer goes with everything.

Once he finished cleaning up, Carl spent a bit of time bustling around his Warehouse, checking that everything was settled and organized right. There was a sense of comfort in looking through his storage units and thinking of the worlds he got various item from. He spent some time reminiscing about the people he knew and loved in those worlds.

Looking at the shelf where his Book of Kelsor was located, Carl remembered one particular day back when he was a senior at Sunnydale.

* * *

The Sunnydale library in the early evening was quiet. Not completely silent, as occasionally the sound of a page in a book turning could be heard. The sounds of scribbling of a pencil on paper also broke the silence.

"And I'm telling you again, it was an accident!" A voice outside the doors could be heard exclaiming impatiently.

The doors opened up, letting in Carl, Buffy, and Xander. Carl was shirtless, while Buffy was wearing his shirt. She didn't appear to have anything on under the shirt, strangely enough. Xander stood off to the side, not getting involved in the argument, though he looked incredibly amused.

"You need to learn to guide those fireballs better! And you owe me for burning off one of my favorite tops!" Buffy angrily glared at Carl as she made her way to the cage where her spare clothes were located.

The rest of the group had put their research on hold to spectate the argument. Jonathan, Andrew, and Jesse may have to have surgery to put their eyes back in their head when they got a look at Buffy's almost completely bare legs. They got a slap to the back of the head by Cordelia and Harmony for their overt ogling though, which caused them to look away.

"Listen, there's no way I could have expected that lizard to be immune to fire! My fireballs just ricocheted off his scales. I canceled the spell immediately!" Carl protested his innocence.

"Yeah, but somehow not quick enough to save my outfit!" Buffy growled. "That was one of my favorite tops!"

"How many times have we told you, Buffy." Carl growled in exasperation. "Stop patrolling in your nice clothes! You're gonna get dirty and ripped clothing that way! We have more rugged and disposable clothes for you to wear while patrolling."

The rest of the group just smiled at the argument. Trying to get Buffy in non-fashionable clothes was an impossibility, even when she knew full well they would most likely get ruined. Giles was furiously cleaning his glasses. Carl thought it was a method to distract himself from saying what he really wanted to say, which would no doubt be something quite undiplomatic.

"You still owe me, since it was your fireball!" Buffy called out with finality while making her way to the cage where her spare clothes were.

"Fine! I'll pay for some replacement clothes." Carl could tell Buffy looked smug that she won the argument. "But I'm only paying the cost of a sweater from Walmart." Carl laughed at her expression like she had smelled something nasty. "I'm not paying name brand prices for clothes you brought on patrol. You were likely tired of that top anyway and wanted it destroyed so you could con someone into replacing it with something new."

Carl could tell from Buffy's expression, as well as Cordelia and Harmony's smirks, that he had hit the bullseye with his wild guess.

"Fine." Buffy gritted out between clenched teeth, accepting that while she won, she didn't win as much as she had hoped to.

Carl smirked as he moved to talk with the rest of the gang. He had a dinner invitation to join Harmony, Amy, and Marcie that night. He was doing his best to keep them from going completely wildcat and attacking each other in their competition. He was completely wondering just how he was going to handle that mess.

Being preoccupied with his "win", he failed to see Harmony, Amy, and Marcie smirking at each other over the fact that Carl hadn't given in to Buffy and gone on a "date". There was hope for them still!

Sitting down while chatting with the girls, he started looking through the Book of Keslor for just what kind of demon that lizard thing had been. If it hadn't been hawking acid loogies instead of fire, he might think it was an immature dragon…

* * *

Carl put the Book of Kelsor back on the shelf with a little smile at the memory. Now that he thought about it, he should have just gone with Buffy and bought her a nice blouse. Maybe his relationship with her would have been quite different if he had seen the signals she was putting out.

But back then he had been a typically clueless guy. He had been completely distracted by the issue with Harmony, Amy, and Marcie fighting for his affection. He hadn't seen how maybe Buffy was demanding the blouse as a roundabout means to have a date-like activity from him.

"Lost opportunities, ah well." Carl chuckled. There were thousands of afternoons like that where he spent time with his girls in study, dating, exercising, and other activities. "Good times."

Moving further along, he spotted the rebreather he had purchased with CP from the Pokemon world sitting on a shelf.

"It's been quite a long time since I actually needed this to go underwater." Carl muttered as he remembered one of the expeditions under the water he and Serena took.

* * *

"Are you sure this is where they said the Gorebyss congregate?" Serena asked Carl as she stood atop a cliff, looking down into the surf of the ocean below.

Carl walked up behind her, hugging her from behind while he too looked down into the blue ocean water.

"That's what the locals said." Carl replied while Serena leaned back into his embrace. "Some of the old timers at the docks said that the Gorebyss only appear here every three years. Once the full moon appears, they come out of the ocean depths and dance across the surface while the shimmering salt sprays float in the air." Carl chuckled a bit. "Who knew that crusty looking old man had the heart of a poet."

Serena giggled while continued to look out at the waters.

Hearing a commotion behind them, the two of them looked back and saw that their Pokemon were mock battling each other. They were careful to avoid the campsite that was set up for them, but they were going all out otherwise.

Fiona and Rhona seemed to be the referees for the battle. Fiona stood there, waving her fire burning stick and sending out orders occasionally, while Rhona floated next to her, her white dress billowing in the wind as she watched the commotion with a smiling body language.

"Looks like they'll be just fine up here while we explore." Carl muttered as he watched the battle. Serena's Pokemon looked up to his and had immediately and enthusiastically joined in the training that he did with them. Due to that, the couple's Pokemon were the strongest and most enthusiastic battlers they had come across.

They hadn't met any trainers that truly gave them a challenge, so the large group of Pokemon that Carl and Serena trained often battled each other for the fun and excitement of it.

"Let's go then." Serena began pulling Carl to their tent to grab their gear. "I want to be down there tonight when the full moon rises."

Carl laughingly agreed, following along willingly.

A few hours later, the sun had fallen below the horizon, and night enveloped the ocean. Carl and Serena were floating in the darkness of the ocean, their rebreathers equipped so they could stay underwater indefinitely.

Well, Serena was floating in the darkness with just a small light on. Carl's enhanced senses could see out beyond the light.

Carl reached out and turned off the little light that Serena had on.

"What are you doing?" Serena asked, disconcerted at first about his shutting off the light. She then gasped in awe as she looked around. Just like that Avatar movie, once the light was shut off, the surroundings lit up in all its phosphorescent glory.

They were surrounded by a multitude of normal animals and Pokemon that glowed in the dark. The whole gamut of colors shone in a dance of beauty to take one's breath away. Thankfully they had rebreathers on.

They spent a few hours there, floating amidst the glowing lights. Carl had some recording equipment that captured the amazing view. But nothing could compare to actually being there with his girl and seeing such a magical scene.

Eventually they noticed that the dance and display was part of the various species reproductive cycle. Plenty of eggs were laid that night, and in the future many Pokemon were born.

Carl and Serena eventually made their way out of the ocean to their campsite to have their own time together in their tent. It was a wonderful end to a beautiful day.

* * *

Carl chuckled low in his throat at remembering how worked up Serena would get whenever she saw something beautiful connected to the world of Pokemon. He placed the rebreather back in its storage shelf before moving on.

There were a lot of memories attached to the various items he had stored in the Warehouse. He was still thinking over his time with Serena when he saw something unusual.

"Huh." Carl looked at a strange door that he hadn't seen before. "That's a strange door that I haven't seen before." Carl redundantly said again out loud once more.

He moved on over to the large airlock looking door and plucked up the electronic tablet that was placed in a small bin attached to the wall next to the airlock door in an obvious location, waiting for someone to come along and find it. Pressing on the screen, an information sheet came up, which Carl began reading.

* * *

**Space Dock Add-on**

**Are you upset that you can't store your favorite hard earned (or stolen) Starship in the Cosmic Warehouse? Well, let me introduce to you the Orbital Docking Station, or O.D.S. for short. This station will follow you on your adventures across the multiverse, and serve as a place to store your own personal capital ship. The O.D.S. is accessed via a command tablet. This tablet will allow you to open portals to your O.D.S. and monitor the station's status at all times. You're the only one who can use the tablet, and if lost, it will reappear nearby a short time later.**

**Specs**

·**Dry-dock size: 10,000 m2. (100m x 100m)**

·**Dry-dock capacity: 1 starship**

·**Rooms: 1 (Airlock/docking port)**

·**Docking Port: 1**

·**Containment System: Magnetic anchor hooks**

·**Defenses: None**

·**Mobility: None**

**Rules:**

**1.****The O.D.S. will automatically move to a secluded location nearby whenever you arrive in a new universe. You will have to manually pilot your starship back to the station whenever you either take it out of dock or add a new ship to the station.**

**2.****You may only use your starship in worlds that have other starships capable of interplanetary FTL travel. If the O.D.S. detects that you're the only one with an FTL capable vehicle, it will lock your ship in dry-dock along with any other vehicles stored on your vessel.**

**3.****Living sentient beings can be stored on the O.D.S. and your ship, however they cannot be taken with you if you move on to a different universe.**

**4.****Portals opened to the O.D.S. can be closed. The portals to the O.D.S can be up to 50 ft2. Only one portal to the O.D.S. can be open at a time.**

**5.****Other people can be brought to the O.D.S. with you, but they do not have to leave with you.**

**6.****You can open doors to the Cosmic Warehouse through the O.D.S.**

* * *

"Well, damn. This thing kind of sucks." Carl snorted. "It wants to stop me from using a spaceship if no one else has one in the galaxy? That would have been too cheap if I couldn't use my ships in Westeros, for example." Carl made the decision on the spot that he would never dock the Yamato inside the O.D.S.

He might make another ship to keep stored inside the O.D.S., but leaving the Yamato there was right out. He liked having his ship in his pocket dimensional space so he could access it anywhere and anytime.

Carl took another look at Rule 3, and had a faint hope in the back of his mind. In order to test the idea, he first made his way over to the Pokeball storage and organization vending machine. Pulling out the ball for Fiona, he made his way back to the newly discovered door, and opened it. Inside was a small room with only an airlock that would presumably go to whichever ship was docked in the station.

Carl clicked the button on the pokeball that would release Fiona from her ball, and dropped it on the ground.

Nothing happened.

"Damn. Guess that caveat of traveling to a different universe has already been applied for my Pokemon." Carl sighed sadly. "I suppose I will just have to wait until after the 15th jump, where whatever it is will allow me to gather my people."

Before putting Fiona's pokeball away, he held it in his hand for some time. It had been quite a long time since he last saw some of his people, but they still had a huge place in his heart. It was a curious thing that the longer he lived, the more he cherished the memories and people that grew close to him in the past.

He certainly wasn't getting more blasé and filled with ennui the longer he lived. If anything his habits that he formed early on were just becoming more pronounced. If he had made it a habit to live as an anti-social loner, then he supposed living that way for hundreds of years would make it very hard to change at this point. Start as he meant to continue on.

After returning the pokeball holding Fiona to the storage unit, Carl once more picked up the tablet and looked at the next section: Upgrades.

The tablet said that he had 200 cp to spend for just the O.D.S. upgrades, and that they couldn't be applied anywhere else. After spending some time thinking about it, Carl made his selections.

Since the O.D.S. wasn't big in his plans, but could prove useful in some cases, Carl didn't see the harm of buying the upgrades. He chose not to get any extra dry docks, but he would enlarge the one dock he had and add extra ports to it to accommodate random ships of other people's he might come across.

**Extra Docking ports (10 cp): Adds several additional docking ports to every dry-dock on your station.**

**Size Increase 2 (50 cp) Increases the size of one of your dry-docks to 360,000 meters2 (300m x 300m).**

Carl also decided that having the jump chain itself take care of maintenance would take a load off his mind. The same with providing fuel and any replacement crew bots so he wouldn't need to program them himself.

**Maintenance Drone (15 cp): 200 large floating robots that automatically clean and repair any vehicle stored in your dry-dock. Can be assigned to serve more than one vehicle.**

**Fueling Station (20 cp): A machine that can replicate any type of fossil, nuclear, or energy based fuel source used by your vehicles. Each fueling station can only service one dry-dock.**

**Crew (25 cp): 200 humanoid robots that can automatically adapt to any crew position assigned to them. They're good for piloting, navigation, weapons control, basic combat, cooking, pretty much.**

And since there were options for engines and protection, Carl went ahead with those too. Especially the cloaking device that would keep this space station from being detected was necessary.

**Built in Engines (20 cp): FTL engines that allow you to move the O.D.S. to different locations. Can only be purchased once.**

**Shields (20 cp): Magic based defense shields that deflect all forms of attack. Can only be purchased once.**

**Defense Turrets (10 cp): Your choice of either plasma, laser, or kinetic guns. Automated and have Infinite ammunition. Each purchase adds 20 turrets.**

Carl carelessly chose to have 10 plasma and 10 kinetic turrets. He didn't really care if someone could destroy the O.D.S., since he wouldn't be using it to dock his main ship. Not to mention it would probably be replaced if anything happened to it. But it felt wrong to have no defenses or weapons for what was essentially an orbital space base.

**Cloaking Device (15 cp): A standard invisibility device that renders the O.D.S. completely undetectable. Can only be purchased once.**

And of course if no one can find his space base, no one can attack it. With 15 cp left, he didn't have a lot of options. But he chose to go with the external airlock over the observation deck. Function over form.

**External Airlock (5 cp): An exit that allows you to explore the exterior of the O.D.S. Includes 1 free spacesuit. Can only be purchased once.**

And finally, with only 10 cp, Carl was left with the choice between the hanger bay doors, or another round of turrets. Since Carl wasn't really planning on using the station in any meaningful manner, he didn't feel the need for more weapons. He could always pull out more ships if he needed more fire power. So he chose the hanger bay doors.

**Hanger Bay Doors (10 cp): A pair of large doors built onto the surfaceof the O.D.S. Designed to allow a better entrance for small starfighters and dropships. Can only be purchased once.**

After finalizing the purchases for the O.D.S., Carl took a tour of the facilities. When he opened the door, he saw the previously small space was expanded to accommodate the new additions. The enormous docking space stretched out quite a distance. 300m x 300m was a pretty decent size.

Carl saw that the maintenance and crew bots were on standby in units set aside for them to maintain themselves. They lined the halls of the O.D.S. that looked out over the dry dock area.

After looking around a bit, he followed the signs to the external airlock, and made a tour of the outside. Currently in between worlds, the O.D.S. floated in a dark void, with nothing to see anywhere nearby. Something about the dark void gave Carl the willies, so he soon stopped staring into it.

Looking at the O.D.S., it basically looked like a giant flying saucer, which somewhat amused Carl. Thinking about it, he supposed he could pretend to be a Roswell alien on one of jumps. Buzzing military bases, appearing to civilians as lights in the sky, abducting and prob- on second thought, Carl decided he didn't really need to go that far for a prank. That last one was a bad touch too far.

"Well." Carl muttered to himself as he mentally distanced himself from his poor idea of a prank. "What to do now?"

He made his way back to the normal Warehouse and stood looking at the terminal that would send him to the next world. "It's not like a week is a long time. And I don't have any burning goals to learn or practice anything at the moment. Might as well jump early."

Carl strolled over to the terminal and selected an early insertion into the world.

* * *

X

**Cooking Show Jump**

**In this world, jumper, you will be a newly hired Cooking Show Chef. You gain 1000 CP to make your choices on cooking styles. You will start off with a cooking show during the late night hours. How long you stay on the air will depend on you, jumper.**

* * *

Carl had to stop reading as he was laughing too hard to continue.

"Damn, so random." He wheezed to himself. "I've been to all kinds of dangerous worlds, learned both martial and mystic arts. Fought zombies, demons, and beasts that are 5 stories tall. But now I've got to do a cooking show! So lame!"

He didn't stop laughing for a good 10 minutes.

Wiping a tear out of his eye, he chuckled a bit more. It had been quite a while since he laughed like that.

He eventually returned to reading the document.

* * *

**Note: Your show getting cancelled is the equivalent to death in this world. Fortunately, since most cooking shows don't last too long in the real world usually, Jump-chan has agreed to make it only last four years.**

**Leaving your current show to start a new one does not count as being cancelled, but adds 6 months to your stay time.**

**Items bought in this world will furnish your warehouse home should you have one or build one. Otherwise they'll appear in whatever home you make for yourself elsewhere.**

* * *

"That's not too bad." Carl muttered. "This jump will only last for four years. I'm sure I can manage to do a cooking show for four years. I've got plenty of experience cooking all kinds of food. It shouldn't be hard to make it interesting enough for the audience to not cancel my show."

"Well, let's see what's on offer." Carl spent a few minutes looking through the sparse options.

* * *

**Drop-in: You came to this world with no name, no identity, and no cameras. It's going to be a lot harder to make a living here, but at least you've got all the recipes from the other jumps, right? Now, on what aisle do they store the Chocobo powder?**

**Home Cooker 50 cp: You've got the touch of home. Full of comfort food, lots of butter, and a slightly endearing or annoying accent. You can make everything a family would want. Just make sure they don't catch you talking in any way racist from an event years ago.**

**Foreign Chef 50 cp: Whether a Screaming Scot or a Jumpin' Jamaican, you are a foreign chef catering to those that love the different cultures, and more importantly palates, of the world.**

**Le Cordon Bleu 100 cp: You've been trained at one of the many famous cooking schools of the world, and as such have a very refined palate and an almost innate understanding of what items compliment others to make fantastic foods.**

* * *

Carl frowned contemplation as he considered how very…generic this world seemed. "At least if you were going to drop me in a cooking world, it should be something like Toriko. Something where there are delicious and powerful monsters to fight, kill, and eat. Where the very food you eat empowers your body, making your stronger and better able to hunt more delicious food. Where the cooking techniques are beyond human. But no. I get stuck in normal, generic cooking show world."

Carl sighed depressedly. Maybe he was getting used to exotic locations a bit too much?

"The benefits of these origins are just too lame to spend CP on. I mean, if I didn't have senses beyond human from the time I got my body upgrade, I might be interested in having a 'very refined palate'. But with my upgraded senses, including from getting an Animagus form, my palate will probably be the number one in this world."

He selected **Drop-in**. He could already see that he was going to use this world to bank CP, since the skills available here were…pitiful.

* * *

**Basic Cooking Classes 50 cp: You've got experience with some of the less mediocre chefs in the state, teaching you how to properly season things and what things should look like when they're done cooking.**

* * *

Carl laughed. He read the rest of the skills and laughed some more.

"Damn. I've been cooking my own food for hundreds of years by this point. I think I'm a little beyond the basics. Look at these skills. **Southern Cookin' 100 cp, Creole 100 cp, Oktoberfest 100 cp, Asian 100 cp, Mediterranean 100 cp, Advanced Cooking Classes 150 cp, Barbeque 300 cp, Old World Cooking 300 cp, Cabinets and Kings! 500 cp.**"

"I mean, my original farms had one that was solely dedicated to Oktoberfest alone! I certainly don't need to waste my CP on these skills that I've already picked up from my experience in cooking." Carl chuckled in disdain.

"And if there are really amazing cooking skills here in this world, I can work hard to learn them while I'm there."

"So I'll just drop in. I definitely won't spend any CP on these mundane items. A **Gas Range 50 cp, Basic Cookbooks 100 cp, Basic Cookware 100 cp, **etc. It's not like I can't spend regular cash for these items. I've already got a head full of cooking skills, and a Warehouse full of cooking items, so I think I'll be just fine."

He continued scrolling down past the skills and items in the jump document.

"Now, to pick some drawbacks to get some more points. Looks like I'm limited to only gaining 600 points from Drawbacks."

**Pre-Dinner Mayonnaise +0 cp: It's good for you.**

The corners of Carl's mouth were twitching. He was really trying not to smile. He had no idea what was up with this…weirdness. He must have missed a joke about mayonnaise somewhere. He could only imagine what the internet would make of this joke. Maybe he could find the joke on the internet of this planet? Maybe search through the saved archived internet pages from the Stargate Universe?

Carl shook his head and moved on.

**Bad Ingredients +100 cp: Something was wrong with the milk you bought. If you don't check the ingredients almost immediately before the show every time, they might spontaneously go bad, and ruin the dish in such a way that everyone sees it go bad.**

Carl frowned at that drawback. As someone who had enjoyed fine foods for many decades and centuries, the idea of getting something that would be so disrespectful to his ingredients was an eyesore. He didn't choose that awful drawback.

**Test +100 cp: You have a bad habit of tasting what you're cooking. If you don't counteract it through exercise or other methods, you'll very quickly get fat.**

"But, how is a cook supposed to know if their food is tasty and up to par if they don't taste it?" Carl blankly asked himself, before chuckling. "I will certainly not get fat, not with the Metavore perk that I got from the body mod. This goes in the maybe pile."

**Bad Attitude +200 cp: Off camera you're very off-putting. You don't get along well with the general public, and if you don't reign in your tendencies you may wind up in a bad spot.**

Carl frowned. He really didn't like the idea of drawbacks that affected his behavior or mind. At the very least he wanted the freedom to treat people as they should be treated. If he attacked or berated a loyal and hard working employee or fan because of some lame drawback, that would be a poor repayment to that person's dedication. He put that one in the rejected pile.

**Sold Out +200 cp: You have a tendency to name specific brands constantly during the show, to the point that it annoys people on how much you love the Borden'sTM brand butter on your Wonder BreadTM toast with SchmuckersTM strawberry jelly with a glass of Minute MaidTM orange juice.**

Carl chuckled a bit while remembering that movie Wayne's World where they make fun of exactly that kind of selling out to sponsors.

"It's like people only do things because they get paid. And that's just really sad."

He put that drawback into the no pile. As funny as the joke was for a small one minute bit in a movie, being stuck in that mode for four years would be a bit…tiresome.

**Exotic Cooker +300 cp: You keep requesting more and more specialized equipment and ingredients, to the point where it's getting harder and harder to find them. You'll have to spend your weekends off either hunting them in the wild, growing them yourself, or finding other ways to get them. If you don't, and keep requesting from the producers, they might start to think of you as too much trouble.**

"That's a perfect drawback for me with my Farms. I'll have no trouble producing rare cooking ingredients. I dare say some of my audience will be surprised when I bring out chicken wings the size of a cow…" Carl was thinking of some of the animals he had stocked his farms with from the cultivation world.

Despite how the drawback would affect his behavior, Carl didn't think this drawback was too bad. He had plenty of means to insure that it didn't negatively affect his show since he could simply get the ingredients himself rather than begging the producers to get it for him.

**Twice as Bright +300 cp: Your show will advance quickly and wonderfully within the first two years. But you'll hit a peak with the audience, and they'll start to trickle away on the basis of "He wasn't as good this year". If you don't figure out a way to win them back, they may abandon you.**

"I don't think that this drawback will be a problem. All I have to do is stay on air. It doesn't matter how big my audience is. And there are plenty of ways to game the system and remain on air." Carl smirked, ideas already coming to mind.

"Very nice. I'll have 3300 cp banked after this. It's finally getting back up there after that ATG world spending spree." Carl nodded as he finalized his selections and hit complete on the terminal.

His vision went dark.


	69. Cooking Show

Carl's surrounding were dark for a very long moment. Even his enhanced eyes couldn't see anything, since there was nothing to see.

Bright lights from all angles suddenly lit up at the same time he felt a solid floor under his feet; and in that moment Carl knew he had been transferred into the world. He could once more feel the world around him. The bright lights temporarily blinded him, but even if he couldn't see he could sense a group of people positioned around him.

He tensed for a moment, wondering what was going on. But he didn't feel any danger from the people around him, they felt like normal people.

"And, action!" A figure sitting in a folding chair yelled from behind the cameras.

Carl's vision cleared up and he could see the building he was in and the people around him. Apparently there was no time to wait or prepare, as his cooking show was starting right now.

He immediately put on a smiling face, so as not to appear too flatfooted, now that they had started filming.

The Drop In option was really not wasting any time, getting him started. In order to regain his equilibrium and get a bit of knowledge of what was expected of him, he reached out with his mind scan the surface thoughts of those around him, especially of the man who had shouted "action".

A moment later, while Carl's smile stayed plastered on his face, it turned a little strange and strained. The information he had gotten was a bit…irritating.

The last chef who was hired for this specific late night slot for a cooking show had gotten into a huge fight with the producers over what equipment he was allowed just 30 minutes ago. The argument was so bad, and the chef was so irritating, he had been fired on the spot by the producers.

According to what was in the mind of the director, they had grabbed Carl from the crew and thrown him in front of the camera just in time to film, since the show was supposed to be broadcast live. They didn't have much hope for Carl to do much, but they needed to broadcast _something_ since they had already paid the network for the slot.

In addition to the previous chef being 'blessed' with a gift to inflame people's dislike and irritation, the previous chef had, in a fit of anger, stolen or destroyed all the cooking ingredients and equipment before leaving the studio.

So now Carl was in a bit of a quandary. The filming had already started, he had no time to purchase new equipment. No time to get assistants. There were no ingredients. And if he didn't pull something out of his ass in the next minute, the show would be cancelled. Which would equate to failure and death for his jump chain adventures.

"Well, shit. Look at this place!" Carl loudly exclaimed. "Apparently the last chef the studio had working here got canned. And he did not take it well. The rat bastard, who doesn't deserve to call himself a nincompoop, let alone a chef, had no respect for the ingredients and spoiled them all before he left."

The camera was focused on Carl's scowling face. Apparently the camera men didn't get his message to pan over the mess left in the studio kitchen, since he kept the camera steady on Carl.

Carl angrily stalked up to the nearest camera man who had a shoulder mounted camera so he could move around and get close ups.

"I said look at it!"

He dragged the confused camera man over to where the fridge was. He made sure the camera got a good shot of the ruined ingredients that were splashed around the inside of the fridge and spilled out on the floor.

"Look what that mad man did to my precious ingredients. Those poor, poor ingredients! Especially the butter. What a tragedy! You can never have enough good butter!" Carl pointed at the wall that had globs of butter splattered all over it. "What was the bastard trying to do, create some impressionist art with my precious butter?!"

Carl made sure the camera had a good shot of his scowling face. It helped that he was able to keep light contact with the camera man's mind so Carl knew exactly what he was seeing. Ensuring that even the "great tragedy" was photogenic couldn't hurt his chances of reeling in the audience members.

"And over there! Look what he's done to my range!" Carl stomped over to the multi burner stove, dragging the camera man behind him to highlight the mess. Somehow the grills and hose connections to the gas lines had been bent and slashed, respectively.

"What did that asshole do, take a sledgehammer to it? If I ever see that rat in person, I'm going to give him a piece of my mind for disrespecting the food!"

Carl adjusted his stance and body language to show his aggressive anger. It wasn't enough to just rant. He had to sell it with every line and expression on his face and body. He had to suck in the audience members so they too felt the anger he felt.

"That asshole majorly screwed us over here guys! There's not an intact utensil in this place." Carl turned abruptly to look directly into the camera. "But I promised you a cooking show, and I'll give you a cooking show, by damn!"

His face lit up with a grin of determination. He straightened up, prepared to move forward.

"You, follow me. I want you to document every second of this historic moment, where we shall labor to save dinner! You and you." Carl pointed to two studio workers off camera, nudging the mind of the camera man so he panned over to get the surprised looks on the two workers faces. They were surprised and flatfooted to be put in the limelight.

"Get over here. What's your names?" Carl ordered. The two men hopped to with alacrity, standing in a line in front of Carl.

"Marco."

"Johnny."

"You're drafted for a glorious cause! Follow me!" Carl started marching off, but paused after a moment at the words that interrupted him.

"We're key grips, not cooks." Johnny had a nervous look on his face.

"I don't care if you're a rhesus macaque! I don't care if normally you manage to burn water! You will follow my instructions to the letter, and you will give it your best effort, you got me?"

Under Carl's intense grip, first Johnny, then Marco gave in. They nervously nodded agreement.

"I can't hear you? When I give you an order, you say loudly 'Yes, Chef!' Now, you will follow my instructions, won't you?"

"Yes, Chef!"

"Yes, Chef!"

The two nervous key grips shouted out together.

A smile bloomed on Carl's face.

"Excellent! With your assistance under my instructions, you will be instrumental in saving dinner from this treasonous sabotage! From now on, you'll follow my instructions and do your part for the glorious meal! Follow me."

"Yes, Chef!"

"Yes, Chef!"

The two key grips and the camera man followed along behind Carl as he exited the studio. Carl ignored the frantic bustle of work as the studio workers hastened to keep the camera cords from tangling up as the camera man followed him.

While Carl was exiting the studio, he mentally arranged for a delivery of food and items from his farms to appear in a delivery truck outside the studio. Once Carl, his two draftees, and the camera man arrived outside, Carl dramatically threw open the doors to the truck, showing the refrigerated back of the truck full of ingredients.

"Behold! Dinner is not lost to us!" Carl grabbed a bag of tools that he handed to the two key grips. "Okay, while I'm getting some ingredients from my delivery truck, I want you, Johnny and Marco, to take these drills. Find those ruined pans that that monster destroyed. Straighten them up as much as you can, then you will drill holes in the pans in this pattern. You'll take these wire hangers and attach them like so."

In order to make his meaning clear, Carl drew on a pad of paper what he wanted. "Do you understand your instructions?"

"Yes, Chef!"

"Yes, Chef!"

Carl smiled at them in approval.

"Good! I expect that to be done when I get back. Can you handle that?"

"Yes, Chef!"

"Yes, Chef!"

"Good men!" Carl patted them on the shoulders in approval and sent them on their way. Meanwhile, Carl hopped up into the back of the refrigerated truck. The camera man kept focused on him and the ingredients in the truck as Carl picked them out, all the while talking about the ingredients, where they came from, how they were prepared and cooked.

The ingredients he needed to make a hanging barbecue meal. Bratwurst, steaks, and chicken, as well as the ingredients for shish kabob were all piled into a basket.

Carl talked about the intricacies of a good barbecue to the camera while he gathered his ingredients and all the spices and sauces that he would need, before making his way back into the studio.

Due to the previously mentioned bastard's ruining of the gas lines, Carl had to make a jury rigged burner that the hanging grill sat over. Since he couldn't adjust the size of the flames with his jury rigged system, he adjusted how far the grilling surface was from the flames. And if he cheated a bit with magic, no one knew.

Over the next half hour Carl spent the time talking about what went into making a good barbecue, and what went into making a great barbecue. All the while he was adding the proper spices and sauces as he arranged a veritable barbecue feast

Carl naturally had no way to tell at the moment just how many people had tuned into the show, or what their reaction was. But he gave his all to make himself personable and entertaining to attract viewers.

"Marco! Johnny! Front and center!" Carl bellowed out once the barbecue meal was complete.

"Yes, Chef!"

"Yes, Chef!"

The two men had gotten into their role and they called out loudly as they stood in front of him.

"You've done good! We have saved the dinner! Be proud! Now, Marco. Do you know the most important part of cooking a good meal is?"

"Uh….no, Chef." The man scratched his head in confusion.

"Why, eating it of course!" Carl laughingly said. "No matter what kind of art piece you create out of your meal, the most important part is consuming it. For only on the journey to the belly can the meal serve the purpose for which the chef put in so much effort and time! So, dig in men!"

"Yes, Chef!"

"Yes, Chef!"

The two men enthusiastically fell on the meat like starving wolves. Carl saw the envious looks of the other workers in the studio.

"Don't be jealous men!" Carl called out to them. "Come and feast with Marco and Johnny!"

Carl didn't have to ask twice. The smell of grilling meat had gotten everyone hungry. The director had enough presence of mind to set up a camera to capture the lot of them eating before joining in himself.

The last few minutes of the broadcast was simply a view of everyone chowing down on the food Carl had made, while praising the flavors through their full mouths.

The first show finally came to a successful close, and Carl sagged in relief.

Carl certainly wasn't afraid of his long term prospects in keeping his show on the air. He had plenty of methods to do so. But it was that first note from the jump document that caused his nervousness.

**Your show getting canceled is the equivalent of death in this world.**

Carl had been put on the spot the moment he arrived with no time to prepare. If the producers had made a snap decision to cancel his show based on his poor performance before he could get to them and influence them to not cancel him, then it would be game over right after world entry.

He took in a deep breath and slowly let it out, relieved that he was now in the clear.

While he had been out gathering his ingredients from the van of food he had pulled out of his Warehouse, he had sent out the Yamato and ordered it to track down the producers of the show and ensure they would do no such thing as cancel him.

He had just gotten word from the Yamato VI that it had been successful in putting the majority of the producers on ice so they couldn't cancel his show. The only one it hadn't gathered was the one who was working as the director at the moment.

But since the director/producer didn't have a majority stake in the production and couldn't make decisions like cancelling the show, the Yamato VI had left him in place.

"That was decent show for a newcomer, Chef Carl." Once the cameras finished filming, Rob Steen, who was the director/producer, approached Carl.

Despite the man's words, Carl knew he was excited about the show and spectacle Carl had put on, but was getting ready for negotiations and wanted to low ball the offer.

Until the Yamato had grabbed up the producers, they had been following the show's social media feed and had seen the good comments. "They" had sent word to Rob Steen that the show was green lit. Or rather, the Yamato VI had just sent word to Steen that the show was to remain on air.

Steen obviously had no idea that the producers that contacted him was actually the Yamato's VI. Or that Carl knew how Steen didn't want to give him a big head for doing such a good job in order to assume a dominant position in the negotiations. Too many people that Steen had seen in the industry had turned into Prima Donnas with just a bit of praise, making it hard to take advantage of them.

So Steen didn't want to inflate Carl's ego, or let on just how well the live audience had reacted to the show. They still had to negotiate a contract for Carl, after all.

Carl simply snorted a bit inside and smiled politely at the man who gave off all kinds of sleezy vibes. "Thank you there, Mr. Steen. So, I've got the job?"

"Now, don't be too hasty there, young man. We've still got to negotiate some things. Why don't you come with me back to my office, and I'll have the lawyer join us there while we hash out a contract." Steen almost ordered Carl, full of the attitude and prestige of the boss with the money.

Steen was thinking he had Carl hooked. And the more money Steen saved from low balling Carl, the bigger his cut would be.

With a light mind scan, Carl easily saw through all of Steen's tactics. While Steen didn't have a large amount of money tied up in the show, he would still get a decent cut. And the bigger the better, in his mind.

Steen was fully expecting Carl to be so excited for the job and a chance to get famous that he would sign anything, which would lower Steen's costs to produce the show and earn him plenty of money.

"Sounds great, Mr. Steen." Carl played up to Steen's expectations, and acted completely overwhelmed and excited as he followed the man back to his office.

Carl was already reaching for his magic to influence Steen. He couldn't afford for Steen to do anything that could jeopardize his life and prospects in the Jump Chain. And he certainly wasn't going to allow his life to be in the hands of a bunch of producers whose only concern was a return on their investment.

The moment his ratings dipped after two years due to the drawback, they would likely try to throw their weight around and annoy the hell out of Carl. They may even try canceling him, even if the show was still profitable, just not as profitable as it was before.

They arrived at Steen's office just as Steen's lawyer did. If there were no other indications than this meeting, Carl would already know that Steen and his lawyer, Gerry Hill, had bad intentions for him. The two men had no intention of letting Carl get his own lawyer or agent in on this negotiation. They planned to use him as a work horse and milk him for everything they could.

Carl paused for a moment. Maybe he shouldn't put those two analogies together. It made a weird mental image.

Steen and Hill sat down across the large desk from Carl, and started pressuring him to sign the contract they presented, with no time to review.

Carl only had to scan over the contract they presented to see how bad of a deal it was for him. The contract would give him no legal protections, no decision making power in the show, and his work hours would be determined by others. His pay was minimal, and he would owe a large fee if the contract was broken by either side.

He scowled inside, because the cooking show remaining on air equated to his very life and death. If the show was cancelled, or he was fired, Carl's journey on the jump chain was done for. There was no way Carl was going to rely on this sleazy man to be his life line. Spending the next four years sucking up to such a scum in order to survive was not something he would put up with.

Carl looked across the desk at the two men with sleazy smiles of superiority on their faces, and Carl had had enough playing along. With a wave of his hand, the two men were affected by compulsion spells that Carl wandlessly cast.

If the two men had been willing to give what they saw as "fresh meat" in the industry a decent contract and a fair chance, Carl would have been happy to work with them. Not with them as his boss, by any means, but he would have been more than happy to include them in the profits of the show.

But since they were trying to pull one over on him, Carl wasn't going to play nice.

A couple hours later, a smiling Carl left the office with a notary that he had engaged the services of. He left behind a group of very confused men. The other producers that the VI had grabbed had been teleported down, and under compulsion spells a deal was made and signed off on.

Over the next several weeks as the producers watched the rising popularity of Carl's Cooking Time show, they would constantly ask themselves why they made the decision to sell the producing rights to the cooking show that looked so promising to someone else. And why they did it so cheaply. They didn't even recoup their costs, and in fact lost money on the deal.

But when they looked at the contract that was notarized and signed by themselves, they knew they wouldn't get anywhere by trying to sue Carl. And a little voice in the back of their minds told them to just let it go and get on with their business.

Carl also went about his business, pleased with himself as the new owner and producer of his very own cooking show.

He was once more very happy to have available the bank accounts that followed him from world to world that he got from the Monopoly Gauntlet, as well as the properties that was constantly making him money.

Having immense personal power or advanced tech often made Carl's problems easy to solve. But with a simple application of money (and compulsion charms), he had insured his next four years would be a relaxing vacation. Since he certainly wasn't going to be firing himself or cancelling his show, he just needed to keep filming and he would be fine.

Now to break the news to the crew and organize things for the next episode. Carl was pleased it was only a weekly show, so he would have plenty of time to organize everything. He was going to have fun with this.

* * *

Several weeks later, the camera zoomed in on Carl as he stood at a large counter. The counter top was filled with various ingredients that had been chopped, sautéd, sliced, and prepared in various ways for the final assembly.

He had his own crew trained well by this time and they knew how to zoom in on the food to make it look good!

"See, the issue with a making a delicious burger is that you have a limited canvas to make your art. There are so many good ingredients, that you are simply swamped with choices." Carl waved showily at all the ingredients that lay on the counter. "But if you try to throw ingredients on willy nilly, you'll fail to make a fusion of flavors that transcend the sum of the parts. And if you try to overload it with too many ingredients at once, it simply becomes a huge mess and insult to the craft, as the diner will fail to fit it in their mouths. Remember that! As a chef, you are here to make a transitory item of beauty that is overflowing with flavor. Everything you do is to please the palate of the eater, not to glorify your huge egos as artistes!" Carl joked in a tone to let his audience know that he was simply joking, and not trying to be insulting.

"And how you prepare the ingredients is key too. On some burger builds, you want some lightly fried onions. On other builds, you want raw onions. In this build, we're thinly slicing the onions, and placing them strategically like so, so that we can use the guacamole we've made as a kind of mortar to keep the burger together. Then we layer the lettuce, and then tomato on top. If we tried to put the guac between the cheese and lettuce, for example, then when the burger is being eaten, the pressure exerted will just squeeze the guac out the back, making a mess. These are the things you need to keep in mind as you build a better burger!"

Once Carl had finished crafting the burger, he displayed the plating. The audience members started drooling when they saw the finished product. Carl may or may not have had something to do with making the burger look magically delicious.

"And thank you for tuning in!" Carl began wrapping up the episode. "Remember to keep experimenting and trying new things. We can take great comfort from foods in our daily lives. Remember to treat yourselves well, and thanks for watching. Until next time, this is Chef Carl, signing off." Carl then picked up one of the burgers he had assembled and took a big bite. He made sure to show the audience on his facial expressions just how damned delicious the food was.

And as usual, as the credits rolled, in the foreground, the studio workers and audience members joined Carl on stage and grabbed some of the food, also showing the audience just how damned good the food was. The ratings were doing pretty good, and the comments on social media of people jealous that they couldn't eat the food through their screens always cracked Carl up, but it kept people coming back for more.

* * *

After the second show, Carl had determined who were the decision makers at the television network and had a talk with them. When he left that meeting, he was satisfied that no one anywhere would be canceling his show for any reason.

He continued to have a weekly show, since that gave him plenty of time to prepare for the show. He always used the ingredients from his farms, which made the dishes that much more flavorful.

At first he went through all the basic American dishes, since that was the country he was dropped in. But he soon moved on to other ethnic foods. There were really so many dishes in each countries recipe list that he could cook a single dish each day and not run out of dishes by the end of his fourth year.

Ramen, Sushi, Bulgogi, Yukgaejang, Yangzhou Fried Rice, Sweet and Sour Pork, Curries, Moules Frites, Burritos, Chimichangas, Kebabs, and much more were featured on Carl's weekly show.

The audience for his show continued to grow, as they enjoyed his ardor for the food he made, and enjoyed seeing what kind of tips and talk of food he would have each week.

After a year of filming his show, Carl was getting a bit restless with the routine and boring world he was stuck in. His mind kept going back to the Toriko comic that he had read so long ago.

In that world there was the profession of Gourmet Hunter, which was a highly celebrated profession where one needed a great deal of strength to hunt for very dangerous animals that would provide the best ingredients that were packed with flavor and energy.

The animals and plants of that world seemed to be designed specifically for a cooking world. The rarer the animal or plant was, the more tasty it was and the more energy packed inside it. The Gourmet Hunters were able to use energy attacks and fantastical martial arts because of the incredible energy provided by those animals and dishes. They packed their DNA, their gourmet cells, full of energy as they ate the energy rich foods.

Chefs were another celebrated profession in that world, due to their ability to commune with their ingredients and bring out the maximum flavor and energy from their dishes. A bad chef could ruin the most robust and perfect ingredients. A top class chef could transcend boundaries and elevate the dish above what it could normally attain.

Thinking of that world that Carl had only seen through the pages of a comic book, he started thinking about how he could transform the world he was in right now to be more like the world of Toriko.

He had all kinds of magical and profound beasties and plants that could provide the energy needed to enhance the physiques of humans when they ate the food they hunted.

But he needed to be very careful in how he started the whole thing. If he just plopped everything down on planet it would destroy the ecosystem, and the strong beasties would immediately drive mankind into being an endangered species.

So while Carl was filming his second year of his cooking show, he began working with the Yamato VI on how to slowly change the normal world into one that was like the Toriko world. He spent a lot of his time through the week inside the Virtual Reality world that he had built from the World Seed he got from the SAO world, testing the effects of introducing various plants and animals to the world.

It was really more of an exercise in breaking his boredom, more than anything. He wasn't going to be on this world for more than four years, so he had no long term plans to do much. But if he ever did come back to this world, he could easily implement the plans he came up with. Or if he was ever in any other normal world he could do so.

In the beginning of his third year, just like his drawback **Twice as Bright** described, the audience that grew quickly in the first two years started complaining about the quality of his show. He wasn't worried about it, since he knew it was just the drawback causing it. It wasn't like he was going to fire himself.

And since he had total control over his show, he didn't have any arguments with himself over the list of random or rare ingredients that he felt compelled to include in his dishes due to his **Exotic Cooker** drawback. With the rare and varied ingredients in his Farms, his need for exotic ingredients was well supplied.

After a few weeks into the third year, Carl noticed that there was a curious effect which amused him to no end. While the viewers of the show complained vociferously online, the numbers of viewers never dropped and continued to rise steadily.

Carl himself was confused about the strange phenomenon at first. He was sure the drawback was designed to make him lose viewers so that he had to work hard to keep on the air. He had been confident that even if no one watched him, he could remain on air with a simple application of money (and compulsion spells if necessary). But now he found that he was even gaining viewers.

After some thought, the only thing that made sense to Carl was that two perks were influencing his viewers. From the ATG world there was the **Ludicrous Loyalty Enforcement** perk that ensured no matter what he did, the people that follow him would harden their hearts and stay loyal. And from ASOIAF, **A Quiet People** perk ensured that the people under his authority would be exceptionally unlikely to rebel.

So with those two perks working together, the people who were viewers of his show somehow counted as his followers and so they were under his authority. Despite vocally complaining, they remained loyal and continued to watch the show.

And when the people who hadn't ever watched his show saw the online complaints, they decided to check in on the spectacle, like people who couldn't look away from a train crash. But once they actually saw the show, they were impressed and decided to continue watching, which put them in the category of followers, also highly unlikely to rebel.

Despite his perks counteracting the drawbacks, Carl decided to change things up. It was time to have some fun in this world.

The first thing he did was to change his show, which added on six months of time in the world, but it reset the two year timer for when people would start complaining about his show.

Then he took off the stealth and hiding spells that kept the Gourmet Grounds hidden from the rest of the world.

He had taken the ideas he got from the Toriko comic about how there were different grades of hunting grounds. The low danger level had animals, plants, and other culinary ingredients that were low level but also low flavor and energy.

Still, compared to normal food the low level flavor was still top quality. But compared to the medium and high danger areas, the flavors from the low level areas were weak.

Through experimentation in the virtual world, he had figured out the best methods and locations to set up each of the hunting grounds, as well as setting up a department of people that administered the areas, including issuing of hunting licenses and patrolling to prevent poaching.

The hunting grounds were basically separated into different levels of danger and had magical, profound energy, and technology enforcing the separation, keeping the various animals from roaming outside their areas. The high danger but highly delicious animals could only remain in the high risk areas. The lower risk animals also stayed in their areas.

Carl didn't bother putting any restrictions on where the humans could go. If they were stupid enough to risk their lives in places they shouldn't go and couldn't handle after all his precautions and warnings, then he wouldn't care for their fate. It was their life, and they had the agency to choose suicide by food if they were so inclined.

With his hunting grounds set up and now visible, Carl began the advertisement that spread the information about the hunting grounds. The fun thing was that the people he recruited and trained to be administrators were already powerful enough to absolutely destroy modern armies. And the defenses he set up on the hunting grounds made it so no nation on Earth could take them over and monopolize them.

The information about how the energy packed animals inside could be eaten to evolve a person's individual strength spread. At first there was a great deal of disbelief. It was too fantastical for the modern person to truly believe it. But Carl's show and others that filmed live the incredible strength and abilities of the evolved people were eventually accepted as truth.

Naturally there were still people out there that couldn't accept it. They continued ranting about "cheap tricks" and "light shows". They did continue to have a following. But they also didn't dare enter the hunting grounds after their own close calls with death when they were trying to prove it was all a hoax.

Carl didn't really care if they continued to rant or not, since it didn't affect him.

And so by the end of his third year of his time in the world, he had successfully transformed the Cooking Show world into a mock up of the Toriko Gourmet World.

It was pretty fun seeing the whacky things people came up with when they interacted with his Gourmet World.

* * *

Because Chef Carl was the one who first broke the news about the new Gourmet World, not to mention he built the whole thing though no one knew that fact, he was acknowledged as the world's foremost cooking expert with regards to the dangerous animals that inhabited the Gourmet World.

As a result he got many invitations to do guest appearances on other cooking shows. Carl took up several invitations, since it was interesting to see what other people came up with.

So it was that one day in the beginning of his fourth year in the world, he arrived at the studio of one particular chef who had made a name for themselves by experimenting with unusual combinations. Chef Rhom-C was known for being very avant-garde.

Carl had just walked in the door, when he was met by a most unusual sight.

"What the fuck is that thing?" Carl asked his guide.

Now, it must be noted that Carl knew every single animal, vegetable, herb, and fruit that was living in the Gourmet World. So the fact that he wasn't just expressing outrage at something he was seeing must be emphasized. He was genuinely baffled by what he was seeing.

The thing Carl was pointing at was a gelatinous mass that was slurching around the counters of the kitchen where he would be cooking with the chef on the show. The gelatinous mass was a glistening bright green. If anything it looked like a giant four foot tall slime from an JRPG. It was an enormous animated Jell-O.

The guide looked where Carl was pointing and gave a little chuckle.

"Oh, that. I guess you haven't watched Chef Rhom-C's latest shows. No one knows how it came to be, but he was mixing a bunch of different items into a sauce he was simmering, and it caught fire. I think he caught his eyebrows on fire. In his spastic flailing, he threw the pot of sauce and it collided with some electrical outlet."

Carl's eyebrows were raising more and more the more of the tale he heard.

"So, I guess like Frankenstein's monster, the electricity seemed to give life to the sauce. And, well. There you go." The guide waved at the animated Jell-O that was created from some sauce.

"So, he just lets it hang around his kitchen?" Carl disbelievingly asked, watching as the thing continued making circuits of the kitching.

Shluuu-urch. Shluuu-urch. Glop.

The sounds it was making were…unique.

"Well, a lot of people from the government and the colleges have come to study it. But since Chef Rhom-C owns it, they can't really take it away without getting bad publicity, cause his audience loves the thing. So, he named it Sauce." The guide shrugged. "It's harmless. He throws it the scraps when he's cutting up the ingredients, and it seems to stay happy. It's grown a bit from when it was first created, though."

Carl nodded. Then he shrugged. Then turned to follow the guide to where he could chill until it was time to start the show.

A half hour later he and Chef Rhom-C were in the middle of prepping the meal while the camera crew were filming.

"Bring me the lamb!" Chef Rhom-C called out.

Carl looked over at the burst of whispers by Rhom-C's assistants when he noticed none of them had brought over the lamb like they were supposed to. Rhom-C was a very dour looking tall blonde man and Carl could tell his assistants were terrified of him.

"You! Fatty! Where's the lamb?!" Rhom-C yelled out.

"Uh, it's gone, Chef." The so called "Fatty" that Rhom-C singled out said nervously, while showing the chef an empty metal bowl.

"What do you mean, 'it's gone'?" Chef Rhom-C bellowed out as he was advancing on the scared assistant. "How can it be gone? Did Mary come and take her little lamb, little lamb, little lamb away? Did PETA come to protest the unethical eating of good meat and released it into wild? How can it be gone?"

By this point Chef Rhom-C was nose to nose with the unfortunate individual who was the focus of his ire.

"Uh…" The chubby man looked to the side where the Frankenstein Slime was Shlu-urching away. "I'm pretty sure that Sauce got a hold of it, Chef."

Chef Rhom-C looked down at the green jello residue in the bowl the lamb had been in, then glared over at the unholy gelatinous creation. He saw the remnants of the lamb inside the green mass. His face turned red. He stormed over to the gelatinous mass and began bellowing at it.

"I'm here to cook lamb, Sauce! Why the hell would you eat my lamb, Sauce?! Where the hell am I going to find more LAMB, SAUCE?!"

Shluu-urch. Shluu-uurp.

The green animated Jell-O ignored Chef Rhom-C as it kept doing it's thing.

Buuuuurp.

Carl raised his eyes to the sky at hearing the burp from Sauce. What a strange day.

He then turned to the camera and shrugged helplessly to the audience while Chef Rhom-C continued bellowing about his missing ingredients.

"While Chef Rhom-C continues bellowing at Sauce about his missing lamb, let's see if we can replace it with another meat and still make a decent meal."

In the end, they made some decent pork chop sandwiches. Sauce kept eating all the ingredients when they weren't looking. So they had to jealously guard the cooking pork chops. At least he didn't get those.

* * *

When Carl had only six months left in the world, the **Twice as Bright **drawback kicked in again. He wasn't willing to chance something happening to his show through some convoluted plot due to someone blowing up his studio cause they didn't like the show, or some such unusual happenstance that would cause him to be canceled, so he switched his show once more.

At that point he only had a single year left in the Cooking Show world.

Aside from his selected Gourmet Guards that protected and regulated the Gourmet Hunting Grounds, no one else in the world had gotten strong enough to hunt the more dangerous areas. So the general world didn't know much of what was in the high danger areas.

Some of the more avid cooks, hunters, and martial arts enthusiasts only ate the energy rich food they could gather themselves from the cooking grounds, so they ended up getting strong enough from the food in the low danger level hunting ground to move up and hunt in the medium danger level area.

Other's only worked hard enough to gather common ingredients in the low level areas to sell to the high class restaurants, since they made a lot of money doing so. They never wanted to go any higher, since they could make plenty of money just doing that.

But seeing as he was going to be leaving the world soon, Carl moved his show to the high danger area to show off. Hey, he wanted everyone to be able to appreciate his creation!

So his show became more of a wilderness hunter/gatherer show. Each week he would show off some of the amazing foods he could find, trying to engender a desire to go there in more people to drum up enthusiasm.

There were cows that were 10 stories tall that gave blue milk that made the most amazing butter.

Bushes that had licorice growing off them instead of fruit, that when added to certain drinks raised the flavor to amazing heights.

Trees that dropped nuts the size of a truck. And the squirrels that ate those nuts.

And the most amazing of all, celery that actually had flavor. He could soak that celery in plain water and an hour later would have the most amazing beef or chicken broth, depending on the celery breed.

He even took his show underwater to capture some of the amazing fish in their native habitat. Tuna the size of whales, for example, whose flesh remained amazingly tender and delicious when made into sashimi.

Carl's last year in the world was quite fun. He would have to bring the girls back to this Gourmet World he created so he could show off.


	70. The Warehouse 7

Carl sat up from his bed, where he always appeared between worlds, with an amused smile on his face. Those five years had actually been quite fun and stress free.

Jumping up from bed he stretched out. It wasn't a good enough stretch for him.

Reaching out for his magic, his figure was soon replaced by a very large Shadow Panther. Carl then stretched out as only a cat can. Paws flexed, his claws unsheathed. His back arched, and his mouth opened in a wide yawn that displayed his deadly teeth.

After finishing his epic stretch, he returned back to his human form.

"Nothing stretches out quite as nicely as a cat." Carl made his way to the shower.

He didn't have any perks from the Cooking Show World to add, so he could skip that part. The next hour was spent as he usually did, taking the time in the kitchen to make himself a truly bountiful breakfast.

While he was feasting, he thought back on the past five years of performing in front of a camera and how fun it actually turned out to be.

He knew that most of the people who go into show business have to constantly worry and work hard to maintain the image they create. They have to obsess about their audience reaction, whether or not their performance will make enough money to keep the producers happy, and a whole host of other issues.

But since he was quite the cheat existence and didn't have those same hang ups and problems, his time in front of the camera was actually quite relaxing. Participating in a television show wasn't something that he would have ever chosen to do on his own. He had pretty much been forced into it by the Jump Chain. But it didn't turn out too bad because he could play by his own rules.

He was absolutely sure that if he didn't have all his cheat abilities he would have hated being in show business.

Once he had cleaned up in the kitchen, Carl wandered around his Warehouse. He didn't particularly feel like watching movies or playing games to while away the week he had until he had to jump to the next world.

After some time wandering idly up and down the aisles, the door in the wall that led to his martial arts dojo caught his eye. It had been a long time since he had entered that building.

Carl opened the door and entered the Japanese style dojo. He had purchased the dojo in his fourth world, History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi. At the time, he had thought he would be using the Dojo a lot to train himself and any friends he made. But things hadn't turned out that way and he hadn't even stepped foot in the dojo for a long time.

Feeling nostalgic, Carl pulled out a bokken from the stacks against the wall and began Joge-Buri strikes. The wooden practice sword whistled through the air as Carl continually practiced the overhead vertical strikes while thinking back to the world he learned it from.

* * *

Carl was standing in the yard of Ryozanpaku with a sword drawn and raised above his head. The sunlight glinted off the blade, as he wasn't able to keep it completely stable. He swung the sword down and forward, attempting to imitate the strike he had seen Shigure Sensei show him.

He raised the sword again over his head. The metal of the sword wasn't really that heavy compared to what he had been training at, but after hundreds of swings, he was feeling the burn and could barely hold the sword up and steady.

"Wrong…"

Carl let the sword drop to his side, wiping the sweat from his brow as he looked over at where Shigure Sensei was feeding her mouse, Tochumaru.

"What was that, Shigure Sensei? What am I doing wrong?"

Ever since he had arrived at Ryozanpaku and started training, he barely had any time to think. Everything was train, train, train!

While he had originally intended to only learn Jujutsu from Akisame Sensei, he had fallen into the same pace as Kenichi and was being trained in all the disciplines each of the masters practiced.

After a bit of thought he had immediately thrown away his objections to being taught everything. Even if it took him longer to master, it would only increase his abilities and techniques.

Shigure Sensei was the most standoffish among the masters, and the one that taught Kenichi the least because he had shown a huge fear of weapons. And while Carl had originally thought to focus on the unarmed styles only, seeing the disappointment in Shigure Sensei's eyes when Kenichi had basically rejected her skills because of his fear of weapons had caused Carl to change his mind.

He had then sought out Shigure Sensei to teach him. She had only shown him a bit of how to swing the sword, likely because of how Kenichi reacted, she was hesitant to go all out with him in teaching him.

Which lead to him trying to swing the sword today to practice his sword technique.

Shigure Sensei looked up from teasing her mouse friend with a bit of cheese, dropping the food into his lap to devour. He blank expression hid her feelings to the average person, but Carl could see how eager she was to correct him and teach him the joys of fighting with weapons.

"You don't make…the sword a part of you. You are holding it like…a stick. You have…no focus."

Carl thought about her words seriously. This was a master of bladed weapons. She may have not been describing it in detail, but it was up to him to parse her meaning and apply it to himself if he wanted to learn. She was already his benefactor for being willing to teach him, so he had better focus.

The first thing she said was to make the sword part of him. How does one do that? It's an object he was holding, how does it become a part of him.

Carl held the sword up vertically in front of him and closed his eyes. He felt the weight of the sword, how it's balance shifted with his breathing and muscle twitches. He felt where his hands were gripping it. He started pondering on the sword, thinking of how it extended his reach. How it moved when he swung it or held it.

The more he focused on the sword, the more it became real in his mind's eye. The feeling of the sword in his palms started fading away as he focused on the sword. It stopped feeling like a thing he was holding and started feeling like an extension of his will, his body. He felt like he knew exactly where the sword ended, and he could reach out and touch things with the end of the sword as easy as he could with his finger.

"Good…"

Carl treasured that praise from his normally quiet sword instructor. He memories the feel of having the sword being a part of him. And then he lost the feeling a moment later. But for a moment he had it! He would have to work on that more!

'The next thing she said was I was holding the sword like a stick. What did she mean by that?'

Carl brought to mind the image of Shigure Sensei when she stood in front of him with a spoon. Because Kenichi had been so afraid of the sword, she had substituted a bladed weapon with a spoon to appear non-threatening to Kenichi. And because of Kenichi, Shigure Sensei did the same for him.

But he had looked closely at her stance and attitude. She had held the spoon as if it was a deadly weapon. As if it was a blade that she would use to cut him with. And it had felt...dangerous. The spoon had felt sharp to him.

'Now how to capture that feeling?' Carl thought. 'She said I also have no focus. What is the purpose of wielding a blade? To fight and win. I'm not swinging a sword for exercise. I'm swinging a sword as an extension of myself to fight and defeat opponents. And the weapon I hold will be a deadly extension of my self. Even if it is a spoon, it can be used to disarm, cut, maim, and win.'

Carl imagined an enemy in front of him, poised for attack. He was in a deadly match with the enemy, and he needed to win. He was going to swing his sword, not for the sake of swinging it, or imprinting muscle memory. He was swinging his sword to stop and disable the enemy before he could be killed.

Carl _focused_ on the very next moment. It could be in the very next breath. His swing was going to be fast, faster than his opponent. He would land the blow first. He would strike down his opponent and subdue him. His blade would cut through the enemy's blade, and land the blow.

He felt the sword becoming part of him, sharp and focused on the goal.

He swung.

The air whistling from the passage of his blade felt and sounded different. It sounded beautiful.

Carl stood frozen, exploring the sensation he had felt for a long time. It opened up a whole new world to him. This was the true art of swordsmanship.

Finally, Carl relaxed back into a standing position, attempting to cement the mindset needed for that strike. For that glimpse into the world of being a swordsman.

"Excellent…Carl." Shigure Sensei praised him, which caused Carl to smile hugely at his sensei for the praise.

"Thank you, Sensei." His Sensei blushed at the praise, causing Carl to have certain thoughts. Even though he was in a body that wasn't even 14 yet, he knew plenty about the relations between men and women. And Shigure Sensei was a very attractive woman.

Later that night, after sharing a bath with Shigure Sensei and dinner, when Carl was alone he thought about the matter of his attraction for his quiet sword Sensei.

He thought about how the philosophy of Ryozanpaku and their Life Giving Fist, their determination not to kill, didn't exactly mesh well with his existence.

Even in his first world he had done everything he could to kill any enemies that would threaten him and his family. He didn't try to simply defeat them and be on top. The only way he could have peace of mind was to kill.

But that mindset and attitude didn't mesh well with the masters and their life here. They were dedicated to their art, yes. But they were also dedicated to not killing their opponent.

Carl didn't think he could live through the Jump Chain that way. But it was a beautiful ideal that seemed to work for this world.

But what would Shigure think of him if he came back here, covered in the blood of his enemies and asking her to join him as he continued down that path? Would she become disgusted with him? Would she reject him and his offer to join him?

Carl sighed. He didn't know the answer. He would just have to see where his path takes him. And for now, he would sink into the sweet dream that is Ryozanpaku. The martial arts school that cherishes their enemies as sharpening tools and friendly rivals. Let the future take care of itself.

* * *

Carl finished swinging the boken and paused, feeling those sensations of being one with the sword. Having a sword to defeat all enemies, sharp and unblockable. Even if he was just holding a wooden sword, it was an extension of his will.

It has been so long since that night when the lovely Shigure taught him the way of the sword. He had long since made his choice to do what he feels is necessary to protect what is precious to him, even if it means killing.

And he still didn't have an answer to whether or not he would go back to the HSDK world and talk to her. To his lovely sword mistress. He didn't want to face her rejection, really. It's almost better to leave it as a lovely dream, than to shatter the soap bubble.

Carl put the boken back in the rack and left the dojo behind, closing the door. He still had several worlds to go before he had to make the choice whether or not to go back to that world. He would leave the future to take care of itself.

No longer feeling like relaxing around, Carl decided to jump into the next world. He made his way over to the terminal and clicked on it.

* * *

**Generic Dinosaur Gauntlet**

**From Jurassic Park to One Million Years BC to Theodore Rex, there is just something about dinosaurs that fascinates most of us. We all have our favorites, and we all have dreamed about being a dino or having one as a pet.**

**For the next ten years, you are going to be one of these great creatures, pitting yourself against some of the mightiest creatures ever created by nature. Of course, that wouldn't pose much of a challenge to most Jumpers, so you are going to have to manage without the advantages you may have become used to. In fact, you are reduced to just your Body Mod, and you have no access to your Warehouse or items as well. This is going to be human wits against savage fury.**

* * *

"Huh, another Gauntlet." Carl absentmindedly grinned. "Well, thankfully I'm already cheating thanks to Spere 037." Carl started chuckling while thinking of how his body mod, or basic body, had been altered to include the perks he had been getting. So he wouldn't be as helplessly as he normally would due to the gauntlet.

"Dinosaurs, huh. Which one should I pick?" Since Carl was going to be living as a dinosaur for the next 10 years, it was important to pick a cool one.

"Let's see, since it's a Gauntlet, unfortunately I don't get an additional 1000 cp here, so I 'only' have 3300 cp banked from previous jumps." Carl scrolled down to see the further options.

**Age and Gender**

**You are an adult dinosaur with your choice of gender. As a special note, you will not die of old age before your ten years here is finished, even if your species does not have a long lifespan.**

"Looks like I'll start out as an adult male dinosaur." Carl chuckled at a brief thought. "At least I won't be laying any eggs…"

"Okay, then. The location will be picked for me based on the species I choose. That's fine. One dino-land is as good as another, really."

**Origins: What kind of dinosaur are you, an Herbivore or Carnivore? You can choose any species of dinosaurs that you want, including any aquatic species, within the classification of your Origin. Don't be afraid to choose Herbivore, even vegetarian dinosaurs are completely awesome!**

Carl busted out laughing at the last line. "Yeah, right. Like I'm going to choose to be anything other than a hunter." His shadow panther form and long time as a fighter definitely had a big impact on his personality. The idea of choosing to be prey was just silly. Carl selected Carnivore.

**Carnivore**

**You are a primarily meat eating dinosaur, whether a hunter or a scavenger, such as the constantly misnamed Utahraptor or a mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex.**

"But that's an interesting idea, being aquatic based." Carl hummed in thought as he considered it. At one point in time in the past Carl would have definitely chosen either an aquatic or aerial dinosaur form automatically, since he already had a land form of a panther. Having an underwater or flying form available as well would have been amazing. But now, with his growing powers he could easily fly or breath underwater just fine, so it wasn't as big of a consideration for him.

"No, I think I'll skip the underwater dinosaur and pick the king dinosaur that kid Carl would been over the moon about. The mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex." He chuckled as he filled in the information on the document.

"The raptors, or Utahraptors, from the movie Jurassic Park were pretty darn cool too." Carl mused before continuing to read the document. "But the T-Rex's sheer size and badassitude blow them out of the water."

Despite the newer Jurassic Park movie that had the raptors being cool when they interacted with Peter Quill, he still thought the T-Rex was better. Those scenes in the original Jurassic Park with the T-Rex had given him shivers. No way was he going to be a human sized dinosaur when he could be a massive predator!

Once his dinosaur form was selected, he saw that the location automatically changed to North America, where most of the T-Rex roamed, in the year 65 million years B.C.

The next section was the general perks. There were a couple perks that were automatically free, so Carl picked those first.

**Basic Instincts 0 cp: You are fully adjusted to your dinosaur form, using it as ably as you could your normal form. You can swim or fly as appropriate to your new form, are accustomed to your new senses and have basic skill in your species' methods of survival.**

"Well, at least it won't be a chore to get used to my new dinosaur form. It will probably be similar to how my panther form instincts came to me."

**Classic or Scientifically Accurate 0 cp: You get to choose: Classic scales and leathery skin or currently theorized feathers and bright colors. Feathers help retain heat a bit, but are fragile and need to be groomed. This affects not just you, but this entire world. After this gauntlet, you can make minor, purely cosmetic changes to any alt-form or personal equipment, but this has to be decided before a Jump starts.**

"Jeez. With how powerful the jump chain is, you'd think they could be better than "currently theorized". Surely the jump chain knows whether it's just a theory or not, right?" Carl thought about it for a bit more. "But then again, all these worlds I've been visiting have seemed to be based on fiction from my original world. There seem to be different world laws in play in different universe, so why wouldn't the dinosaur world also be based on 'fiction'? In some of these worlds the dinosaurs probably had feathers, and in others they probably had hide and scales."

Carl shrugged off the idiosyncrasy of phenomenal cosmic beings that travel the omniverse being rather too vague because there was just so much out there it was hard to be specific in just a few sentences.

"Well, since I picked the T-rex based on what kid Carl would have picked, that image and idea didn't include feathers, because of Jurassic Park. So let's go with **Classic**." Carl made his selection on the perk.

Next he picked a perk that was cheap and would ensure that he wouldn't be suffering from boredom while being a dinosaur without access to the internet, books, movies, or games. Even in the future when he wasn't a dinosaur, having unlimited patience would probably be a good thing.

**Everyday Dino Life 100 cp: Let's face it, even a daily struggle for survival can be monotonous at times. Lucky for you, you are immune to boredom, have unlimited patience, and can find satisfaction and even joy in even the most everyday activities.**

Looking over the rest of the general perks Carl chose not to get any of them.

**Thunder Lizard 200 cp** makes the ground shake when he walks, which ensured that he would never be able to sneak up on prey. He would be a pretty crappy hunter if he took that one.

**Do You Think He Saurus?** **200 cp** made it so that his skin coloration would blend into optical camouflage. Carl was pretty sure that with a bit of practice he could get his Metamorphmagus talent to do the same thing, making the perk redundant. He wasn't willing to pay 200 cp for the perk.

And since **I Don't Think He Saurus 100 cp** needed the previous perk in order to purchase, he was going to pass on it. Even if having active camouflage would be cool, he decided not to add it to his T-Rex form.

The **Alpha 400 cp **and **Alpha Plus 400 cp** perks increase his size if he so chose and make him the dinosaur version of Captain America, enhancing his body to the peak and double the peak of his species respectively. But he chose not to get those. He didn't think the pitiful physical boost was worth it for the high cost. Not when he compared the physical boosts that he already got from Ki and Profound Energy training.

Done with the general perks, Carl moved on to the list of Herbivore Perks, and only chose one of the four available for the plant eaters. It was so good that he couldn't pass it up.

**Apex Survivor 600 cp: From the moment that life begins, the struggle for survival is waged. And no creature ever born was better at that struggle than you are. You have a perfect sense for danger, always sensing an attack in time to respond in as effective a manner as your skills allow. You instinctively evaluate the potential threat level of any situation, so you know when to be on guard. In addition, you will always be able to locate any resources necessary for survival and safety, assuming they exist at all, and have at least basic competence with any skill needed to keep you alive. You are also immune to any form of danger that is not directly targeted at you. Natural disasters, plagues, even random attacks with large area-of-effect will miss you completely.**

One of the big things that had allowed Carl to flourish in these Jump Chain worlds was the fact that he was basically an unknown to the inhabitants of the worlds. Like in the BtVS world he had first entered, he had entered that world with a basic knowledge of what would happen in Sunnydale, which let him strike from the shadows and strike hard.

It was basically ambush tactics. Ambush fights don't last very long if the ambush was done right. So Carl hadn't given his enemies the time they would have needed to bring their resources to bear on attacking him. If that had happened, he would have been overwhelmed and killed in short order.

And that was how he entered most of his fights. He strove to end the fight as quickly as he could to accomplish his goals.

As a result of using the ambush tactics so much, he knew just how deadly it was. So having this **Apex Survivor** perk that would protect him against ambush attacks was worth the large cp cost. And that wasn't even taking into account how he wouldn't be killed by natural disasters, plagues, or area of effect attacks. Or being able to find any resources he needed to survive.

Priceless.

With that perk picked, Carl moved on to the selection of Carnivore Perks. He first picked up the 100 cp perk that was discounted to free for those who chose to be a Carnivore.

**Predator's Instincts 0 cp: You have the mindset and instincts of a hunter whose very survival relies on taking prey on a regular basis. You are skilled at identifying weaknesses in prey, stalking, planning ambushes, and predicting your prey's attempts to escape.**

Carl chuckled a bit at seeing how this perk would add to his ability to be an ambush hunter. With all the hunting perks, he would have to fight against getting too big of an ego, he would be that good.

**Clever Girl 100 cp: Even a predator sometimes becomes prey. Whether by a mightier beast or a pack of lesser ones, sometimes the deadliest hunter becomes the hunted. But not you. Any hunter that tries to get you will soon find the tables turned, as you will instinctively know you are being stalked, and you will easily find opportunities to ambush or otherwise turn the tables on them.**

Carl already had several perks that let him know when he was being targeted, but since the **Clever Girl **perk was only 100 cp, he decided to add it to the list. Having an extra perk to reinforce the instincts that would keep him alive wasn't a bad idea. The **Apex Survivor **perk let him know when an attack was incoming. **Clever Girl** let him know when he was being stalked, which gave him even more warning that someone was eyeing him up. The more ways his perks let him be in control of any fight, the better chances he had of always winning.

**Mighty Roar 200 cp: You proclaim mastery of your territory with a world shaking blast of noise! This great roar will terrify your enemies, inspire your allies, and quite possibly shatter some ear drums. Enemies will find it nigh-impossible to maintain focus or concentration, and any allies will be made instantly aware of any battle plans you might have when they hear you announce yourself. This roar can be heard anywhere in territory claimed by you, no matter the distance.**

Carl smiled at buying the **Mighty Roar** perk, since it was so out of step with his usual modus operandi of sneaking around and ending threats before they could do any damage. But sometimes it was good to be loud and disruptive, rather than silent and deadly. Especially if he could affect an entire battlefield with just a roar, including immediately passing battle plans to his allies, then Carl would find some way to make the perk useful in the future. Probably.

Or he would just roar at things for fun or whatever.

And he certainly wasn't just buying it because then he could recreate the scenes of Jurassic Park with the roaring T-Rex. Nope, definitely not.

**Apex Predator 300 cp: You are the deadliest hunter to ever exist, the ultimate predator. Your instincts for stalking, tracking, hunting, and killing are peerless, quickly becoming a master at hunting any new prey in any new environment. You always know where your targets are vulnerable and the optimum way to hit them. Your luck when hunting, whether in general or for specific prey, is bordering on impossibly good. You can kill anything, even things that lack the capacity to die, and anything you kill stays dead.**

Carl got a bit excited to see this particular perk. He knew that there were things out there in the omniverse that were impossible to kill. Or that wouldn't say dead for long. So having the jump chain fiat ensure that he could kill those things and that they would stay dead was a great comfort to Carl.

With his perks selected, he began looking over the items that he could purchase. Some of them were quite amusing. Like the one that allowed dinosaur themed music to be playing and change based on the situation. Carl was slightly tempted by the idea of having BGM (battleground music) playing, and ultimately chose to get it. It was just so fun.

**Dino Tunes 50 cp: You have a soundtrack that contains all the music from every dinosaur based television show or movie ever made, including all the Godzilla movies, plus all other songs about dinosaurs. This can play as loud as you want it to, and you can choose if anyone besides yourself can hear it. You have a perfect mental index of these songs and can search for a particular song or just let it play randomly, which will produce music appropriate to whatever is occurring.**

It was the addition of the Godzilla music that really sold it for Carl.

**Jumper Bones 150 cp: You have a complete fossilized skeleton of your dinosaur form in perfect condition, including documentation that would allow them to be accepted at any museum. For an additional 50 cp (150 cp total), you have fossilized skeletons of all the dinosaur species that ever lived on Earth. These are stored in a special display hall that keeps them in perfect condition and is attached to your Warehouse.**

It was really the mention of an addition to his warehouse that sold Carl on the **Jumper Bones** item. Not only would he get a copy of his dino form's bones, but he would get a ginormous museum full of dinosaur bone displays. Even though he was normally very stingy on paying out cp, he couldn't resist. He was letting his inner child out to play on this jump. It was Dinosaurs!

**Dinosaur DNA Samples 200 cp: You have viable DNA samples from all dinosaur species, perfectly preserved in stasis. If you take these out of stasis to use them for something, they will replenish in 24 hours.**

Carl chuckled at the idea that he could eventually populate a whole world, or several worlds, full of dinosaurs with the DNA samples. He would never run out, he would always have the DNA to play with. While not totally necessary, he decided it would make a useful item.

**Hunting/Grazing Grounds 200 cp: You have, attached to your Warehouse, a large area that is perfect for your dinosaur form to hunt or graze, providing all the food and water needed for as many dinosaurs as you have. Any animal you have ever killed will have a population in this area, as will any plant you have ever sampled.**

Now this was a purchase that got Carl excited and was completely worth the cp cost. Based on all that he had killed or eaten in the past worlds, this would be a very large area indeed. And it would just get bigger as he continued to hunt and eat things. It was a good thing he was choosing to be a predator in this dinosaur world, because he was going to make a concerted effort to eat _everything_. And if he missed something, he could just clone it from the DNA samples he had and eat it, to make sure it populated the Hunting/Grazing Grounds. He would have a very large mini-world attached to his Warehouse.

After calming down, Carl moved on to the Drawbacks he could pick to recoup his spending. He was relieved to see that there was no limit to CP he could gain from drawbacks.

Carl chuckled and immediately rejected the **Annoying Little Critters +100 cp **drawback. He had learned his lesson about just how annoying constantly being pestered by critters could be in the ATG world, and he wanted no more part of it. 100 cp was just not worth it. Sure he could be lazy and just use them as a source of food, but he already had his fill of pests in previous worlds. He would pass.

**Natural Disaster +200 cp: You will be caught in at least one major natural disaster during your time here. It could be a flood, a hurricane, a wildfire, a drought, or any other major event.**

Carl figured he could handle one guaranteed natural disaster easily. His **Apex Survivor **perk ensured he would survive. But he wasn't going to pick the next level up for only 100 cp.

**Mother Nature Hates You +100 cp: You will forced to deal with a major natural disaster at least once a year during this Gauntlet.**

Dealing with a major natural disaster every year for only 100 cp was a horrible price/annoyance ratio. He would pass.

**Little Baby Dino +300 cp: Instead of arriving in the world as an adult dinosaur, your Gauntlet will start when you hatch and you will have to survive as you grow to full size. A lot of otherwise non-threats become very dangerous to a baby or adolescent dinosaur.**

The warning that there would be threats to him when he was young didn't faze him, since he would be entering the world with his modified body thanks to Spere's cheats. He would be tough and ready to rumble from the moment he was awake. And 300 cp was nice to bank.

There were a couple of drawbacks that Carl considered carefully, and decided to leave to chance. He tossed a coin and it came up heads, so Carl added the first drawback.

**Hunter-Gatherers +200 cp: In real life, dinosaurs and humans were separated by millions of years, but that is not the case for you. You will have to deal with hunter-gatherer tribes of humans that might be trying to kill you or might just be competing for resources. Be careful, those hairless apes are more dangerous than they first appear.**

With his powers and skills he wasn't feeling threatened by tanks, let alone hunter gatherers. It might just entertain him a bit. Speaking of tanks, he was undecided about choosing the next one as well.

**Modern Man (+100 cp): Instead of primitive tribes, you have to deal with modern human beings with all the advantages and technology of a modern society. You are most likely in some sort of Lost World or Land of the Lost scenario.**

Carl then flipped the coin once more, and it came up tails, so he shouldn't add the next drawback.

But after thinking about it for some time, Carl decided to go ahead and add the **Modern Man** drawback, despite the results of the coin toss. He decided he could have some fun with it. Even if he ran into the modern day military, he shouldn't have any problems, and this way he could tap into their internet and troll people online while dicking around in his Lost World.

But as much fun as Carl thought it might be to have man and dinosaurs in the same world, he didn't add the final perk, er…drawback of that chain.

**Sci-Fi Safari +100 cp: Instead of modern human beings, you are going to have futuristic hunters, with advanced sci-fi technology, hunting for food and trophies. Again, you are most likely in some kind of Lost World or Land of the Lost scenario, though time travel or a planet-sized nature reserve is also possible.**

While he was reasonably certain his tech from Stargate would hold up to most all other sci-fi world's tech, he didn't want to mess about with it while he was something that all the Predator style alien hunters would love to kill. That would be like getting the **Annoying Little Critters** drawback.

Carl chose not to burden himself with the **Death From Above** drawback.

**Death From Above +400 cp: You have five years to get used to being a dinosaur. Then the world is going to be hit with an extinction level event. This could be an asteroid strike, a mega-volcano eruption, or something else, as long as it is major enough to threaten all life. You will not be caught in the initial impact/event, but you will have to survive in the resulting post-apocalyptic world until the end of this Gauntlet.**

Hard pass. He wanted to live in his dinosaur paradise for the time he was here, not a burnt wreckage of a world.

Carl returned to the first drawback in the list and seriously considered it.

**Do Dinosaurs Even Live That Long? +50 cp: While normally, you would only have to survive here for ten years, that has now been extended by an additional five years. As a special note, you will not die from old age. This drawback can be taken multiple times.**

Before Carl played around with his Time Pearl for using time dilation, he probably would have avoided taking too many instances of this drawback. He had been eager to get through the worlds as quick as he could at first. But now that he had already spent hundreds of years in the Time Pearl, he had already made the decision to get as much out of the Jump as he could before going back to his girls from past worlds.

So he now he felt like using this drawback to amass cp was a decent choice.

His memory was perfect, so he wasn't in danger of forgetting his loved ones, even though it had been a long time since he had been with them. But now with so much time spent in time dilation, he didn't feel like a couple more centuries was going to hurt too much.

On the other hand, having plenty of CP on hand to buy perks would make him more powerful, and when he finally met up with his people again, he could probably use the CP to purchase things for them, hopefully.

Spere 037's advice had been to stockpile up his warehouse points for after the 15th jump. So he expected that having a stockpile of cp would also be very beneficial.

After weighing the pros and cons and thinking about how much time was enough versus too much, Carl added 200 years to his stay in the world. 210 years altogether was quite a long stay, but it would get his cp bank back up to a decent amount. And it wasn't like he hadn't already spent more than 200 years in time compression.

He really hoped he didn't regret making that decision.

At the end of the jump document, Carl saw something that made his eyes gleam in anticipation.

**Final Choice**

**Assuming you survived your time here your dinosaur form will be an Alt-form.**

**If you survive, you will have to choose your reward. You will pick one of the following two options when you leave this world:**

**Dinosaur World: You have a full-sized continent attached to your Warehouse that contains a variety of biomes with dinosaurs living wild. You can choose to import this continent into a setting at the beginning of the jump, and can choose if that setting has always contained said continent or if it just appeared, which will cause the world to adapt without massive ecological or geological damage.**

**Dinosaur Shifter: Rather than just a single Dinosaur alt-form, you can take on the form of any dinosaur known to have existed on Earth. This includes both classic and modern scientifically accurate versions.**

Carl was torn. With the **Hunting/Grazing Grounds**, he already had a very large area that would be populated with dinosaurs and everything that he had eaten. So the **Dinosaur World** was a little redundant. But more land was more land, and he could bring a lost continent into every world that he visited if he so desired.

On the other hand, being able to change into every kind of dinosaur was pretty damned awesome.

Well, with the dino DNA and his **Hunting/Grazing Grounds**, he would still be able to introduce dinosaurs to any world he visited anyway. So it would be much cooler to have multiple dinosaur forms.

But…land!

"Decisions, decisions." Carl muttered. "Well, I don't have to pick just yet anyway."

With a final check over his selections, and having looked in satisfaction at the 4200 cp he had banked, Carl paused.

4200 cp was a respectable amount.

It really was.

But he couldn't help think of the ATG world. He had bought out as many perks as he could since they were so useful. Just one world had used up all his banked cp, and it was finally getting back up there.

Should he spend more time in this world to get more cp for the future? How long was too long for the resultant cp payday?

Carl paced back and forth in front of the terminal as he considered the issue. He had two competing urges here.

"Get as much cp stockpiled as he could for the future" versus "The time spent was not worth the extra cp".

"Get through the worlds faster so he could go back to pick up his loved ones" versus "Get stronger so he could protect his loved ones".

Where was the balance point? How to decide which one of his desires won out over the other?

After thinking about it for some time, Carl chose to keep his choices as they were. He was already staying for such a long time in the world as a dinosaur. He didn't want to keep going down that slope because he might end up staying for millennia if he was solely concerned with banking points.

He finalized his selection and his world went dark.


	71. Dinosaur Gauntlet 1

Carl was curled up and confined all over his body. There was a faint illumination around him that let him faintly see shapes. He could tell that he was currently inside an egg.

'Well, at least I'm not experiencing birth again. I've got all those particular memories from the various worlds locked away the first moment I can.' One of the downsides of having a perfect memory combined with being inserted into various worlds is that he had many memories of being born, over and over. Not to mention having his diapers changed, or sicking up.

Yeah, perfect memory was awesome, but until he gained an occlumency skill to order and lock up certain memories, it was very embarrassing since it allowed him to remember _everything_ with perfect clarity.

Turning his focus back to his situation, Carl spent a moment focusing on his senses. He could hear the sounds of eggs cracking around him, which indicated that his fellow T-rexes were being born. So, Carl stretched out his body and pressed against the shell of his egg. It soon cracked apart, and he kept pushing and stretching out until the egg fell apart around him, dumping him onto the ground of the nest.

Carl got his first look around his new world. He could immediately see the large looming form of who he instinctively recognized as his mother hovering over the nest.

He shook himself as he struggled to get up, his body feeling a bit unstable as he got used to his new body and instincts. At the moment his forearms were actually decently sized for his body; he could actually almost walk on four legs if he wanted. He guessed that his arms wouldn't keep up with the growth of the rest of his body. They were fated to turn vestigial.

Half of the eight other dinos in the nest had already broken their shells and were scrambling about. Carl realized he was unusual in that he had so much control and strength already as a newly hatched. None of the hatchlings were able to get up yet, they were just laying around squawking with open mouths.

Carl felt the corners of his muzzle twitch in amusement. Looking up at his "mother" that was gazing at him, he realized he was acting a bit unusual compared to a normal hatchling. Pulling up every ounce of acting skills he had, Carl dropped to the ground and started imitating his siblings, crying out his stomach's pain.

Seeing a bit of what looked like satisfaction in his mother's features as she gazed at her brood, Carl chuckled inside. This was certainly a new experience. He had had multiple new relatives every time he had entered a new world. But this is the first time he'd had animals for relatives. He wasn't quite sure how to handle it for now, so he thought he would play along.

Included in the instincts of his new body was the ability to read body posture and expressions, as well as the sounds the T-Rex made. So he understood the impatient barking of his mother as complaints about his "father" taking so long.

Carl suddenly felt like someone was targeting him, trying to attack and eat him. Looking around, he saw the shifty gaze of one of the hatchlings eyeing him up as it tried to scoot towards him.

Carl rolled his eyes in exasperation at the impatient little guy and snapped his teeth in his direction in warning. It didn't take the hint and kept coming. Carl whipped his little tail around when it got too close and knocked the little guy tumbling back.

A moment later, Carl couldn't help but stare as two other siblings latched onto the little guy that he had knocked over and start to gnaw on him.

Their mother snorted on the group, causing the hunger fueled "play" to end, much to Carl's relief. Even though they were non-sentient, Carl didn't want to see the babies eating each other on the first day of their lives.

A short time later, another T-Rex showed up, dragging a juvenile Hadrosaurus, which he dropped at their mother's feet. Carl saw his "father" for the first time. The two adult T-Rexes then tore off chunks of meat from the duck billed dinosaur and dropped them in the nest, where Carl's "siblings" fell to with gusto.

A moment later, Carl joined them in tearing up strips of meat for his empty stomach.

Oh so delicious!

When he had finally filled his belly and the ache of hunger had subsided, Carl had some time to take stock of his situation.

Even though Carl still had access to all the perks he had purchased earlier, he noticed that his dino body was clearly an alternate body, instead of just a shape shifted body.

When he used his animagus form, he still retained all the martial arts, Ki, Magic, and Profound Energy improvements as his normal human body.

But in his T-Rex body, he found that this body was brand new and it was starting straight from scratch. He still had access to all his bloodlines and perks, but his Magic, Ki, and Profound Energy were basically at zero for now.

It would take some time for his Magic to fully mature so that he could use it properly. And he would need to start his Ki training and Profound Cultivation all over again from scratch.

That was a complication that he hadn't foreseen, but he was still much better off than if he had only the body mod and not the perks added to his body mod. It would just take a bit of training to regain some of his old skills.

With the thought that he needed food and energy if he was going to do his training, he forced himself to gorge on delicious, bloody dinosaur meat. He didn't stop at stopping the hunger, he kept going until his stomach was round and plump.

He needed to grow and get strong. And he wasn't about to do it on Ki or Profound Energy alone. While he could fight his body's instincts to feed, Carl decided to let go a bit and enjoy the moment.

Soon enough all the hatchlings were stuffed and snoozing. Carl's parents soon finished their own meal, and then lay down nearby to snooze as well.

Which left Carl the only one still awake as he fought off the sleepiness. Now that his stomach was so very, very full, he could focus on starting his practice to improve his dino body so he would have an advantage in surviving.

Due to his previous experience with Ki training and cultivation, he was quite sensitive to those particular energies. With the Great Way of the Buddha technique, Carl could feel the energy of the world around him. He began the practice and starting absorbing the energy that basically formed as Ki in his body.

According to the technique, he was channeling Ki throughout his body to temper it and strengthen himself in order to strengthen his body and be able to absorb more Ki. Wave after wave of Ki washed through, slowly improving his muscles, ligaments, bones, skin, and even his intestines and various organs. Carl noticed that his digestion speed ramped up as it used the meal as fuel to speed up his body's fortification and growth.

Shortly after the first round of training, Carl felt starved once more. The digestion had sped up so much, his stomach was once more empty.

So he stopped his Ki exercises and quietly got to his feet. He made his way to the carcass and began gnawing off more chunks of delectable meat to fill the void where his stomach should be.

Carl saw that his parents noticed him eating more, but they didn't do anything and went back to their nap. It showed Carl how alert they were to their surroundings, even when resting. Carl soon found out that the claws on his arms could be used to grab, hold, and even help tear off chunks of meat to be dropped down his gullet.

Once he was full again, Carl began his body strengthening routine once more. The sun set, and his dino relatives continued to nap and digest their food, while Carl the glutton continued eating and practicing through the night, periodically stuffing himself.

While he was practicing, in the back of Carl's mind, he was pondering a question. Did he want to continue to hang out with the family and see just what life as a T-Rex family was like? Or did he want to strike out on his own?

There were pluses for each one. Staying with the family would afford him more protection and he wouldn't have to hunt for himself right away. He could continue his training without interruption.

On the other hand, he would probably be stuck with them for quite a long time if he stayed. If the T-Rex stayed in family units, he would probably become responsible for them at some point.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to take on that responsibility. How long did T-Rexes live for anyway? And he didn't know how the reproductive cycle worked for these dinosaurs, but he was not getting any female T-Rexes pregnant!

Before he could answer that question for himself, the situation was taken out of Carl's control. A loud piercing noise came screaming down from the sky. Carl looked up and could just see a streak of fire before the meteor impacted nearby.

The sound of trees being shattered blended in with the loud bang of impact close by. The air was suddenly filled with dirt and dust, obscuring even his vision.

Carl could vaguely see his dino parents scoop up the now awake hatchlings in their mouths, before booking it away from the source of the crash. Carl realized that they had left him behind because he wasn't with his siblings in the nest, and their instincts had taken them over to get out of there immediately.

Looking in the direction that his parents had run in, then looking towards the impact zone, Carl decided that his decision was made for him, since he was already separated from his dino family. So he got up and started moving towards the meteor's landing site. He had never been around for the landing of a meteor, so he was curious to see the spectacle.

Carl began moving through the woods deftly and easily. He was impressed at how quickly his body had improved through just several hours of his Ki practice and digesting his food. He had already grown several inches due to the Ki practice speeding up his development. He would say that he was about the size of a large chicken at the moment, but a very deadly chicken indeed.

As Carl negotiated the rocks, hills, and various debris thrown around by the meteor, he noticed a lot of animal activity, running away from where he was going. Glancing around at the fleeing animals, Carl made sure to keep an eye out in case any of them decided they wanted a quick snack of approximately chicken size. He would have to bust out the fowl-fu if they got any ideas.

A short time later, Carl found the reason that none of the fleeing animals paid attention to him, as he smelt smoke. Apparently the impact had started a forest fire. If he wasn't fire resistant, he too would be running away as fast as he could.

So even though this body hadn't gone through any Profound Cultivation yet, he knew he still had his fire affinity which made him immune to fire, so he wasn't worried about the fire. But he was a bit worried about the smoke that was irritating his lungs, since his body wasn't robust enough to deal with it yet.

While thinking about whether he should run with the others away from the fire so he didn't suffer from smoke inhalation, he realized that he could feel his magic stronger inside him. The only thing he could guess was that his quickly maturing body from the Ki practice was able to handle more magic inside.

Shrugging at the easy convenience this presented him, he pulled on his magic and cast a bubble head charm to make sure he had a supply of fresh air. Feeling the strain, he realized that holding that one charm seemed to be his limit for now. It was sufficient for now. Carl then continued to hop and dart through the forest, making progress toward the impact zone.

He soon arrived at the fire, which was spreading outward from the impact zone. Carl looked at the flames that were eating the trees as it spread outward. The heat didn't especially bother him. He could feel it, but it didn't hurt him at all.

He dashed forward through the fire and emerged on the other side where the impact had thrown huge amounts of dirt all over the place.

Thinking about how his magic had improved from his slightly matured body due to the Ki practice, Carl had a weird thought. He had zero Profound Cultivation in this body, and he didn't sense any Profound Energy in the air. Just what happened to his pocket dimension that he had access to when he reached the Sovereign Profound Realm?

Carl could still feel the inner world full of energy that he got from **Nine Profound Exquisite Body** perk. He could vaguely sense his pocket dimension since it was connected to him. And he could sense that it still had everything stored inside, but his body wasn't able to exert any control over it due to being a complete newbie with no cultivation.

'Looks like the Yamato is in storage for now.' Carl grumped to himself. 'At least I have access to the inner world and the energy stored there. I can regain my cultivation by using that energy and then I can access the pocket dimension and retrieve my ship.'

Relieved that he had a solution, Carl put the issues aside for now continued forward. He soon arrived at the lip of the meteor impact. While he was standing on the edge he looked down into the crater, where he saw a large space stone oozing out a black goo that was obviously a symbiote like Spiderman once had.

'Hehe, if only that were the case.' Carl thought as he looked down at the big dirt hole in the ground. Of course there wasn't a space symbiote here for him to bond with. He didn't even see the meteor that was likely buried under soil. Carl looked around the area and saw the blasted trees, rocks, and dirt strewn around.

It was quite a sight. Carl almost felt like he was in a movie, seeing the scene of destruction. Just as he was wondering if it was the only meteor, Carl saw the sky lit up by meteors as they rained down.

'Damn my big mouth! If only I had access to my ship!' Carl cursed as he hoped that none of those damned space rocks landed on his head. He also cursed himself for picking the damned drawback that gave him a natural disaster. He thought he would have more than just a few hours to grow up and get stronger before disaster struck!

Carl kept an eye on the meteor's trajectories, and saw that one would land within a kilometer of him. Very close, but he would probably be fine. Carl hunkered down in the meteor hole in front of him, ignoring the heat, under the hope that lighting, or meteors, wouldn't strike the same place twice.

The closest meteor landed soon after, shaking the ground and rattling Carl's teeth. He continued to keep an eye on the sky to make sure he would see it coming if anything were going to land on him.

After 15 minutes, the rate at which the meteors were falling started dwindling, causing him to sigh in relief.

That relief changed to a sort of horrified disbelief as he finally took his eyes off the sky and looked around at the destruction. The reflected glow of fire was everywhere he looked. The shower of meteors had really kick started the fire started by the first meteor.

The ground as far as he could see was torn up. The forest was on fire. The prey animals had run away. This wasn't really any good place to survive.

Carl looked over at the nearest tall tree that was still standing a couple hundred of meters away. He made his way over to it, hopping from rock to dirt pile to tree trunk. The tree looked like half of its foliage was stripped from it by the disaster. Carl decided not to chance it as it looked a bit unstable.

So he moved on to a tree a bit further away that somehow escaped the fire and was still standing; he began climbing. His body strengthened by Ki was still going strong for now. He might have to rest soon, though. Carl's claws sunk into the bark of the tree, giving him traction to climb up.

He soon got high enough to see further out. Carl mapped out where the fires were in his mind. He saw that, hopefully, some of the meteor strike started fires would act as fire breaks, stopping the spread of more fire.

But there was going to be quite a lot of acreage burning before the night was over. Carl sighed sadly. If this had happened even a year later, Carl figured he would have already been strong enough to go around all night and use his fire mastery to stop fires.

But at the moment he was too weak in his new body. He could easily lose his life if he wasn't careful by exhausting himself and falling prey to some opportunistic dino.

After some calculation, Carl determined that he would return to his family's nest. It still had part of a meal that he could use for a couple days. After that, he would have to go hunting on his own if his family didn't return. He was pretty sure they wouldn't come back and would settle wherever they ended up.

Carl then made the laborious climb down. Seriously, climbing up was easy, climbing down was hard.

* * *

Carl's chicken sized form slipped through the trees as he kept his alertness up for any predators out to hunt him. His new alternate form of a baby T-Rex was actually pretty fun to run around in.

He was streamlined to run in a forward direction. His legs had been enhanced by his Ki training, so he was able to make great leaps forward when he encountered any obstacle. His tail even gave him the ability to flip his body around while in air so that he could orient his body properly while leaping.

More than once or twice he'd face planted in the ground while getting used to the ways he could control and flip his body midair. But that really just made the whole thing more fun for him. No one was watching him crash, so he could spend his time truly getting used to his new body's abilities and learn how to properly use his tail to flip his body midair.

With his knowledge and skills, he knew he could train it up in no time to be strong enough to not be in any danger from the surrounding dinosaurs. But for now, he needed to be careful.

After travelling through the smoky woods for some time, Carl found his way back to the place where he hatched. He saw the remnants of the carcass his "father" had brought back, and there wasn't much meat on it left. Maybe enough for a couple more meals.

In order to protect himself from any surprise attacks while he was training again, Carl cast a notice me not charm on the clearing. The slight feeling of weakness that came after he cast the spell shocked Carl for a moment.

Sprawled on the ground, he realized that he really wasn't really ready for spell casting yet.

But after thinking about it for a bit, he realized that it was because his new body wasn't used to channeling large amounts of energy. The bubble head charm earlier had been a small enough expenditure that he didn't really notice the load on his new body. But the notice me not charm required a bit more power.

'So, it looks like I'll have to practice magic as well to improve my body's ability to channel magic.' Carl thought as he rested on the ground, panting. 'Based on the **Nine Profound Exquisite Body** that I got from the ATG world, I wouldn't actually hurt or damage myself by trying to channel too much energy. But that doesn't mean I can't tire myself out by doing something I'm not used to in such a new body.'

Carl then settled himself in the nest and began another round of practicing the **Great Way of the Buddha** technique to temper his body with Ki. The previous time Carl had first trained in the technique he had taken over a day to master the first level. Before the meteor shower he had only managed to spend several hours training before the disaster struck.

Now, with no distractions, Carl managed to complete the first stage in only a few more hours. Once more, the phenomenon of a six foot tall silver pagoda appeared around Carl's form. After some time, the pagoda began shrinking and placed itself on Carl's forehead.

Carl came out of his training trance, once more ravenously hungry. His gaze fell on the remnants of the hadrosaurus carcass. To a human, the idea of eating the bloody carcass that had been lying in the dirt for more than a day would have been disgusting. But with his body's instincts, Carl just drooled a bit before he fell on the meal in front of him.

With the sharp increase of his body's strength from his practice, Carl didn't act polite and just devoured the remnants of the carcass whole, bones and all. The bone marrow especially tasted delicious to him.

Once more feeling replete, Carl sat back for a bit and thought about what he was going to do from here.

The first order of business was survival. He needed to hunt food for himself, especially if he was going to be so hungry every time he practiced his techniques.

At this point, even at the first stage of the Great Way of the Buddha, he was confident in his body's power and ability to keep himself alive.

The second order of business was to resume his practice in Profound Energy. Because until his new body once more had the control over the Profound Energy, he wasn't going to be able to access his dimensional space.

And the final thing was that he needed to be wary of the dinosaurs and humans in this world. Until he regained his indomitable power, he was going to be vulnerable to ambushes and the humans and their modern technology.

With that in mind, Carl focused on his small dino body to determine his current situation. He got a bit of a shock then, because he found that he had grown by a good 6 inches in just one night!

'Whoa, my Ki practice is really increasing the speed at which my body grows!' Carl thought in excitement as he jumped around the clearing, testing out his newly grown body. It was probably a result of completing the first stage of the Great Buddha Technique.

After a bit, Carl calmed back down and once more looked at his body. This small T-Rex body was nimble and able to jump around quite nicely, even before the addition of his body strengthening technique. While standing on his two legs, he could either rest his tail on the ground to raise his head up higher to look around, or use his tail to balance his head parallel to the ground as he walked around.

He spent a moment to admire his tail and claws. Very scary!

Carl then focused on the situation inside his body, and that's when he found out that all 54 profound entrances were already open due to the perks he had added to his body mod, even if he didn't feel any Profound Energy in the surroundings. Which was a relief, because he didn't think he would be able to do acupuncture on himself in this form to open them all.

He could also sense the various bloodlines that he had added to his body mod. The Golden Crow, Dragon God, and Phoenix bloodlines were continually surging through his body, improving it as time went on.

That was one of the amazing things about Spere's cheat system. Even the things that he didn't get from buying perks could be added to his body mod. Things like the Phoenix bloodline that he got from Feng Ra.

Looking at how the bloodlines were circulating in his body and improving it moment by moment gave Carl a sense of satisfaction. Even though this T-Rex body was back to the basics, and his Dragon God bloodline was back to being only 6 drops of blood, he was happy with his situation.

There was just so much satisfaction he gained from the idea of training his new body up again. Even the idea that a lot of his martial arts skills were useless to him in this form didn't bother him. It instead excited him, thinking about how he would have to train his new body to fight and hunt based on the principles and skills he already knew.

With everything straight in his mind, Carl settled down and automatically began trying to gather energy from his surroundings to start his profound cultivation.

Carl frowned as he realized that there really wasn't any useful profound energy in his surroundings. There was still some trace amount of Profound Energy, but it was so attenuated that it was difficult to gather enough to even attain the first level of the Elementary Profound level, let alone advance any further.

After spending a few moments futilely trying to gather profound energy, Carl gave up. He wasn't going to be able to get to the first level of the Elementary Profound Realm at this raate. There just wasn't enough profound energy to practice. Carl sighed internally in dismay.

'I guess that's why this isn't a cultivation world.' Carl kicked the dirt in dismay with his clawed feet. 'At least I'm able to use nature energy to practice Ki.'

It would have been more difficult to survive if he wasn't able to practice his Ki techniques, but he would still have been without Ki, he still had his magic and bloodlines strengthening his body. It was just too bad he was stuck without profound energy for so long.

Carl suddenly had an idea, and looked into his inner world full of different energies from his **Nine Profound Exquisite Body**. Even if his body had been changed, he still had the same inner world, after all.

Carl found after some experimentation that he could pull out the profound energy he had stored inside to help him improve his cultivation level. So working delicately, Carl pulled out a bit of Profound Energy, just small threads of it, to begin his training.

After a short time, Carl had attained the first level of the Elementary Profound. He was excited for a bit, before calming himself down and thinking things through logically.

'Hmm, I've got to figure this out carefully.' Carl thought. 'I only have so much profound energy stored inside my inner world, and I can't really add to it for now. I can increase my cultivation level to the Sovereign Profound level with what I've got, and I'll still have some profound energy left over to manipulate my pocket dimension. But I've got to be careful not to use too much, since I can't replenish it. Looks like I'll be sticking to Magic and Ki techniques for this world.'

Carl decided that he would spend the rest of the night cultivating his profound energy, and he would then go hunting the next day. With that settled, Carl curled up on the ground and began his practice, secure in his notice me not charm to keep him safe.

* * *

Many miles away, a middle aged man parked his car in the parking lot outside a building complex. He got out, carrying a briefcase with him, and entered the building marked E. His expression didn't change from the blank look he had as he passed through the security checkpoint.

Once past the security, he entered the elevator and moved to the 23rd floor. Exiting the elevator, he strode confidently down the brightly lit halls to a particular office. Without knocking, he opened the door and entered.

Without looking at the secretary that half stood, he barged into the office.

A very fit man who looked to be in his thirties looked up from the paperwork he was going through, and scowled when he saw who entered with no warning.

"What is it, Barnes? I told you before; I won't be part of your damned treasure hunts." The scowling man rapped out before the intruder could say anything.

Barnes airily waved his hand, dismissing the man's words as he approached the desk.

"I'm not here about that, this time, Sheffield. Whippleton sent me with orders to recruit you and your group for a particular job." Barnes set his briefcase on Sheffield's desk, popping it open and pulling out a file that he dumped in front of Sheffield. Ignoring Sheffield's dark scowls, Barnes then carelessly plopped into one of the chairs.

"What is this?" Sheffield asked without touching the file while continuing to glare at Barnes.

"You should read it first. Then I'll answer any questions after." Barnes blithely answered as he unconcernedly looked around the office. "Nice digs you got here for successfully completing that Descarta job."

"My team has a 100% completion rate. We pride ourselves on that fact. And that's exactly why we won't work with you on your futile hunt. We work on difficult but possible jobs, not chasing after legends and specters." Sheffield sarcastically commented.

"Ouch! So hurtful!" Barnes sarcastically mocked. "I just never expected the brave commander to be so tentative about a simple job."

"Whatever." Sheffield dismissed before opening the file Barnes dropped on his desk. "I won't give into your pitiful provocation. If schoolyard taunting worked to make me act, I wouldn't have been nearly as successful as you aren't."

Barnes grin gained a bit of an ugly edge to it, but he didn't respond this time, as Sheffield was already reading the briefing. After some time, Sheffield looked up from the satellite picture he held in his hands.

"Really? Dinosaurs?" Sheffield asked dubiously.

Barnes shrugged in response. "Dinosaurs, mutants, escaped lab animals. Whatever they are, Whippleton wants to catch them. We only found them because someone was tracking a meteor storm and the satellites took pictures of the impact site. Whippleton made sure the pictures didn't end up online, so we have the lead over anyone else. The whole place is surrounded by mountains, in the ass end of nowhere, so it's going to be a bitch to get to. But it also makes it hard for any competition to do anything. And he's willing to pay your group handsomely for success. The more samples and subjects you bring back, the better the pay."

Sheffield sat back in his seat thoughtfully. "How much are we talking here?"

Barnes looked at him for a moment, and then quoted a very large number.

"Well, I think there is room for cooperation after all." Sheffield smiled sharply at the possible profit he stood to gain. He got on the phone with his secretary and had her call for his lawyer to review contracts. "Once we have a contract signed, I'll expect a deposit to get my people moving. But by the end of the month we'll have people on site and…subjects…will start to be transferred back."

Barnes chuckled in a slightly mocking tone at Sheffield's abrupt change of attitude. Despite laughing at the man, Barnes didn't think he would make a different choice either, faced with the huge amount they could make.

"Good. Once I return with the signed contracts, Whippleton's people will transfer your money. The faster we do this, the better chance we have to beat the competition." Barnes drawled as he strutted out of the office.

Sheffield's gaze turned back to the satellite imagery of the dinosaurs. His people were the best, which meant that they stood to profit hugely from this exotic grab and bag. His mind was already listing the people he would need to assign to this job, and what they would need to buy or modify.

Yes, Sheffield lived for challenges like this.


	72. Dinosaur Gauntlet 2

The next morning Carl finished his practice and got to his feet, stretching every which way. The feeling of stretching his spine and tail out felt great, and he was feeling energetic and ready for the day.

Looking around to get his bearings, Carl departed to the east, towards where he saw plenty of forest that looked like it would avoid the fire from the previous day. The morning sun shone through the trees, making a nice dappled effect of the shadows.

Now that Carl was preparing to hunt, he started paying more attention to looking for tracks and sign in his surroundings. Everywhere he looked he could see many of the traces of the panicked flight the other dinos had done the previous day, but he wasn't seeing any tracks or signs that any of them had wandered back.

Sniffing the air, Carl was amazed at just how good his sense of smell was. It was multiple times better than even when he was in his shadow panther form. His eyesight was also amazing. Carl was very pleased with the basic physique that the T-Rex had.

As he was traveling through the forest, Carl had an interesting thought. Focusing for a moment while looking at his tail, he was able to change the colors on his tail. Giving a little dino smirk, he hunkered down in some shrubbery and focused on changing his coloration. He soon blended in to his surroundings.

'Oh man, I'm so glad that I picked up **Metamorphmagus**!' Carl chuffed a bit in amusement and excitement. It was one more skill that would make him a much better hunter.

Carl got up out of the shrubbery he was hiding in and continued on. After some time, he started smelling water as well as some animals ahead of him. Peering through the trees, Carl could see a break in the trees where a clearing was some distance ahead.

After testing the wind, Carl circled around a bit to make sure that the wind wouldn't pass his scent to whatever was in the clearing. Paying attention to his footing, coloration, and cover, Carl crept closer to whatever his nose was picking up.

Peering out from behind cover, Carl saw a herd of 30 or so dinosaurs. Searching his memory, Carl remembered from books he read that they seemed to be Leptoceratops. The adults were about 6.5 feet long, from snout to tail tip.

Carl observed the group for some time, to see their behavior. Some of the herd would remain standing, staying alert for predators, while the rest of the group was leaning down and eating some of the green grasses in the clearing.

They seemed to be distantly related to the Triceratops, or at least had some features in common. First off, the Leptoceratops had a beak and a small bony fringe on the back of their head. But aside from that, they were very different. They didn't have the size or horns of their more famous cousins. They also had spines running down their tail starting at their hips. And most importantly, they alternated between standing on two legs and crawling around on four while they grazed.

Looking around, Carl didn't see any other predators around, and the behavior of the Leptoceratops seemed to indicate that they didn't sense any problems around them for now.

Carl considered them as his first hunt for some time. At the moment, he was barely as tall when standing as the adult Leptoceratops were at the hips, only about 2.5 feet. So he was vastly outweighed and undersized.

But on the other hand, he had already attained the first stage of the Great Way of the Buddha which should have given him the strength to lift nearly 2 tons. But that was with a human body, and he was much smaller than a human body at the moment, so he wasn't sure just how that strength would translate to this body.

Considering the matter, Carl set his eyes on one of the juvenile Leptoceratops. He would attempt to hunt one of the medium sized ones for now, until he got stronger and more confident in his hunting abilities.

So he began creeping closer, moving from cover to cover. Relying more on his sense of smell than sight to tell when he was getting close as he crept through the grass kept to the depressions in the ground while keeping his camouflage up.

Carl saw that he was close, within 10 feet of his prey. All his muscles tensed for the push off. Carl pounced! The Leptoceratops herd was startled and began running, but Carl dashed forward incredibly fast for his size and within 20 feet had pounced on the prey he had an eye on.

He landed on its back with his jaws missing the back of the neck he was aiming for, but getting a good hold on the spine his prey. He clamped down with his jaws, surprised at how easily his teeth sank into the flesh of the herbivore under him. His increased strength apparently gave a huge boost to his jaw strength.

Carl used his back feet to claw at the Leptoceratops belly while hanging from his back. He could feel his claws sinking in and the blood was flowing.

With a pitiful cry, the prey fell to the ground under Carl's assault.

With the creature now unable to flee, Carl repositioned himself, and clamped his jaws onto the animal's throat, biting down as hard as he could. His jaw sank in, crushing the esophagus as well as cutting off the blood supply to the brain. The animal died shortly after.

Carl had already had experience hunting in his shadow panther form, so he wasn't as shocked by the bloody experience as he might have been before. In addition, his predator instincts were crowing in delight while his tongue transmitted the delicious taste to his brain.

Standing up and looking around, Carl didn't see the herd of Leptoceratops anymore. They had made their getaway. He also didn't sense any other predator nearby, but he didn't want to take any chances. Clamping his jaws on his prey, Carl dragged it back to the trees where he could anchor a good notice me not around to keep other animals from approaching while he fed.

Soon Carl began enjoying the meal. Something about having made the hunt and kill himself always excited him, making the meal that much more delicious.

Once he was full, Carl continued practicing his Ki technique to continue training up his physique and strength.

While doing so, he kept one earhole open for any intruders that might give him a hard time. Just like that, Carl set the tone for his following days, as he fell into a routine of practicing and hunting. He never felt bored, even if all he did was sit in one spot looking around for anything to hunt. At the very least, he always had his sense of smell to tell him things about his surroundings, which was oddly entertaining.

* * *

The next morning when the sun shone, Carl finished up his practice ravenously hungry, and continued eating the remains of his kill. He was still flabbergasted a bit at how huge his appetite was as he was practicing the body enhancement technique. He hadn't run into this problem when he was practicing the technique as a human. At most, he was just a bit hungrier when he was training in the HSDK world, nothing like this.

'I guess the difference in body really does make a difference. Here I'm in a beast's body, so I have to have a beast's consideration for the differences. A bigger stomach, for one.' After a moment's considerations, Carl thought of something else. 'Or it's because I'm just hatched and in a growth state. Or both. I wonder if it will affect my innate strength, by having a beast's lineage.'

After a bit, Carl shook those ideas out of his head. They weren't important at the moment. What was important was going on another hunt to catch food. Looking down at the scraps of a 200 pound animal that he devoured in one day, Carl shook his head at just how big his appetite was. Even now he wasn't completely sated.

But looking at his body, he had grown another few inches long overnight. At the rate he was eating and growing, he would probably only take a couple years to reach his full growth, instead of 15-20 years.

'With a human body size, the strength inherent in the first stage is 2 tons. But what about comparing that with a full sized T-Rex body? Just how strong would it be?' Carl laughed, his baby T-Rex barking echoing around the trees.

After chortling for a bit, Carl blanked his mind of any of his concerns, ideas, and worries and continued his explorations of the area. It was important while moving to be especially alert. Even if his perk driven senses should warn him of any predators targeting or ambushing him, that was no excuse to be lazy.

He briefly considered following the tracks of the Leptroceratops from the previous day and grabbing another, but then thought he shouldn't deplete their numbers too greatly. He didn't want to eat any animal to extinction just to fill his belly.

And if he couldn't find any prey for his meal today, at most, he would pause his Ki practice for a day so he wouldn't starve himself to death with his body's hunger demands.

With that resolution, Carl began traveling east once more, climbing a nearby ridge so he could get eyes on the layout of the land.

Carl found that his body was very agile as he ran through the large and widely spaced trees. It felt fun, dashing around on his two legs, his smaller forearms tucked into his chest. With his diminutive size at the current time, he didn't feel like a mighty T-Rex. He didn't even feel like the Utahraptors. He felt more like those little compys from the Jurassic Park movie. Just a little guy with a big bite!

Carl practically flew over the terrain as he climbed the ridge, and then climbed a thick tree. That was one thing he wouldn't be able to keep doing as he got older.

Reaching the height where the branches couldn't continue supporting his weight, Carl pushed aside the smaller branches obscuring his sight.

The beautiful early morning landscape in front of him was beautiful. There were great swaths of forest around. In the distance, Carl could see where the forest ended and grasslands began.

It was only now that Carl realized that the flora in this lost world seemed to be full of primitive plantlife that the dinosaurs lived with, not the modern day world's plantlife. It seemed to be a bit more robust to accommodate the needs of the gigantic herbivores that roamed the area.

In the distant grasslands, Carl could make out various herds of those large herbivores. He could see Triceratops, Appotosaurus, Stegasaurus, Anklyosaurus, and many other smaller creatures.

Carl realized that since he was in the modern time, not the Cretaceous period that the T-Rex originally lived, that there were dinosaurs from all the periods seemingly living here side by side.

'What a wonderful lost land!' Carl happily thought. Seeing the sheer size of the area where the dinosaurs lived in, Carl was especially happy. It seems that there would be plenty for him to eat in the coming days that he shouldn't need to hold back his appetite too much.

Scrambling down the tree, Carl had just reached the base when he felt a cold sensation on his neck, and a feeling of danger. Focusing on his senses, especially his sense of smell, he focused in on where the sensation was coming from.

Over 30 feet away, he spotted the cold eyes of a Velociraptor eyeing him. Carl chuckled inside, since the little beastie was only about the same size as he was. He felt no real danger from it, despite its obvious intentions.

Carl then saw several more show up. Despite Carl obviously spotting them, they continued acting as if they were hunting him. The group split up, trying to cut off Carl's escape route.

'Well, just when I was thinking of hunting, brunch delivers itself.' Carl chuckled inside.

Casually walking away from the approaching raptors, Carl employed his metamorphmagus abilities when he arrived at a clump of shrubbery. He changed directions and set up his own ambush among some rocks while blending in to the surroundings.

Carl then watched from his chosen perch as the raptors lost sight of him and became confused. The pack of 15 or so converged on the last known spot that they had seen him, milling around as they tried to determine where he had gone.

That was the moment Carl had been waiting for. With a mighty roar, that came out more like a pitiful 'waaaaaang!', Carl pounced on the group. Despite the pitiful sound that he made, his roar was a use of the **Mighty Roar** perk, so it temporarily stunned the group of raptors.

Carl was on them before they could recover, and slashed two necks with his hind claws as he came down in the midst of them. Blood fountained out of the deep slashes he made. The two raptors he injured collapsed under the attack, and Carl clamped down on them, one with his jaws, the other with his small arms.

The rest of the pack freaked out at the sudden attack and quick death; the moment they recovered from the panic, they scattered in all directions. Carl let them go. He had taught them a lesson to fear him, and secured another meal, which was exactly what he wanted.

The weak struggles the prey under his claws and teeth didn't last long as they quickly bled out. Giving the equivalent of a proud T-Rex smirk, Carl set up another notice me not charm and began practicing his body cultivation technique. His catch would fill his belly when he finished practicing.

* * *

It had been a couple weeks since the meteor impact disaster, and Carl had continued his routine of training and hunting. He had wandered by the sections of the forest that were burnt due to the fires from the meteor impacts, and had already seen new plant growth in the previously burnt areas already sprouting up. It probably helped that there was plenty of moisture in the air and rain on a regular basis that ensured the plants were able to grow so quickly.

Carl was pretty happy that even before he began practicing his body cultivation, he hadn't been bothered by the high humidity. He remembered being quite miserable in his original life when he'd been forced to endure the humid climates. But now with his dinosaur body, he actually loved the climate.

Besides hunting for food every day, Carl had made it a practice to nibble on the various plants he came across. He knew that the act of eating them would add them to his **Hunting/Grazing Grounds,** even though he wouldn't be able to access the grounds until he left the Gauntlet world and regained access to his Warehouse.

'Right, that reminds me. What about my various Monopoly properties? Are they present in this world? I can't find out because I can't access my Warehouse to interact with my VIs. And just because I can't access my Warehouse, does that mean that if my properties are present in the world, then they aren't getting the supplies from my farms?'

Carl sighed in defeat. He really had no way to figured out the answers to those questions at the moment. And worrying about them wouldn't help him at all. So he made an effort to throw the problem to the back of his mind. Especially because even if his business wasn't going so good at the moment, it wasn't like he would lose the properties. In a new world, his business would resume like normal.

Chances were that his managing VIs were working to find an alternate supply source, if they haven't already secured some.

Carl then returned his attention to the matter in front of him, namely the giant lake he was currently looking at in curiosity.

When he had first looked at the large lake, Carl had almost dismissed it and continued on his way. It wasn't until he noticed a brief turbulence beneath the lake that Carl had looked closer. At which point, Carl had seen some giant water dwelling dinosaur gliding just under the surface.

With that, Carl's attention was captured. He gazed interestedly at the lake. Only then was he really cognizant of what his senses had already known. The giant lake was salt water. It even smelled like an ocean.

How was it possible to have a giant lake be a small sea in the middle of a continent?

Carl's gaze at the depths of the lake gave him no answer, other than the lake was incredibly deep. Even with his enhanced sight he couldn't see the lake bed.

Was it connected to the ocean with underwater caverns? Was it just salty like the Great Salt Lake in Utah?

Carl was itching to find out. With his water mastery and bubble head charm, exploring the depths should be easy for him. But looking at the enormous predators in the water, Carl decided to wait until he had grown more and was large enough that he wouldn't be swallowed so easily. He didn't fancy playing Jonah and the whale. Digging himself out of a carcass at the bottom of the ocean didn't sound like fun.

He wasn't really afraid of them, but he figured they would be annoying if they kept interrupting his exploration. When he was fully grown, his sheer size would deter them from interrupting him. So, exploring the depths could wait for now.

Carl then turned his attention back to his surroundings. Around the great sea lake, there was a large marshy grasslands, in which roamed herds of various herbivores. Carl had been skirting around those very herds for the past day as he traveled.

Occasionally he would have fun with the herds of herbivores, jumping on the backs of the large dinosaurs and catching a ride while trying to keep his balance. He knew he wouldn't be able to get away with being so casual and having fun when he grew bigger. Then he would be an actual dangerous predator to these giant cows, and they would freak out about his presence.

So he took the opportunity now to play around with them before moving on as he continued to wander around his lost land.

Now that Carl decided to ignore the inland ocean lake, he turned away and started making his way across the grasslands to the other side, where Carl could see hilly and valley terrain. He was curious to see what food there was on offer there. And he had seen some Pterodactyls flying around there, making their way from the hills to the lake.

A basket full of wings sounded good about now. He was curious about the flavor…

* * *

The sound of Pterodactyl calls echoed over the cliffs. Small Pterodactyls that couldn't fly yet remained in their nests on the cliff face, while their parents were making trips back and forth from the cliff face to the inland sea lake.

Carl was perched on a rock some distance from the cliff face, color shifted to look like just another projection of the rock he was perched on. He was dubiously looking at the cliff face, doubting his original plan.

Over the past few weeks he had been daily hunting and training, which caused his growth to be incredibly fast. As a result, he was now nearly four feet tall at the hip, and nearly eight feet long.

Looking at the sheer cliff face, taking into consideration his increased size, and adding in the presence of flight predators, Carl wasn't quite so confident of his idea to raid the Pterodactyl nests as he originally was.

He could still save himself if he fell with cushion charms. But he wasn't sure he wanted to go through the hassle until he could fly on his own to make sure he didn't run into any problems.

Having just made up his mind to come back later for some "chicken wings" and eggs, Carl was surprised to hear something he didn't expect to hear.

The loud thrumming sound of rotors were echoing over the cliffs. Many helicopters suddenly appeared from beyond the mountains, flying past the nests of the Pterodactyls.

The Pterodactyls actually freaked out quite a lot, taking to the air. There were quite a bit of near misses as the helicopters barely avoided crashing due to the presence of the dinosaurs.

Carl chuckled a bit to see the frantic maneuvers of the pilots to keep from the disaster of crashing into the dinosaurs or each other. After they got escaped from the near disaster, the helicopters reformed into their formation and continued on their way.

Looking at the formation of heavy duty helicopters, which were apparently the quickest and easiest way into the lost land of the dinosaurs, Carl wondered what their purpose was. Were they here just for a safari hunt? Or were they going to capture eggs and baby dinosaur specimen to bring back to their zoos and labs?

Carl abandoned his perch and followed behind the helicopters.

He was amused to discover that at the sight of the helicopters Carl's dinosaur instincts made him feel very territorial. He had already started considering that the land of dinosaurs here was _his_. To see these humans come here and trespass on his land offended him. Especially if they were here to capture and steal _his _prey.

On the other hand, Carl wasn't going to make the assumption that they were here to plunder resources. They might be here to do scientific studies and observation only…

Carl cracked up laughing inside. Yeah, he didn't believe it either. The kind of people who simply want to study animals, even rare extinct animals, for science usually couldn't afford the cost of performing those studies. They usually needed a financial backer. And those who had the money usually weren't philanthropist enough to fund such studies unless they got some sort of return on their money.

At the very least a rich person needed to recoup costs, or they wouldn't be able to keep funding scientific studies in the future. And no one liked the idea of being duped out of their money or property to fund a fool who talked big but wasted their investment while getting no results.

So Carl was pretty sure this group of people was here to grab samples that would be used to make a profit.

And while Carl didn't really have a problem with the idea of people profiting off their ventures in general, he wanted to supervise the people doing the profiting. He wasn't about to let large groups of people in to use the natural resources until they had slashed and burned everything to the ground in their greed to profit.

This was his home and hunting grounds, after all.

So while the helicopters made their way to their chosen landing site, Carl followed behind them, trying to keep them in sight. Which was surprisingly easy, since he could run very quickly now, with his body strength from training.

A short time later, Carl found the group had set down on the grasslands. Carl crouched in the grass on a nearby hill, watching the group set up a perimeter and camp. They had chosen to set up near one of the rivers that ran into the lake, where they could gather water to be purified for their daily use.

It made sense for them to rely on a local source of water. Water was heavy, sloshed around, and was not compressible. They had weight to fuel ratios to consider, so they would naturally try to travel as light as possible.

Carl watched in amusement as they set up their little electrical fence perimeter, powered by generators. Based on what he had seen already of the large dinosaurs, they wouldn't be bothered by such a little shock. Even the predators wouldn't be deterred by it very much. At most they would be a little more careful in their attempts to circumvent the fence.

Meanwhile Carl listened in to the conversations he could hear from his hill a couple hundred meters away from the camp. Most of the time Carl suppressed his conscious attention to his senses so he didn't get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of useless input. But now that Carl was focusing, he could clearly hear the conversations going on.

When Carl heard they had a satellite link back to their people, he was suddenly very interested. He knew that there was supposed to be "modern humans" in this world. But that could cover a lot of ground. Hell, by the sense of geological time, anything from 5000 B.C. - 5000 A.D. could easily be considered "modern".

So seeing this group of humans coming in on helicopters, sporting guns and having computer tech, made Carl aware of the approximate timeline of just when he was, based on their equipment.

And he was quite interested in getting a satellite phone that would link him back to the human's home so he could peruse the internet for more information.

After a few hours of listening in on their conversation, Carl knew for sure that the group of humans were setting up camp here to gather some samples to take back to someone named Whippleton.

With his initial curiosity sated, he didn't hang about anymore and departed as silently and invisibly as he had arrived. He still had to get some dinner…

* * *

Barnes had just exited his tent where he had his computer set up, having just sent a situation report back to Whippleton, when he saw Sheffield standing nearby, staring out at the perimeter.

"See anything?" Barnes nervously asked as he walked up next to Sheffield. He knew how to handle all kinds of situations among human civilization. He could talk his way out of anything; from a woman being offended by his checking her out, to talking rings around the local authorities and getting released from smuggling charges.

But out here in the wild Barnes knew his skills were redundant and useless. He didn't really know what to expect and felt like danger was all around him, which made him especially jumpy.

Hell, his fears weren't even unjustified! He had seen plenty of satellite footage over the past month that showed there were plenty of predators here that would love to kill and eat him.

There was even that short video of what looked like a mini T-Rex efficiently taking down a dinosaur that was four times bigger than him. That had been especially spine tingling. That dinosaur that was so much bigger than the mini T-Rex had gone down in a matter of seconds. He wouldn't last any longer, considering he was much smaller.

So even though he didn't see any dinosaurs right now, that didn't give him any assurances. That mini T-Rex had come out of nowhere. Even with careful analysis of the footage going frame by frame they didn't see any sign of the T-Rex before he made his lunge at his prey.

"No." Sheffield stated curtly, startling Barnes who had almost forgotten he was waiting for an answer. "And that's what bothers me." His eyes continued to scan the grasslands outside the perimeter they had made. "Something was watching us until just a moment ago, and I never caught sight of it. I could feel its eyes on us, though."

Barnes shivered at the idea that they were being eyed by some predators, but reassured himself that they were fine behind their perimeter.

"And don't think that the puny perimeter will mean all that much to some of these dinos. It's really only a slight deterrent. Even a bunch of enraged elephants could knock it down, let alone these behemoths." Sheffield casually commented while eyeing Barnes, and was pleased to see the man shiver in fear once more. He never liked Barnes, so seeing the man so jumpy was a special treat.

"Well, it's a good thing that there is a huge incentive for you to get your job done quick and get out of here, then, yeah?" Barnes roughly commented, having seen the ridicule in the other mans eyes and trying to get some measure of his own back. "Be sure you don't fail, or your bonus will disappear like that." Barnes said with a snap of his fingers.

Sheffield took care to shrug nonchalantly, unwilling to let the man see his own unease. He had felt the gaze of a predator on him from the moment they landed and started setting up camp. The fact that he could feel that gaze and hadn't been able to spot anything, even when the creature had been leaving, really unnerved him.

If it came again at night, his infrared and night scopes should be able to spot what they were dealing with. At least it was gone for now…

"Yeah. Let's get this job done." Sheffield whispered as he took one last lingering gaze on his surroundings.

* * *

Later that night Carl made another trip to the human's camp. Looking over the state of the camp, he was satisfied that most of the humans were asleep. There were a few that were awake that were on night watch, but they shouldn't be able to catch sight of him.

Before making his move to infiltrate the camp, Carl cast the usual stealth spells on himself. Sight, scent, and sound were the basic three. But since Carl knew about human tech, he added another one to mask his heat signature and make it blend into his surroundings.

Even with his stealth spells in place, Carl still practiced his skills of stealth. He crept silently up to the wire perimeter fence, and easily leapt over it. Landing silently on the ground inside the camp, Carl was happy he didn't set off any motion detectors. He made his way further inside the camp, sniffing and looking curiously at what they had set up.

Carl looked over their light weight off road vehicles that they planned to use to get around and collect their samples the next day.

Inside one of the tents they had a multitude of different firearms and tranquilizer darts stacked up.

He was also amused by the placement of the infrared cameras that focused on the perimeter. Those cameras might see the presence of other predators, but not him.

Making his way around the sleeping areas, Carl did a little poking in the sleeping brains of the leaders of the expedition to see what their goals were. Since they were only planning on taking a few eggs, Carl wasn't particularly bothered at first. He was fine with them taking a small portion of the prey. He wasn't a selfish predator that didn't want anyone else to have anything. As long as they didn't go overboard.

He was actually more curious about just what they planned to do with the eggs that they did gather. But since they didn't know what their employer was planning, he couldn't find the answer himself.

His curiosity sated for the time being, Carl was about to leave the camp, when he realized something. His predator's instincts seemed to be affecting him greatly in this new body, since he was about to just let this group of humans do what they want with no care, as long as they didn't cross his bottom line.

Carl realizedhe had been thinking of them like they were scavengers that nibbled on the scraps left from his hunt, which were of no great importance to a predator. That it was too much of a hassle to chase them from the area of his kill since they only took a few scraps.

Now that Carl realized his thinking was being greatly affected by his instincts, he could take steps to overcome the hormone driven mood and mindset.

And he realized he was about to make a big mistake by leaving the humans alone.

While a single group of humans taking a few eggs wouldn't hurt the prey population, there were more far reaching consequences to letting them carry out their plans.

Sure, one single group of humans benefitting a bit from his lost land wouldn't damage the Lost Land too much. But when news about how they had brought something valuable back got around, and news like that always made the rounds, and other groups saw how profitable it was, they too would try to get in on the action.

It would trigger a sort of gold rush mentality/activity; where everyone and their mother would try to get in on the action before it was gone.

And having hordes of humans coming to strip the place clean would piss Carl off something fierce.

Carl shook his head at his animal instincts getting in the way. He already _knew_ this. But he still almost fell into a trap and didn't consider the consequences.

So it was better to not let this group of humans get away with anything so as to avoid drawing in more groups to his land.

With that idea settled, Carl made his way back into the camp. He had some equipment to sabotage. If the equipment the group needed for their hunt was damaged, then there would be no hunt. That was as much of a warning as he would give them.

If the group didn't understand the statement that Carl was making, or stubbornly ignored it, then he might have to get a little more forceful in teaching them the lesson.

After finishing his work with the human's equipment, he left the camp with a graceful leap over the fence. He settled down with a smirk nearby to relax the rest of the night away. His normal daily practice could be delayed until this issue was taken care of.

* * *

Sheffield's second in command woke him up early in the morning, babbling about sabotage. It was unusual to see Manny so freaked out, that it got Sheffield up in a hurry. Only taking enough time to make sure he was dressed and armed, Sheffield followed Manny to see what damage had been done.

"It's uncanny boss. All of our Rhinos had their tires slashed and the fuel tank pierced, draining the gas. There's no way to repair all four tires and repair the tanks on every Rhino. They're trashed." Manny babbled as Sheffield inspected the damage.

Sheffield was scowling at the ruin of his scheduled plans. Looking around at all his men, he couldn't see anything suspicious in their expressions or behavior to indicate any of them were responsible for the damage. He wouldn't put it past rival companies to pay off a traitor to do such delaying tactics.

While they foundered, the rival companies were no doubt throwing together their own expedition.

And while he didn't like the thought of any of his men turning traitor like this, there was still the small group of men under Barnes that he hadn't been allowed to veto coming. It was likely one of them who did it. Bastards!

Sheffield looked at the damage once more. Whoever sabotaged them did a good job of making it look like it was something one of the local dinos had done, instead of being the work of a human traitor in their midst.

He idly wondered what tools the saboteur had used to make it look like the tires and tanks had been gnawed at with teeth and slashed with claws, not punctured by tools.

The damage was just too great to use the equipment. Even the spare tires had all been trashed, and the welding equipment's hoses had all been cut. There was no fixing it.

"This makes our mission more difficult, but not impossible." Sheffield announced to his men. "We deliberately staged here because it was a distance from any of the nests, so we wouldn't be stirring up trouble for ourselves. But now, we'll have to adjust a bit. Now that we don't have to transport a bunch of heavy equipment, we have some spare fuel, so we'll use a couple helicopters to get close to the nests, and go the rest of the way on foot."

"Remember, if we go back empty handed, this whole expedition will be a loss. So keep an eye out for anybody that isn't acting in the best interest of everyone here."

He knew everyone was thinking that one of them was a traitor that just made their life more difficult, but he couldn't say it or he would have to take more extreme measures. And that would take time he didn't have to spare. They needed to get this done quick.

Sheffield finished giving Manny orders on what to prepare for their expedition and how to prevent any more sabotage. The men loyal to him would keep a better eye out and prevent the saboteur from striking again. But if they caught the man who did this, he would make him pay.

Oh yes, he would make the man pay who tried to keep him from this paycheck.


	73. Dinosaur Gauntlet 3

From his perch overlooking the camp the next morning, Carl shook his head while growling a bit. Stunned at how the growl actually came out of his mouth, he paused and shook his head. Looks like it was time to start Occlumency meditations to control his predator instincts. He had been acting a bit impulsively lately.

Carl returned his attention to the human camp where they were preparing for an outing to capture their samples. Apparently this Sheffield didn't take his warning to cease their activities to heart. Sheffield was obviously a stubborn man who was used to success and overcoming obstacles, so it made sense he wouldn't give up easily, especially with so much money on the line.

Listening in on their conversations, Carl found that they planned to spend today capturing eggs and small dinosaurs, and they would depart in the morning, since it was apparently too dangerous to fly out of there at night.

Carl was pleased with that information. If they planned to leave immediately after snatching some eggs, he would have to act precipitously when all the humans were awake to prevent them from taking anything out of his land. But since they gave him a full night to work, he had plenty of time to plan and act.

After leaving some monitoring charms behind, Carl departed the area to go grab a bite to eat. He would have a busy night, so he would have to ensure he was fully prepared and rested today.

His hunt didn't take too long before he had a small meal. He wasn't looking for anything too big, and he found a small Chilesaurus that was wandering in the wrong place that was just right for Carl to fill his belly. The two legged plant muncher was about 9 feet long from nose to tail tip, but only 3 feet tall at the hip. He never saw Carl coming; its nose was buried deep in the fresh green leafy buds of a shrubbery when he landed on its back.

By the time the human hunting crew was finished with their egg hunt in the afternoon, Carl was cleaned up and back at his post overlooking the group of humans. He was amused to see that they had set up a more active night watch. They were no longer depending solely on their technology to alert them to any night time activities.

Of course, it helped Carl that the human in charge, Sheffield, thought it was a human saboteur that ruined their equipment. All his preparations were meant to catch any humans that tried to move around and do anything to ruin their success. Which meant they were completely ignoring outside the fence, where he would come from.

Not like they would see him coming anyway, with his stealth spells.

As Carl waited for the afternoon to pass, he realized he really liked the perk that ensured he would never get bored. Spending hours watching the group of humans as they scurried around the camp was surprisingly entertaining. He felt fine just lazing about in the grass, hidden from view and watching them.

After dark fell over the camp, the human activity slowed down and came to almost a halt by nine at night. All the humans seemed to have sought their bunks for the evening.

It wasn't until shortly after midnight that Carl made his move. Employing his stealth spells, he easily breached the perimeter and slipped past the guards to do his work. It didn't take him long, not even an hour, to do what he came for and depart with a few extra items.

Carl didn't even bother to stick around to watch the commotion in the morning. He did leave some monitoring charms so he could enjoy their reaction, but he wanted to get his loot somewhere he could stash it safely.

* * *

Sheffield made sure to be up before the sun rose in the morning. He had made sure to triple their guard at night, to make sure that no one among his crew would have a chance to sabotage the operation.

But now he was positive that it wasn't any of his men or Barnes' men that sabotaged their efforts. No matter how much a traitor might have been paid to prevent them from gathering samples, they wouldn't have been foolish enough to do what was done last night.

Sheffield stood looking at the wrecked helicopters that were now useless. All of their rotors had been wrecked. They were trapped in this huge lost land of dinosaurs, with no means of escape.

He sighed in frustration. He knew he should have listened to his gut and escaped yesterday, but the sheer amount of money was too much for him, overcoming his common sense and gut feeling.

"That's it man. Game over, man. Game over!" One of Barnes' men started wailing in despair.

"Shut your mouth!" Sheffield barked angrily at the man, looming over him with the threat of physical violence, cowing him into clamping his mouth shut. Sheffield then strode forcefully in front of the men, making sure their attention was on him. In order to have a chance to survive, he needed to take iron control. Panicking meant death.

"Listen up if you don't want to die!" Sheffield's voice carried, automatically catching the men's attention. "We are now in a survival situation. Everyone will listen to my orders, and follow my commands if you don't want to die." Sheffield's words captured the men's attention. They were all focused on him and his words. Good.

"The first thing we'll do is assess the actual situation and what we have to work with."

Sheffield began barking out orders to the men, assigning some to make an actual inspection of all the equipment. Others to make lists and gather their supplies. And some to stay on guard and watch the perimeter.

That last one was very important, since it seems there was someone or something out here with them. And it was smart. Too smart.

Sheffield himself then made his way with Barnes to the tent with the communication equipment. They were shocked to find it all missing, with no sign of where it went. There was no way to send a message back to base and arrange a rescue.

They were cut off, with only what they had available to them. No way back to civilization. It was going to be difficult to survive.

"What do you think our chances are?" Barnes asked in a quivering voice.

"Not good. But not horrible either." Sheffield answered grimly, already gathering up the physical maps they had made, and thinking of the next step. "We'll survive. As to whether we can even make it back home anytime soon? Too many variables to say for sure."

The first of the men with reports on their situation arrived, cutting off whatever Barnes had been about to say. He subsided and paid attention to the plans and orders that Sheffield was giving. Whatever the situation had been previously, with Barnes having an important role in the expedition as the paymaster's representative, was no longer the case. Now he had to rely fully on getting along with the group to survive. He had to work closely with and under Sheffield if he too wanted a chance of survival.

* * *

Swiftly traveling through the forest, Carl soon arrived at his destination. There was a cave that he could make use of that he had found a bit ago. He hadn't moved in yet because he didn't have any things he needed to keep safe.

With his daily hunting and training days prior, it had been easier to just anchor a notice-me-not spell to any tree he was lazing under at the time when it was meditation time, rather than coming all the way back to a cave.

But now that he had a bundle of communication gear, he needed a place to put it. And so he was going to make use of the cave as a fixer up.

He arrived outside the cave and stretched out his senses. After some time, Carl came to the conclusion that there was nothing currently inhabiting the cave. Since he didn't need to evict anything, Carl entered right in.

Looking around the cave, he found that it was quite dirty and rough. It was totally unsuited for his current project of connecting to the human's communication network. So he gathered his magical energy, and started casting cleaning spells. With each casting, dirt and debris were wiped away, leaving bare stone behind.

Once the place was cleared of the loose dirt, Carl looked at it in satisfaction at its potential. The cave itself wasn't very large at the moment, which meant he needed to expand the cave for future growth. There was no way a full sized T-Rex would fit.

But the cave had the potential to be a decent home, and it had enough for him to work with for now.

The next step was to even out the floor. Making use of the stone cutting techniques he knew, Carl started leveling the floor and shaping the walls and ceiling. It wasn't long before the cave looked like a proper house. He also shaped some stone tables, perfect for the stolen equipment that Carl purloined from the humans.

He levitated the shrunk equipment to the table and returned it to its normal size. Carl then moved outside the cave, and cast some temporary wards and notice me not spells to keep anything away from his new home until he could fashion some more permanent wards.

Before the humans arrived, he was content to roam around without a nest, taking things a day at a time, living the predator lifestyle. But now that he had some of the human's equipment, he needed a good place to keep it safe.

Now that his cave was temporarily clean and safe, Carl once more entered his new home base. Looking at the purloined equipment for a moment, Carl then walked past it. He had several more things to do before he started playing with the communications gear and laptops.

Looking around the cave, and extending his weak magical senses, Carl started planning just how to expand the cave so he wouldn't outgrow it in the next few years. He also didn't want it to be inherently unstable.

Many of the wizarding homes in the HP universe had not exactly conformed to physics. The Weasley's home for example had been a ramshackle thing held together by magic. It really was the antithesis of the Dursley cookie cutter home.

Which is why the Burrow was a totally cool thing that he and many other kids absolutely loved when they first read the stories. But as fun as the Weasley's house was, it required quite a bit of magic to hold it together. If it was built solidly in the first place, the magic in the area could have gone to more productive uses. Like wards to keep the property safe.

So Carl was going to make sure his cave wasn't so destabilized by hollowing out the stone that he needed magic to hold it up.

There were some basic measuring and sounding spells that returned information on the density of stone and its composition. After using those spells, he had an idea of what he had to work with.

Once he had worked out a plan in his mind, Carl began cutting the stone, making sure that the ceiling was well supported and wouldn't collapse. He began at the back, cutting deeper into mountain to increase the size of the cavern.

Carl temporarily shrunk the stones he cut, and laid them outside the cavern to get them out of the way as he expanded the inside. He found that he had to rest occasionally. His dinosaur body wasn't completely used to channeling large amounts of magic, or doing it for so long.

And while he had to generally wait for his magic to mature on its own, the more he trained his body in the Ki techniques, the quicker his magic was maturing, having been dragged along in its development due to his rapidly growing body.

Once he finally had the cavern cut the size he wanted, Carl temporarily paused his work. Looking outside, he saw that night had fallen. Because of his incredible senses, he could see just fine at night. So he decided to go on a hunt before resuming work.

Within an hour travel of his cave, Carl caught the scent of some Bonitasaura. They were a four legged duck billed dinosaur that grew to 30 feet long as adults. Carl didn't try to take out an adult, since they weighed 10 tons. He would have a hard time dragging that much meat to his cave, even if he used his magic to lighten the load.

So, like the predator he was, he targeted a juvenile Bonitasaura. Due to his excellent stealth skills, he was able to sneak within 20 feet even without his magic. He felt that it was a good test of his skills and kept him from getting complacent.

He was on the 14 foot long Bonitasaura before the herd knew it. At first the adults tried to scare Carl off by mock charging him. But he had already ended his prey's life. Quick and merciful deaths was easy enough for Carl to manage, but the adults of the herd didn't realize Carl's prey was already dead.

So Carl let out a mighty "_WAAANG!_" They were suitably frightened by his perk assisted roar, even if it wouldn't have really been that scary normally. But it did the job and broke their nerve. The herd beat feet and relocated somewhere else for the night.

Casting a lightening charm, Carl dragged his food back to his cave. Normally it would have been quite a bit more difficult for such a small predator to take down something that was several times his size, let alone drag such a heavy load so far. But Carl didn't plan to play by normal rules when he had magic and Ki strength. He still had to conserve his Profound Energy, since he had no practical way to replenish it for now, but the other forms of energy were free game to cheat with.

Carl did have some questions about just why he wasn't able to gather Profound Energy in this world. But since there was no one to answer those questions for him, he was fresh out of luck.

On the way back to his new lair, Carl saw plenty of predators that showed up because of the bloody smell and commotion. They were all hoping to get a free meal out of the deal. The predators that showed up had some uncertainty about whether they should make a play for the meat. But Carl's accurate stinging hexes convinced them to be on their way. It would be more trouble than it was worth to mess with something so out of their experience range.

Carl then cast some smell concealing charms, and was no longer bothered by opportunists on his way back to his lair, due to the smell of blood being contained.

Sitting just outside his cave lair, with large blocks of stone stacked nearby, Carl ate his meal while enjoying the ambiance of the night. The moonlight filtered down through the trees, the insects were droning on in their night ramblings, the night was peaceful.

After finishing his meal, Carl cast a series of grooming spells on himself. While he usually kept up the habit of brushing his teeth developed from when he was a kid the first time, now that he had access to the mouth cleaning and freshening charm he sometimes just lazily used magic to take care of his personal hygiene. But now that he was a dino he could only resort to magic to keep himself properly cleaned and groomed.

Carl then put the remnants of his food off to the side on a stone block and cast a preservation charm on it. It would keep until later and wouldn't be spoiled. While his animal body wouldn't be bothered by a bit of spoilage or rot, Carl still felt fastidious from his long time as a human and wasn't willing to eat spoiled meat or roadkill that had been sitting around for a while.

With that taken care of, Carl then levitated one of the stones from excavating the cavern in front of him. He had the idea of what he was creating fixed in his mind, and began carving the stone block with ancient runes.

It didn't take him more than a couple hours to finish carefully carving out the ward scheme on the stone. He levitated the stone inside the cave and placed it in the location he had set aside for the ward room.

The next several hours Carl spent carving several more stones, before levitating them to the perimeter of where his wards would be, and burying them in the ground. The ward scheme would actually benefit quite a bit from having all the stones come from the same source. It created its own sympathetic resonance, which made the job easier.

Some of the perimeter was a bit more difficult to get to and place the stones properly because of rocky and mountainous terrain. But with levitation charms and effort, Carl eventually managed it.

Once the perimeters stones were set out, Carl returned to his cave and began pouring his magic into the main ward stone, charging up the initial startup. It was made from a normal stone, not magical in nature. So without being connected to a power source, like a ley line, it would need to be charged up daily to work properly.

It was a good thing then that Carl had chosen this particular location because a ley line passed almost under it. He reached out with his magic and guided the workings of the ward stone to reach out to the ley line. Once the ward stone connected with the ley line, Carl could immediately feel the power charging up the ward stone, activating the various defenses and functions.

The magic from the main ward stone reached out and connected with the perimeter stones that Carl had laid out, extending the ward stone's functions to the whole area that Carl had laid out.

Once the wards were stable, Carl used a simple spell to cause a drop of his blood to exit his body and floated it to the identifying location on the ward stone. This keyed Carl's blood and magic into the ward schema as the owner, giving him complete control. Without his permission, no one would be able to enter, or even really notice, his cave lair and the surrounding land for several acres.

Any that tried to enter his land would have their attention drawn away and wander off. It would work just as well for dinosaurs as it did for humans. So his new home was as secure as he could make it for now.

With that accomplished, Carl left the cave once more and made a tour of his new "estate". He was amused to see that there were some dog sized dinosaurs that had been pushed out of his new land by the wards. Birds and bird sized dinosaurs, small mammals, and insects could still travel around Carl's property, unless they were an animagus. Then they would get zapped. But anything larger would be diverted and kept away.

Once Carl was satisfied that his ward scheme was working properly and with no mistakes, he returned to his cave and began working on interior decorating. He carved a smaller ward scheme stone that would power a preservation/refrigeration room so Carl could store food there.

Once the refrigeration room was complete, and Carl's left overs was placed in his new fridge, he moved on to the next room. A bathroom.

While Carl was currently a dinosaur, he wasn't going to be uncivilized. Indoor plumbing was necessary, since he didn't plan on crapping all over his nice new lawn. Not to mention a shower was nice, even as a T-Rex.

Carl decided to make each fixture of his bathroom duplicated. One set of facilities he would keep human sized, which he could currently use with his small size. The second set would be adjusted as he grew larger, so that he would always have comfortable facilities.

A few rune schemes later, Carl had a shower, bath, and toilet. The water was easily produced, and the vanishing runes sent the waste away.

Next up, Carl made himself a large stone bed that was big enough for an adult T-Rex. He gathered plenty of grass from outside, and weaved it with his telekinesis into a nice nest. With cleaning, cushioning, and preservation charms, it would last him quite a while. And he could continually add to it to make sure he was comfortable as he grew.

Carl chuckled to himself as he realized that he had been doing all this in the dark. So he added magical lighting to his cave. He didn't especially need it, but it felt like the thing to do.

Looking around at his bare and stoney new house, Carl actually felt quite satisfied. It wasn't nearly as luxurious as some of the places he had lived in. But there was a certain amount of charm present in a bare stone dwelling's aesthetics for a dinosaur. There was also satisfaction in having built his new dwelling all by himself. Something to be proud of.

The next item on Carl's agenda was setting up his computer room. He built a stone table to place all the equipment he had stolen from the humans. Carl then spent a couple hours carving some special rune schemas into several stones.

One set was specially designed to siphon off the magic in the room so that the electronics wouldn't be destroyed by magic's normal effects of destroying electronics that weren't specifically protected.

Another set he carved to convert that magic that was siphoned off to electricity and store the electricity to power the electronics. Another schema was used to act as a communications relay. Since he was effectively under a mountain, if he didn't have some relay to the outside, the communications gear wouldn't be able to get a signal under all that stone.

So one half of the relay stones he placed inside his communications room and the other he placed up on top of the mountain hill his cave was located in. Having the link outside and a decent height allowed it to pass on a decent signal for the communication gear in his cave.

But before he activated the communication link, and while there was no signal, Carl powered up the laptops and communications equipment. Peering at the screens, Carl carefully reached out and started interacting with the machines.

While normally any magic that touched the laptops while they were running would have fried them. But Carl had an advantage with the perk he had gotten from the HP world. **Setup Wizard** gave him a knack of naturally melding of magic and technology.

So while the wards and other magic that flowed around such a wizarding home setup would fry electronics, Carl's direct magic was well suited to interacting with electronics, allowing him to play at being a technomancer hacker.

A short time later, Carl had hacked into the machines and started reprogramming the computers and communications gear. It wouldn't do if his link to the human's internet was compromised because he let the equipment automatically connect to their home base and send some reports back and ping his location for them.

Until Carl could access his pocket dimension and pull out his own tech and really go to town, this was the best equipment he had to work with. It was still pretty easy to sneakily connect to the internet through the satellites in place. It would just be incredibly slow, since he had to hide his activity and couldn't just demand a large data transmitting chunk be assigned to him.

Eventually, Carl finished writing the programs he would upload to the human's internet to keep track of certain matters for him. His programs would be sneakily inserted into many databases, and continue to grow and monitor the goings on of the humans. It would alert Carl if the humans were gearing up to make another expedition to his land to exploit his hunting ground.

That would give him enough warning so he could be prepared to act.

It would probably take several days to weeks to upload and propagate his program secretly, a bit at a time, to the internet. Then it would take several months to fully infiltrate everything in a slow and secretive manner.

But Carl was fine with that. The sheer isolation and difficulty in getting into his Lost Land surrounded by mountains ensured that the next attempt by the humans would take a while.

Once Carl was ready with his infiltration programs, he connected the communication relay. After seeing that everything was running properly, Carl left behind his communications room.

It had been a couple days since he had acted and spoiled the human's efforts to smuggle out dinosaurs. He was kind of wondering just what they were up to now.

* * *

Carl almost skipped through the forest as he made his way towards where he last saw the humans. He was feeling pretty good about having finished his new home the previous day. Once everything was finished, Carl had crashed and slept the night away instead of training. It felt good to relax every once in a while.

Waking up in the morning, he had gulped down a few pounds of meat before exiting his house and looking around. The morning light gave the forest a pleasant feel as the various small creatures were just waking up and going about their day.

It somewhat amused Carl to see regular modern day birds living amongst the dinosaurs. This land must have been a special place that preserved the dinosaurs while allowing new species to continue to wander in. There had to have been some kind of magic shenanigans to have that happen, but Carl wasn't going to worry about it too much.

The important thing was that it was here now. And he was going to enjoy his time here.

After some time, Carl silently exited the forest, and snuck his way to a nearby hill to observe the humans. Looking down at the camp, Carl could immediately see that the place had been abandoned.

The fence had been packed up and carted off. Several of the Rhino off road vehicles had been stripped of engines and anything unnecessary and used as carts to transport various items. The helicopters sat abandoned in the fields, along with anything that wasn't immediately needed.

Carl was intrigued that Sheffield had his group leave immediately. While their choice of camp had been fine for a short term in-and-out job, it was obviously not very good for long term survival. He was impressed that Sheffield recognized that fact and worked so quickly.

Since there was no one nearby, Carl circled the camp, looking for tracks to find out where they had gone. He was impressed to see that the group had cooked the eggs they had captured the previous day. Smart.

Sheffield already realized that they weren't going to be able to deliver the eggs, and decided to use them as food to stretch out their non-perishable food supplies.

As Carl followed the tracks of the humans, he saw more than one predator's tracks that told Carl they were intrigued and investigating the presence of the humans. After traveling for a couple kilometers, Carl saw the sight of one ambush.

If Carl was reading the signs correctly, one human died and another two were injured in the attack before they could rally and drive off their attackers.

Carl continued following the trail, and a few more kilometers later came to the new camp site of the humans. They had set up on the edge of the forest where they would have access to wood to build tools and a sturdier camp. There was also a stream nearby to provide a source of water.

When he arrived, Carl saw the humans were in the midst of building their camp. The current camp wasn't much to look at for the moment. They had the electric fence up, but it surely wouldn't be of much use for very much longer. They had a finite source of fuel for the generators.

Sheffield had them organized in two groups. One group was working at chopping trees down that they were going to build a wall out of. The second group was on guard, watching for any predators.

After some time, Carl saw the groups switch places. He noticed that even Sheffield was working hard to build the camp. That increased Carl's appreciation for the man as a leader even more. In a survival situation everyone needed to pull their weight or resentment set in.

Resentment caused the monumental problem of disunity.

"United we stand, divided we fall" may have become a cliché saying, but it had a very real kernel of truth.

Carl had seen in Sheffield's mind that he usually ran his unit with military style discipline. Generally speaking in a military type organization the officers and enlisted had different roles and responsibilities. It was rare to see an officer doing grunt work. But obviously Sheffield had realized that in the survival situation they were currently in, it was no time to be hung up on things like who was the boss. Work needed to get done fast, and all hands were needed.

Seeing that Sheffield was a stand up kind of guy that tried to do his best for his men, and was resourceful, Carl almost felt bad about stranding him in this dangerous land. Almost.

Sheffield was the exact kind of man that Carl would have recruited for his own forces in a different world and situation. So he decided that he would give some small amount of aid to the man in his efforts to keep his men alive.

Carl intercepted the group of four Utahraptors that was about to attack Sheffield's men. The four raptors were a quite a bit bigger than Carl at the moment, but like the honeybadger he didn't care. He was tougher and meaner than they were.

After a couple slashes on the flanks of two of the raptors with his hind legs, and latching onto the neck of a third, crushing its throat and killing it quickly, the rest of the group ran quickly. They really weren't ready for such a vicious attack coming from nowhere.

Seeing that the three surviving raptors fled, Carl dragged his kill closer to the humans, and left it for them to find. They could enjoy the taste of dinosaur for dinner.

With his good deed for the day done, Carl departed the area. He was willing to provide some help for the humans when he was around. Saving them from an ambush, leaving some meat. But Carl wasn't going to hang around and babysit them. He had other things to do, like stocking his larder.

With a last look at the spooked humans who had just found the raptor, Carl left the area for his own hunt.

* * *

Sheffield and three of his men were standing over the remains of a bloody big raptor. The thing must be 20 feet long and weigh nearly 2,000 pounds. Sheffield felt a sense of despair go through him for just a moment before pushing the feeling deep down inside.

Looking at the huge predator that had obviously been on the way to ambush his men, Sheffield wondered if he had any chance to keep the majority of his men safe in this dangerous hell hole.

Sheffield firmed up his will and cast away his doubts. Now wasn't the time for him to have a break down. If he faltered in the sight of his men, they would soon lose hope in him and the possibility of their survival. And if that happened, they were as good as dead.

At least it seemed that something was going right for them, since something had intercepted this beast and left it for them, apparently. He certainly wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Mario, Stu. You two get to work on this carcass. We've got meat for the next few days. Rob, you and I are on overwatch. Let's get this done quick and get back to camp with our food before anything else comes sniffing around." Sheffield ordered.

His men acknowledged the order, and jumped to work. Sheffield then began looking over the signs left behind by the scuffle. If he was reading it right, there had been four of these big raptors. He shivered inside at the thought of the four of them bursting in and attacking his men.

There would have been at least one death, probably more. He needed to take better precautions for security. It would take some work to do, but that was for the best. Work would keep his men's minds off their situation.

It would keep his mind busy too, which was for the best, Sheffield thought as he looked over his surroundings for any sign of ambush. He had a momentary thought, wondering if the same thing that stranded them here had just protected them. But he threw that thought away. It wasn't important in the grand scheme of things. Survival for him and his men was, and he needed to keep his mind on the ball.

* * *

After Carl left behind the humans, he wasted no effort in hunting down another meals on wheels, er…feet.

Predators in the wild usually had a pretty low success rate in their hunts. There were all kinds of reasons, but one of the main reasons in Carl's mind was that the prey was evolved to escape the predators that evolved alongside them. The prey was designed to be able to either get away quickly, making them difficult to catch, or they were defended well enough that catching them was as dangerous to the predator, if not more so, than to the prey.

The prey struggled just as hard to survive and escape as the predator struggled to catch them to eat and live.

Carl on the other hand had many advantages that made up for the usual difficulty predators had. His metamorphmagus abilities made him able to blend into the environment easily. It was difficult for Carl's prey to spot him coming.

And if Carl was having too difficult a time on the approach, he could "cheat" and use magic to mask his smell, sound, and visual presentation to make the approach to the prey even easier.

And lastly, Carl had an outlandishly strong body, which let him kill the prey very quickly. As a result, once Carl got a hold of them with his teeth, there was no hope of struggling free, or having the rest of the herd group together to attack him and free Carl's prey.

All this added on with his enhanced predatory abilities from perks, and enhanced senses from the body mod made it difficult for Carl not to catch a meal whenever he went out.

So while there was no real suspense or sport in catching his prey, Carl still felt satisfaction in his successes. Every time he caught a large enough prey, it meant that he could have another one or two training sessions without starving his body of the nutrients needed to continue growing.

After successfully catching some napping Hadrosaurus, he had enough meat for several meals. After dragging the carcass to his fridge, he decided to focus on training his Ki technique for the next couple of days.

Carl sank gratefully into a training fugue. He enjoyed the sensation of progress. His physique improving moment by moment, his magic strengthening alongside. His body growing larger due to the Ki energies washing through his body and fortifying it.

It was only a few days later, when Carl polished off the last bit of meat and bone marrow, that he realized he needed to go hunting again.

While Carl was wandering about, looking for sign of prey, he was pondering in his mind about martial arts and fighting skills.

His current body was vastly different from his human body, so he couldn't directly use the martial arts skills he had learned as a human.

But the interesting thing that stuck in Carl's mind was that at one point in the history of martial arts, many martial artists borrowed moves, ways of motion, and techniques from animals they watched in nature. They adapted them to the human body, and used them as techniques to overcome an enemy's defenses.

So while those techniques were used to distract, overcome, or overwhelm an enemy's defenses, they weren't the most efficient ways for a human to punch, kick, and strike. Later on the martial arts started including scientific study of the way a human's body, skeletal structure, joints, and muscles worked. They learned the way to transfer the most power. The ways to move most efficiently and maximize the speed of strikes. And more importantly, how to build up the power of the body.

That was especially the case of the Masters of Ryozanpaku. They weren't just martial arts nuts. They were brilliant and intelligent masters that continued their practices, their studies, and their learning.

And especially their use of Ki with their bodies was a field that they constantly learned and innovated in.

Carl had learned a lot from them in his time there. He had then continued learning and practicing on his own. He had then learned even more when he began to teach students of his own.

He thought he had mastered the field and principles of Ki and Martial arts, until he had to explain it to his students. That was when he felt like he was learning the principles all over again, when he had struggled so hard to find the words to describe it to his students.

So now, while Carl was out hunting and moving according to his body's instincts, Carl focused everything he had learned in the past on exploring his new dino body. He focused on how his muscles, joints, and skeletal structure moved all together. He paid attention to how his tail moved to counteract the weight of his head, and how small shifts in different muscle groups affected his movements.

He kind of regretted having such small arms that couldn't really be used for grappling. But they were strong enough to act as hooks or anchors at key times. So there was still plenty of things he could do with them.

After catching meal after meal for the next couple of days and bringing it back home via levitation, Carl began figuring out how to use his new body to maximum effect.

While doing so, Carl kept in mind that he would one day be a full grown T-Rex. There would be plenty of smaller dinosaurs, or humans with weapons, that could swarm him, trying to overwhelm him. So mobility and the ability to attack in 360 degrees at a moment's notice was important.

There would also be many larger dinosaurs that he either hunted with or tangled with as they tried to protect their herds. There were the Triceratops that had straight stabbing/piercing attacks while they charged, or sweeping slashes as they threw their heads around.

Ankylosaurus with their low clubbing attacks with the bony weight on the end of their tails, with their bony protected backs.

Then there were the large Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus with their long tails and necks with their sweeping attacks that carried weight great enough to break bones and smash heads.

There were the Stegosaurus with their low slashing/stabbing attacks from the spikes on their tails and their plate-like defenses on their backs.

And finally there were the other predators that he would have to deal with. Pterodactyl that would harass and swoop down from above.

Utahraptors that would surround and attempt to hamstring him.

Other T-Rex or other large bipedal predators that would use their large jaws to clamp down in an attempt to get a strangulation hold on him.

And always the threat of sweeping tail attacks to knock him off balance and gain an advantage.

Carl visualized and kept all these methods of attack and defense in mind as he trained his body in how to move, how to attack, and how to evade.

It was awkward at first. He had various different memories and instincts that wanted him to react in different ways at first. Even his T-Rex instincts didn't want to cooperate with how he tried to train. So sometimes he jumbled up what he planned to do, and ended up face planting. Over and over again.

But eventually, he began to have success in programming his new body in the new movement patterns. While training, he used the mental discipline of Occlumency to separate out the various instincts and programming in his mind for his different bodies. It wouldn't do for him to mess up all the training and instincts he had for his human body when he returned to it, so he started keeping different sets of instincts and reflexes in his mind.

But this practice also made him aware that he really hadn't gone through this type of training for his Shadow Panther animagus form. He had taken his Shadow Panther form as just a lark, a fun thing to do for an hour or two. But now, Carl was thinking he had neglected a serious part of his training, and left a huge weak spot in himself.

Now that he was thinking of his Shadow Panther form, Carl attempted to employ his magic to shift forms. The magic was easy to channel in the memorized pattern, but when he tried the last step, Carl was still stuck in his dinosaur body.

Carl sighed in regret. It looked like the jump chain fiat ensured that he would be in his dinosaur body for the entire time he was in this world and wouldn't let him shift forms. A bit of metamorphmagus color or size alteration was fine. Full body animagus shifting wasn't.

Since he couldn't shift to his panther form and practice in that body, Carl made a mental note that in the future he would put in the time to develop a set of moves and martial techniques for his panther body.

With that resolved, Carl got back to work in developing his abilities in his T-Rex body. It was exhausting, but rewarding at the same time. He couldn't wait to go out and put his new skills to the test, to see where he needed to brush up on them.


	74. Dinosaur Gauntlet 4

Carl didn't have any set schedule that he followed, but he spent a large majority of his time training. He would go out on a hunt every couple of days to keep his larder of meat stocked. Occasionally he would go watch how well the humans were doing, and occasionally drop some meat off for them if it looked like they were doing too poorly.

While Carl didn't get bored anymore, spending some time watching the humans was an interesting diversion. He was there to see their first attempt at fishing from the lake.

Carl could only shake his head at the human's decision to try to fish from the lake. Yes, there was plenty of fish there. But there were also plenty of predators who would see the slow moving humans on the shore as a good snack.

And sure enough, not more than a half hour of sitting by the lake, and the humans were attacked. They were lucky enough to have seen the shadows of the crocodile type dinosaurs approaching, and fled before they were ambushed.

After seeing the size of the dinosaurs in the lake, the humans made the smart decision to avoid the lake from then on. Carl couldn't blame them, even though he was looking at the crocodino with a bit of drool dripping from his mouth. When he got a bit bigger, he would feast on seafood…

The speed at which the humans built their shelter and a wall surrounding it impressed Carl. Especially because this was the modern age, where such construction skills were usually not practiced.

In addition to the three meter tall fence, they added plenty of sharpened stakes to the top of the wall to make sure the dinosaurs couldn't climb. There were plenty of sharp bramble brushes with sharp thorns that they used as another deterrent. It worked pretty well. Carl saw on more than one occasion when some scavengers tried to climb the walls to get to the free food inside and couldn't get past the bramble thorns.

Occasionally Carl would follow the humans' hunting teams, watching them as they tried to catch enough food for the entire group. He was impressed at their survival savvy as they also found plenty of tubers and nuts in the forest to supplement their diet, in addition to the plentiful fruit.

After several weeks, Carl started letting one of the humans get short glimpses of him. He found great entertainment in the practice, feeling like he was playing a game of bigfoot.

Carl only allowed one man to get a glimpse of him before he faded back into the shadows. It was a great set up.

When he started babbling about the six foot tall dinosaur that he saw, everyone in the group got a bit excitable. Maybe they were a little bit on edge at the idea of a dinosaur that could become invisible at will.

But when they found absolutely no evidence of a dinosaur present, no tracks, no spoor, no nothing. Well, they started thinking the man had gone a little crazy from the stress and fear.

After a couple weeks, Carl started feeling a bit bad about the joke he was playing on the dude, since he seemed to be cracking under the pressure. He was actually starting to think he had gone mad.

So Carl generously let himself be seen by more members of the group. He even went so far as to present some newly hunted meat as a gift to the guy he had been playing a joke on. Carl guessed the guy had been so overwhelmed by gratitude at his favor, he had passed out.

'Eh, maybe I went a bit too far to pass his present to him in his own tent?' Carl thought as he idly scratched his jaw as he ran and jumped over the wall, ignoring the racket and panic of the humans he left behind. 'Nah, I'm sure they'll understand that I was apologizing for the joke.'

Carl chuckled a bit as he paused just before entering the tree line, letting the humans get a good look at him, but no pictures, before he disappeared amongst the trees.

The monitoring charms he left behind in the humans' compound gave him hours of entertainment as he listened to the panicked babbling and freaking out of the men. He could re-watch it several times and he still didn't get bored of it!

Carl looked up at the sky and asked himself a question that all pranksters were forced to ask themselves. 'Did I go a bit too far on that last prank?'

* * *

It had been a couple weeks since that terrifying morning where a freaking juvenile T-Rex had dropped the carcass of a Stegoceras outside Tom's tent. Sheffield exited his own tent to check on how the night had gone, and if there was anything to report.

As he walked the perimeter, he thought about the strange incident.

Tom had been making everyone nervous for a couple weeks with his talk about a large dinosaur that only he ever saw. But sure as hell they all saw it that morning. Tom's scream had them all running to find out what was wrong, and they saw it there clear as day with his head inside Tom's tent.

Tom's cry had cut off abruptly, and Sheffield had thought that was it for Tom, right there. The juvenile T-Rex had pulled his head out, looked around casually at everyone gathered there with no fear. The T-Rex had then casually kicked the Stegoceras carcass lying there that everyone had ignored until then, and suddenly broke into a run for the wall.

Before anyone could do anything or bring their weapons to bear, that T-Rex had cleared the wall in a single leap. Not even touching the top of the wall on the way over.

Everyone was flabbergasted. That was about the right word for it. No one knew exactly what to think, especially when they found out that Tom was just fine, even if he was embarrassed to have pissed himself and passed out.

None of the guys gave him grief about it, though. "Try to wake up with a T-Rex head in your lap and see how you do." Tom had almost cried that out in relief when he said that. He was just relieved to be alive and no longer considered crazy, considering everyone else had finally seen the ghost dinosaur he had been babbling about.

The strangest thing about the whole encounter? Everyone had claimed they heard the Jurassic Park theme song playing in their ears.

Da Dum Daa Dum Dum. Da Dum Daa Dum Dum.

That more than anything had made the scene so surreal no one could react in time to having a _freaking T-Rex_ right in their midst. Even he had paused as his mind was trying to reboot.

Sheffield shook his head in disbelief once more. He could understand the cutthroat nature of survival here among the dinosaurs. It was normal, natural. Nature red in tooth and claw, and all that.

But having a weird dinosaur that drops off presents to them so they have meat to eat, only let's himself be seen by one man until he wakes him up with a scream, and has a theme song?

It was just…unnatural.

Sheffield had just finished his tour around the perimeter and was pleased that everything was secure. He was on his way back to his tent when he saw something that was unusual. It was a bright blue egg sitting half hidden by a tent flap.

"What the hell? Where did this come from?" Sheffield said out loud as he picked up the foot tall egg to inspect it.

Barnes, who was just walking back from the latrine when he heard Sheffield's words, also noticed something out of the corner of his eyes. He picked up a bright red foot tall egg from nearby.

"Sheffield, do you know what this the hell this is?" Barnes asked as he moved over to Sheffield so they could look at the eggs in each other's hands.

"Boss, where'd you get the egg from?" Manny said as he walked up holding a green egg. "I found this one outside my tent. Strangest thing though, is that today is Easter."

The three men looked at each other, then looked down at their brightly colored eggs.

"No way. No way is someone leaving us Easter Eggs. We would have spotted them, right?"

At just that moment, the three eggs blew up into different colored whipped cream that splattered all three men completely.

They reached up and wiped the whipped cream out of their eyes. Absolute disbelief would be evident in their faces if they weren't completely covered in multi colored cream.

"Are…are we being pranked, boss?" Manny asked.

Barnes' mouth was just gaping, opening and closing like a gold fish.

"I do believe you're right, Manny." Sheffield finally gritted out from between his teeth. "And they have a horrible sense of humor."

* * *

Several months had passed, and Carl continued to grow larger at an accelerated rate while training. It was now nearly impossible to sneak up on the humans without magic, because of his size. He was now about seven feet tall at the hip, nine feet tall at his head when standing normally, and 22 feet long.

He was also moving on to larger and larger prey with his increased size. He hadn't moved onto hunting full grown adult Apatosaurus, let alone Brachiosaurus, because of their sheer size. But by the time he was fully grown, Carl figured he would have practiced his control over magic enough to be capable of transporting that much meat. He would have to expand his larder's size a bit before he got to that point, though.

Carl was quite pleased with the program he had released into the internet. He was getting all kinds of important and interesting information back from it. And more importantly, he had been able to track down his Monopoly properties and contacted the managing VIs.

He was relieved to find out that when they arrived on the planet and realized they didn't have access to the Farms output, they had immediately sought to replace their supply chain. They still had access to his Monopoly bank account, so funding hadn't been a problem to get things back up to speed.

Carl had then sent out orders to the VIs to contact a lawyer that would remotely handle his affairs for him so that he never had to show up in person. That would be awkward. Once his lawyer, one Hiram Fetterman, was hired, Carl tasked him with setting up a company that would do business for him in the human world.

He had a lot of money that followed him through the jumps, so if he applied that money to the businesses of the human world, he could have quite a bit of influence in what happened there.

Once his influence was firmly established in the human world, he planned to start establishing his claim on the Lost Land that was his. Carl knew that with the nature of the spying in governments and the business world, it was only a matter of time before the information about his land was spread. So it was better to get ahead of the matter and work multiple angles to keep control over who he allowed in.

And using the legal system he could keep the corporations that wanted to plunder his land gridlocked for _years_ in red tape.

Over the past few months while he sent orders to his lawyer and managing VIs and trained, he hadn't had to do as much to help the humans to survive anymore. They had finally learned enough of the rules and territories around them, and how to hunt, to survive on their own.

He had still occasionally played some light hearted pranks on them. Like permanently transfiguring some wood into toilet paper and tp-ing their base. It amused him greatly, and the people involved were actually happy to have some toilet paper to replace the leaves they had been using for some time.

Crouching down, Carl eyed the small screen, reading the reports from the monitoring AI. It was a good thing his sight was so good, or he would have a hard time reading such a small screen. He really needed to figure something out to make the web surfing a bit more comfortable.

Skimming the report, Carl saw that the big boss of the humans, Whippleton, had sent another expedition. It had taken him several months to organize another expedition because of several considerations.

When the first expedition lost communications, he had to wait to see if they ever returned. When they didn't he had to settle with the company, insurance, and their families, all while trying to keep things under wraps. He didn't want word of what they were doing to get to competitors.

And finally, he had to move slowly to gather, train, and equip another group so word wouldn't get around. From the reports of his AI, Carl saw that Whippleton had failed to keep everything completely quiet. His competitors knew he was up to something, even if they didn't know what it was.

Scrolling through the report, Carl saw that the group that Whippleton sent was stationed just on the other side of the mountain range that kept the lost land isolated. They planned to make their entry in another two days.

Cocking his head in thought, Carl thought about what he was going to do. He was going to stick to his idea to keep the humans from bringing anything dinosaur related out of the land and kicking off a gold rush that would see his land exploited and destroyed in their greedy rush to profit.

Over the past few months, aside from Ki practice, Carl had been using his stored profound energy to advance his cultivation.

He estimated it would be another year and a half before he once more attained the Sovereign Profound realm and regained access to his pocket dimension. The second time around cultivating from scratch was much easier to do, and he had all the energy needed in his inner world, so it was much easier than pulling it in from his surroundings.

Once he had access to his pocket dimension, he would bring out the Yamato and a bunch of the spider-like Pete builder bots so he could start building some large scale tech and magic protections around his land.

And once he had complete control over his land, and could ensure that no one would destroy his land in their greedy rush to profit, he would consider partnering with someone like Whippleton. They could then slowly introduce dinosaurs, "extinct" plants and medicines, and other such marvels to the world in general.

By then Carl would allow his captive playmates to return home. But until then, Carl would have to make sure that this second group disappeared just like the first.

With his decision made, Carl departed his communications room and continued fiddling with a project he had been playing with for the last few days. He didn't have access to all the fabric materials that flying carpets were made from, so he was improvising. He had been modifying the runes that allowed a broom to fly, and trying to create a dinosaur sized flying raft.

The idea of a T-Rex standing on a raft, flying around and harassing the human's helicopters was a visual picture that just amused the hell out of him. So he had been trying to get it working properly. Just a few more adjustments should see the project complete…

* * *

Over a dozen helicopters came flying over the mountains, making a circuit around the old campsite of the humans where the sabotaged helicopters were, and landed nearby.

Carl was invisibly hovering a short distance away on his raft, waiting for the group to land. He had eventually given up on the idea of shocking the humans by harassing them with his flying raft because they still had their satellite phones and radios available. The only current method Carl had to make sure they couldn't report back the presence of a flying T-Rex would have destroyed their electronics, causing them to crash.

And since Carl didn't want to cause their deaths, he decided to simply monitor them invisibly. It didn't mean that he wouldn't be buzzing the human's settlement sometime later when they had no communications.

Who would believe them about a T-Rex flying on a raft when they finally got back to civilization if they had no proof?

Once the group of humans exited the helicopters and began investigating the old camp, Carl flew down and began stunning them. He had decided not to pussyfoot around and just get the job done.

Carl started with the group of men that were immediately around the helicopters. The moment that his first stunner landed, the group of humans were freaking out. Yelling and running, diving for cover. Trying to find who was attacking them.

It was amusing, really.

Carl ignored their antics and kept shooting the fish in the barrel. Anytime one of the men tried to get to a radio or sat phone he prioritized stunning them.

A few minutes later Carl had the entire group subdued. He finally landed his raft, satisfied with his work. He first gathered all the humans together so he could make sure they wouldn't become a snack of any dinos while they were out of it while he ransacked their equipment.

Carl then began sorting through the gear they had brought with them. He saw they had brought a bigger supply of weapons and ammo. It seemed that they were nervous about how the previous group disappeared without any word.

He didn't mind if they had ammo and weapons, so Carl put it off to the side for them to gather later. Carl took any communications, photo, or recording equipment and set it aside to bring to his lair later.

He made sure none of the helicopters could fly again, so they couldn't just fly away.

Carl thought about it carefully, but eventually decided to sabotage the off road transportation Rhinos. If the humans weren't able to get around easily, there would be less of a chance of them getting into mischief. They would have to focus on surviving.

Once Carl had finished disabling all their equipment, he gathered up the group of humans and was about to bring them to the settlement that Sheffield had built. He stopped though, because he saw that Sheffield and his men were making their way over.

'Well, that's convenient. They must have spotted the helicopters and were making their way over, hoping for a ride home.' One side of Carl's muzzle lifted in a gruesome looking grin. 'Guess I'm going to have to disappoint them.'

He gathered all the equipment that he didn't want the humans to have and departed on his flying raft. The humans he stunned would wake up in less than an hour, and Sheffield and his men would arrive in five minutes. So he felt everything would work itself out just fine.

After arriving back at his lair, Carl stashed his newly liberated equipment away. He thenlooked over the reports from his AI about what Whippleton had learned from the transmissions from his most recently sent team.

Carl was amusing himself by watching the freak out of Whippleton over another group losing communications, when he was startled to hear an argument escalating over at the human's camp over his eavesdropping charms.

Apparently the leader of the new group of humans, Dwayne, didn't want to cede authority to Sheffield and the conflict was getting more and more tense. Carl was kind of wishing he had some popcorn right about now as he watched the drama.

Tempers were running high among the new group, as they hadn't had much time to adjust to being stranded. It was probably a good thing Carl had stunned Dwayne and his men so that Sheffield and his men could gain control over the armaments the new group had brought.

Otherwise Dwayne and his men might have stubbornly and pridefully taken control of the group with their firearms and gotten a bunch of them killed while he learned the ropes and rules of living in dino country.

Eventually the arguments got settled and the people were settling down. Sheffield would be in charge, with Dwayne and Barnes the number 2 and number 3 men.

It was an amusing thing to see that Barnes resented being relegated to number 3, even though the decision to assign Dwayne as the number 2 was a matter of politics that allowed him and his men to settle down and stop kicking up such a fuss.

It was really strange what the human ego and pride would cause people to do, even in a life and death survival situation.

There's Dwayne and his men who felt the need to jockey for position and power, even though they had no real idea how to survive without the help of Sheffield's men.

Then there was Barnes who felt resentment for losing some undefined and ephemeral amount of power. It wasn't like the men who had been with them for the past several months would suddenly trust Dwayne over Barnes just because Dwayne had the title of "Second in Command". So it was really illogical for Barnes to be butthurt about the decision.

'But, hey. That's humans for you.' Carl thought sarcastically, conveniently ignoring the fact that he, too, was human. Most of the time.

With the addition of more humans, they would need more food. And Carl wasn't sure if they would be able to hunt enough food for the whole group. Since he didn't want the group to starve to death, or kill each other over resources, he generously donated a Parasaurolophus he hunted to the relief funds of the humans. Several thousands of pounds of meat should last them for a decent amount of time.

Who said Carl wasn't a philanthropist? He was obviously doing charity work, here.

With the arrival of the second group of humans, Carl decided he would focus more on his profound cultivation rather than his Ki and magic training. The sooner he could arrive at the Sovereign Profound Realm, the sooner he could access his pocket dimension and retrieve some advanced tech to protect and ward the lost land of dinosaurs so humans couldn't randomly enter whenever they wanted.

And the sooner he could get rid of his house guests.

* * *

From then on, Carl paid less attention to the humans and focused solely on his profound cultivation. Since he was using the energy from his inner world, it took practically no effort to gather and absorb the profound energy. So his cultivation level started shooting up quickly.

Additionally, since Carl wasn't practicing his body cultivation with the ki techniques as much, he didn't need to eat quite so much and so he spent less time hunting. His body growth slowed down to a normal rate for a T-Rex.

By the time a year had passed, Carl was once more able to access his pocket dimension. He had arrived at the Sovereign Profound Realm quite quickly. But it seemed that the jump chain was determined to force him to experience life as a dinosaur. Unlike when Rover attained the same level and gained his human form, turning into Feng Ra, Carl was still stuck in his T-Rex form. He pretty much expected that to happen by now, so he wasn't too bothered by it.

The first thing Carl did after gaining his new rank was to immediately pull out the Yamato and had it hover over his land in stealth mode. The stealth satellites he had in stock on board were launched to monitor every inch of the planet.

With the placement of the satellites he finally had a decent connection to the internet with plenty of bandwidth.

With some Petes and a stockpile of basic supplies that were in his pocket dimension, Carl soon had his lair upgraded. He had a large computer installed that became the home of the VI that he had uploaded to the internet to help him monitor the humans.

He sent probes to inspect his new dinosaur land to get the exact specs. With the exact measurements of the land, Carl was able to design a defense and warding schema. With the Petes help, he had the whole system built, installed, and running within a couple weeks.

It really was amazing what advanced technology could do. And how fast it could do it.

Once he had the defenses for his lost land up, Carl had the Yamato teleport the humans from their camp in his lands and transfer them back to their home country. With a little bit of hacking they were undeclared dead. As compensation for what Carl put them through, he had some funds transferred to them or their surviving families. Carl made sure that the humans who survived could enjoy the rest of their lives in civilization.

And if he found out they were looking for work, he had Hiram send them invitations to join his company. His company was just starting but already making waves in the technology industries. Especially because they had working, 100% sensation, full dive virtual reality technology. It made the video games quite immersive.

With everything taken care of so that he would have complete control of his dinosaur lands, Carl then put the Yamato back in his pocket dimension. It would remain in there until he left this world. He wasn't going to use any more profound energy during his time here if he could help it. With his magic, ki, and technology available to problem solve, he was sure he didn't really need his profound energy or pocket dimension for anything.

He still wasn't sure why he wasn't able to access profound energy in this world. He thought that since he got cultivation as a perk, then he would always have access to profound energy. The only thing Carl could figure was that because it was a challenge gauntlet world, some things were made more difficult than usual.

Maybe there was a Jump-chan up there somewhere messing with him? Maybe Spere 037 was playing a prank on him? Who knows.

He was just glad that he had his inner world full of profound energy so he could upgrade his cultivation level and pull out his technology, or he might not have been able to so easily solve the issue of humans encroaching on his land.

Now that Carl didn't have to worry about the humans, he settled into a routine of training his body, ki, and practicing his magic. He continued to hunt since he enjoyed eating meat, not to mention that any animal he ate would end up populating his Hunting / Grazing Grounds. So the more he ate, the bigger his reward would be.

Eventually Carl had finished exploring all he could on land so he turned his attention to the salty ocean lake. He was more than large enough by that time to not be casually targeted, and he was more than strong enough to end any of the threats big enough to come after him.

When he finally slipped into the water, it was an interesting experience. His body shape and structure lent itself quite well to the back and forth motion needed to swim through the water, like a crocodile. But his legs were just too big and in the way.

So he used his Metamorphmagus powers to temporarily shrink them so they were out of the way. He then flattened his tail a bit vertically to make it a better fin for propulsion. A little bit more changes here and there, and he was a streamlined underwater hunting nightmare.

Carl had a grand time for the next couple years lurking in the depths and catching all the fish and dinosaurs he could find.

He found that the deep ocean lake did have a large passage through the land and into the deep ocean. While swimming in the depths, Carl found many of the deep monsters. He had no idea why they didn't come up to the surface more often. Even that enormous Megalodon was just chilling in the depths, hunting smaller fish and being really lazy.

Turns out its metabolism was slowed way down so it didn't burn much energy or need to eat that much while it was in the deep water. Bullshit answers like that work in alternate universes. Carl just shrugged and accepted it.

At any rate, it had provided a lot of sushi for Carl to devour.

Because he never felt a sense of boredom, his sense of time seemed to come unhinged. The years seemed to slip by with hardly any notice on Carl's part.

He never did reach out to Whippleton or any humans to sell or trade any dinosaur products to the humans. He just didn't feel the need to after he set up his company and protections on his land.

Occasionally he would look over the reports about the men who spent two years stranded in dinosaur country. He was amused to see them tell their grandchildren stories about their time among the dinosaurs.

When the first snot nosed brat called his grandfather a liar to his face about his stories of the pranking T-Rex that would sometimes provide them food, Carl frowned. Something about that just didn't sit right with him. So he did something about it.

The next time that snot nosed brat visited his granpa, he happened to get a face full of whipped cream to the face. When he wiped clear his eyes, the thing he saw hovering over his grandfather's head was a giant T-Rex head smirking at him.

When Sheffield saw his grandson scream, piss himself, and pass out, he sighed.

"Is that you Prankster-Rex? Did you have to do that to my grandson just because he didn't believe my stories about you?"

The only answer Sheffield got was a deep chuffing laugh and hearing the sound track to Jurassic Park once more.

Da Dum Daa Dum Dum. Da Dum Daa Dum Dum.

"Dammit, how am I going to explain this to my daughter?" Sheffield sighed at seeing his grandson lying in his own piss, unconscious.

Using a pensieve, Carl made a home video of his memories of watching the human's time in his land. How they survived, how they built their base, and their hunts. And he especially included his pranks on the humans.

With enough copies for each survivor, Carl made the deliveries in person. He didn't want to cause the old men survivors to have heart attacks, so he invisibly delivered the packages. At least this way their families knew what good and hardy men they had been. That they were someone to be admired.

Standing at the front door of Sheffield's house when his family was visiting, Carl knocked quite loudly on the door, leaving the package on the steps.

The knock was loud enough to shake the house.

The entire group of relatives inside got up to go to the door to see what was happening. Carl was laughing inside when he saw Sheffield rubbing the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache coming on.

After all, he had just started hearing the Jurassic Park theme song, so he knew who was at the door.

Carl chuckled his T-Rex laugh at the people who were looking out in vain for who was there. He kicked the package forward, causing their jaws to drop open at the large box that seemed to appear and move on its own.

Then he stepped over to where the bicycle of the rotten kid who had called his grandfather a liar lay on the lawn and took a big stinking dump on it. It was a little crude, but if that didn't get the message across to the kid that Carl didn't approve of his hurtful words to his grandpa, then nothing would

With a last laugh, Carl invisibly flew away from the home and vanished from the family's life.

Later on Carl enjoyed watching through his spy bots the family's discovery of the tapes and watching what their parent/grandparent had gone through. He was pleased to see that the bratty kid now looked up to his grandfather as a hero.

By the time Carl had gotten to the 10th man on his list, the word had gotten around to the group of survivors what Carl was doing. It made it a fun diversion for Carl to see the preparations the group of men made. Most of them simply invited their family over to be witnesses. Some of them set up cameras.

Only a couple of groups of men tried to set up ambushes to try to capture Carl for profit. Carl disapproved of those yahoos trying to ambush him, so he stunned the group of yahoos and put them in embarrassing positions in public. They would be quite shamed when they woke up naked and all tangled up with each other.

They also didn't get their copy of their adventures as a punishment.

With that diversion finished, Carl returned to his dino lands and continued his life there while his company expanded into all kinds of businesses.

* * *

Carl found that one of the best perks he had purchased was the anti-boredom one. Even if he sat still for an entire day just looking at a tree, he felt perfectly fine. But since he didn't want to become lazy, he took up a few hobbies that he indulged over the years.

One of the hobbies was people watching. Or, more accurately speaking, watching over their technology development. He would occasionally introduce new breakthroughs through his company when it looked like they were getting stagnant and not advancing any.

By the time he left the Dinosaur Gauntlet world behind, he had left behind quite a legacy. A large portion of the solar system had been visited by the humans. They had a colony on a couple of moons and Mars, and they were pushing to expand even further.

He never allowed another human to visit his lost land of dinosaurs. It was his, afterall.

But those who played in the virtual reality world could visit a copy of the lost land and experience what the land of dinosaurs had to offer.

And he continued pulling his pranks on people he felt deserved it. Just because he didn't get bored didn't mean he didn't appreciate a change of pace every now and then.

* * *

_While the presence of the Lost Land of the Dinosaurs never made it into official records, certain families had plenty of proof of their relative's time stranded there. Many among society questioned how it was possible that with our advanced technology we were never able to find any evidence of the existence of such a 'Lost Land' filled with dinosaurs. At least no evidence beyond a few dozen videos and preserved samples of Tyrannosaurus Rex excrement._

_But more lasting than any rumors concerning the Lost Land of the Dinosaurs was the cultural phenomenon of the strange dinosaur alternately fondly remembered, or vehemently cursed, as Prankasaurus-Rex._

_It has been sufficiently documented as an actual phenomenon that many a school bully has found themselves with a cream pie in the face, or other such pranks played on them, when they took their bullying too far._

_If they didn't soon amend their ways then some beloved item of the bully's would find itself buried under a ton of dinosaur excrement in their yard. If they changed their bullying ways, the pranks on them immediately stopped, and they would receive a gift certificate for a gallon of Firebird brand ice cream, in a flavor of their choice, on the anniversary of the end of their anti-social ways._

_This pranking behavior was certainly not limited to schoolyard bullies. Several notable government officials found themselves at the butt end of the ghostly dinosaur's pranks. At least until they amended their corrupt ways and endeavored to publically make amends for their corrupt malfeasance. Those who didn't amend their ways found that their dirty laundry was aired to the public, thus ending their career as a public servant._

_Because of Prankasaurus-Rex's habits of light heartedly correcting people's behavior, he has become something of a folk hero to many. And many sought to emulate him, to very mixed results._

-Excerpt from History of Folk Tales and Heroes: The Truth Uncovered.


	75. The Warehouse 8

Carl opened his eyes suddenly.

He sat up and looked down at his body.

"Well, damn. I finally get my human body back." Carl said out loud. It was the first words he had spoken in 210 years. "That was a long ass time stuck as a dinosaur."

Carl sprang up from his bed in the Warehouse and moved around, testing the feeling of his body he squatted down and touching the ground, standing up again and twisting left and right while wind milling his arms.

"And boy does it feel good to be in my human body again. Not that it wasn't fun being a dinosaur, but day-um. Being forced to stay a dinosaur for so long just because I wanted to bank some CP. At least I didn't stay longer. I would have almost forgotten how to be human." Carl chuckled as he made his way to the shower.

Fat chance of actually forgetting anything, thanks to perks. But it was the principle of the thing. Never ruin a good joke with reality or accuracy.

And he took a long time in the hot shower. It was one of the things he really liked about being human, taking a hot shower that relaxed the muscles.

While he was in the shower, he reached out and felt the presence of abundant Profound Energy once more. Sighing in relief while he was enjoying the feel of hot water running down his body, he began absorbing the energy and shunting it to his inner world to restock his supply of Profound Energy.

After he was done, Carl dressed and made his way over to the terminal that Spere left behind. Clicking on the display, he saw a pop up notice that told him it had been ten jumps since Spere had visited, which meant he had another 600 cp to choose another cheat.

Carl spent some time looking over his options, but ultimately decided that he wouldn't purchase anything for the moment. He was currently doing just fine and wasn't in need of any boosts. He would leave the 600 cp in reserve just in case. Or maybe 10 jumps later he would purchase one of the 1200 cp cheats.

Closing out of the cheat selections, Carl looked over the options he had for adding his perks to his base body.

"Huh, that's interesting. A new tab." Carl selected the tab and got a pop up message.

**[Your first time getting an alternative form jumper? Well, we have just the thing for you! Each alt-form you have can be its own separate package! That's right, you can choose to have all of the perks, none of the perks, or a mix of what perks you want applied to your various alt-forms! The perks you apply to your alt-form doesn't affect your base human body in any way!**

**For example if you want to play around as a vampire or demon, but don't want those pesky infernal and undead perks to affect your base body, just apply them to your alt-form and you can freely switch between them with no downsides!**

**Now available for only 600 cp!]**

"Hmm. That does sound good." Carl pondered the situation. Clicking on the T-Rex tab, he saw a list of the perks available to add to his dinosaur body. And none of the perks he had applied to his human body were available, except for those from the Dinosaur Gauntlet.

"So, it looks like the **Beneath the Mod** cheat only allows one instance of applying the perk or power to the body mod." Carl rubbed his chin in thought. This seemed like a good mod to get so he could load up any alt-forms he got with all the good perks and not have to worry about picking and choosing which ones to apply.

"So far I've got just the one T-Rex alt-form." Carl mused.

When he was about to leave the Dinosaur Gauntlet world, he had been given the choice between **Dinosaur World **and **Dinosaur Shifter**.

**Dinosaur World: You have a full-sized continent attached to your Warehouse that contains a variety of biomes with dinosaurs living wild. You can choose to import this continent into a setting at the beginning of the jump, and can choose if that setting has always contained said continent, or if it just appeared, which will cause the world to adapt without massive ecological or geological damage.**

**Dinosaur Shifter: Rather than just a single Dinosaur alt-form, you can take on the form of any dinosaur known to have existed on Earth. This includes both classic and modern scientifically accurate versions.**

In the end, since he had spent so long as a T-Rex, he was more than ready to resume his human form and so the **Dinosaur World** had been more attractive to him. A whole continent of his own, attached to the Warehouse. Even if he didn't bring it into the jump world, it gave him massive amounts of space in his own little pocket dimension to roam in.

Plus, he had figured that if he had to retrain his first alt-form, the T-Rex form, from scratch, then chances were highly likely he would have to do the same for any others. And he just didn't want to take the time to train the same thing over and over again, hundreds of times.

So while the new purchase from Spere 037 here might have been more useful had he gotten the **Dinosaur Shifter **option, it was still something that he felt was really important to get so his alt-forms were as strong as they could be.

Carl went ahead and made the purchase. He was pleased to see all the perks and powers populate the available list for his T-Rex form, now that they weren't used up when applied to one of his forms.

He went through and added all those useful perks to his T-Rex form. There were some that he didn't think he would need, like the fashion knowledge from the BtVS world. He also made sure to add the perks from the Dinosaur world to his human body.

After double-triple checking, and checking once more, that all his selections and modifications were what he wanted, he finalized his addition to his base bodies. And confirmed the process.

And then he fell unconscious.

* * *

Carl woke up once more. Getting up from the bed, he shifted into his Shadow Panther form and stretched for a good minute. Popping back to his human form, he took another shower.

There was just something about stretching as a cat that seemed to stretch all the joints and ligaments just right that he couldn't quite get as a human.

While he was eating his breakfast that he washed down with Root Beer, Carl thought about nothing in particular. Plenty of things concerning the Jump Chain was hovering in the back of his mind, but he was steadfastly ignoring them until he was done with his biscuits and sausage gravy. Unless the world was actually ending, nothing needed to interrupt his enjoyment of biscuits and gravy.

A half hour later, Carl had polished off the last of his breakfast and cleaned up the dishes. Exiting his house, he began exploring the changes to his Warehouse.

There were four new doors in the walls, all clearly labeled.

The first door was a refrigerated storage room. Inside were many circular pillar like storage units that held all the samples of the DNA that he got from his purchase.

"Just like in the original Jurassic Park that Nedry stole from." Carl chuckled as he looked over the samples. "Very atmospheric." Carl said when he opened up one of the pillars by pulling up the center pillar. The revealed "shaft" was lit up from inside by the low level lights. A breath of fog roiled out when the pillar was open.

"Well, it could be stored much more efficiently, but this is fun too." Carl chuckled as he looked at the room.

A lot of space was wasted by having all the DNA samples stored in a bunch of circular pillars that stood in row after row as the room went back. One side of the room appeared to be for predators, the other side for herbivores.

Looking around, he saw there was an electronic tablet that showed a list of all the dinosaur samples there, and had a section, row, and number assigned to it so finding the correct pillar where a DNA sample was stored was easy.

"Well, at least the setup is logical and easy to navigate." Carl placed the tablet back on the wall. He would play with dinosaur DNA later.

Exiting the room, he went to the next new doorway. Inside the room the first thing he saw was a life size fossilized T-Rex skeleton standing in front of the doorway.

"Nice." Carl smiled at how the fossils of his own bones seemed to be glaring down at him. Suddenly the skeleton moved, tossing its head back in a silent roar to the skies, before it settled back into its first position.

"And the skeleton is animated to do poses. Awesome!" Carl chuckled. Boring museums have nothing on his displays!

After looking around the displays of all the fossils, Carl realized that he could literally spend weeks, if not months, in there just looking through the many, many displays.

Patting his fossilized skeleton on the feet as he passed by to the exit, Carl then made his way to the next door.

It was the Hunting/Grazing Grounds that he had purchased for only 200 cp. Once he entered the door, Carl found himself in what looked like a modern day hunting lodge. It had all the comforts of home, with several bedrooms and baths, a nice kitchen, a trophy room, a big fire place in the living room, and massive 10 foot tall glass sliding door that led to a balcony that overlooked a valley teeming with life of all kinds. Everything that Carl had eaten had a viable population in these grounds.

Just before exiting the lodge to go to the balcony, he saw a tablet on the wall in the usual style. Picking it up, he saw that there was a list of the animals and plants that were available and stocked in the hunting/grazing grounds. There was even a map to show the different biomes, and an option to track the areas where each species usually hung out.

He put the tablet back on the wall and stepped out to the balcony. The air smelled and taste so sweet and pure. He sat on one of the cushioned chairs near the edge of the balcony and just gazed out on the valley for some time, enjoying the moment.

He liked that the hunting grounds weren't butting up against some wall. The lodge sat all alone on the cliff face with nothing around it, but the doorway inside the lodge led back into his Warehouse. Those kinds of space shenanigans always gave him a sense of awe, amusement, and satisfaction.

Like a well done multi-dimensional puzzle.

After spending a half an afternoon just sitting there, Carl eventually moseyed on back into his Warehouse and looked at the last door that led to his Dinosaur World.

He opened the door and walked into his cave housing complex that he had built when he was in the Dinosaur Gauntlet.

"Excellent." Carl smiled in satisfaction at seeing his hard work in building this cave housing not going to waste.

Just in front of the exit, there was a tablet on the wall. Opening it up, he saw that the map of the continent was different from what he had experienced in the dinosaur world. Apparently when he chose the modern day humans, his land was restricted to only a single enormous plateau, instead of a whole continent.

But now the original was restored to him for his use. And it was a big continent. It was practically a whole world on its own.

Exiting the cave door that was big enough to fit a full grown T-Rex, Carl strode out onto his lawn.

Looking around, he saw there was plenty of room there for him. He reached out for his alt-form and changed into a T-Rex.

A moment later a large and powerful predator stood on two legs, his tail swinging back and forth.

Seconds after transforming into his T-Rex form, Carl could feel the changes happening. Massive amounts of Profound Energy were being sucked into his body, changing and evolving it.

More and more energy was being sucked in faster and faster. He could feel how the profound energy flowed through him, densely layering into his body, changing and evolving his body.

Several minutes later, it was done. In place of the adult T-Rex stood the naked humanoid form of a well muscled seven and a half foot tall man.

Carl flexed his new muscles as he stretched. His skin tone was a bit lighter than his T-Rex form, but some of the colored markings of his T-Rex form carried over to his human form and ran along his back and legs. The same evolution into a human form that Feng Ra went through had just happened to him, now that he wasn't being restricted by the world.

His shoulders were wide and built with tightly corded muscles. His powerful and muscled back tapered down to his slim waist. His legs were powerful, able to easily kick stone to powder or sprint faster than speeding train.

Taking a deep breath in, he held it for a moment.

**WAAAAANG!**

Carl roared, as if he was still that massive T-Rex.

The jungle around his cave home fell silent in fear of that fearsome roar.

"Hehehe." Carl began chuckling while moving his arms and legs, bouncing up and down, and twisting at his waist left and right to get a feel for his new body.

"Well, that's probably why there were restrictions on Profound Cultivation while I was in the Dinosaur Gauntlet." Carl mused as he settled down after getting used to his physical strength and abilities, his new height and reach. "It is a thing with the cultivation world that the beasts can take on human form after a certain level. And since I was meant to stay in my dinosaur body for the whole time, if I evolved due to the presence of cultivation energy then it would negate that rule."

Concentrating on his profound energy, Carl meditated for a bit. After some time, he reached out and pulled on the energy in a certain way, and slowly transformed from a 7'6" man to a 48 foot long T-Rex.

He stretched as a T-Rex for a bit. Crouching down, he jumped straight up. His magic fortified the ground around him so it didn't get torn up from the force he exerted in his jump. He flew up in the air, far above the trees.

At the apex of his jump his momentum slowed to a stop.

And Carl's T-Rex form just floated in air, looking around in satisfaction. His T-Rex body was still the same. All the training he had done, all the physical power he had built, was still there.

Letting go of the profound energy that was keeping him in the air, he began falling back to the ground, picking up momentum as he went. Tilting his head forward, he began moving his legs like he was running.

Under his feet, just as he was about to step down, pockets of wind solidified, giving him a solid platform to push off against. He began running downwards faster and faster in a spiral pattern, beginning to level off above the trees and running in a giant circle to bleed off his momentum.

He began slowing down, running in air through the trees; coming to a stop exactly where he had jumped from, having picked up and then bled off his momentum and speed in his wind platform running.

After shaking his head a bit, he shrunk back down to his 7 ½ foot tall T-Rex humanoid form. He began running through some katas, testing the new humanoid body he now had.

After working through a routine, he judged that his more compact body had about 70% of the strength his T-Rex body did, packed into a smaller body. It was actually stronger than his human body at the same training level. That made sense because the base of this body was a freaking T-Rex, whereas his original body was just a normal human to start with.

"Well, I'm satisfied." Carl smirked as he began walking back towards his cave home. In mid step he changed from his naked 7 ½ foot tall humanoid T-Rex form into a 6 foot tall clothed human. He had to abruptly adjust to a smaller stride if he didn't want to stumble.

"Note to self, practice your 'look cool' moves before doing them in public." Carl chuckled to himself.

After he returned to his Warehouse, he went to find himself a video game to play for a couple days. After spending so much time as a dinosaur, he felt like doing some human activities for a while before going into the next jump world.

Powering up the console, he picked up a controller and began playing some random third person shooter game. When was the last time he just chilled and played games like this…?

* * *

Carl parked his motorcycle in the parking lot of his Headquarters building that traveled from world to world with him. In the SAO world he had only discovered that the Headquarters and Dojo were right next to each other after he had left the virtual world of Aincrad after defeating Kayaba on the 100th floor.

Once he had finished with rehab that his grandfather forced him to go through, he had spent several weeks contacting all his friends from Aincrad. He had eventually looked into the two properties he owned, and found they were located in prime locations.

So he had worked with his grandfather's blessing to buy up the business building next to his headquarters and dojo to relocate Andrew and his wife's café to. Since it was in such a good location, their business had improved greatly.

And Andrew's café had certainly needed the extra space! With all the new recipes from Aincrad and other locations that Carl's business partner was introducing to the world with his help, not to mention the networking of the families of the "orphans" and "girls" being grateful for what they had done for their family members, it would have taken more work to remain unsuccessful.

Because of Carl's work to teach his friends the basics of martial arts, he spent plenty of time at the dojo. So Andrew's café, the dojo, and the headquarters building that was fully stocked with all the latest computers, video games, and internet became the prime locations that Carl and his friends spent time in, when they weren't going to school.

With his helmet under his arm, Carl cheerfully walked from his headquarters parking lot to Andrew's café. The ground floor was crowded like usual, the tables were packed, and the servers were bustling everywhere, taking orders, delivering food, and cleaning up.

Carl bypassed the hostess on duty, since she recognized him and he knew where he was going, and climbed the stairs to the private booth upstairs.

He found the room number and walked in, to see a number of expectant faces looking at him.

"Carl's here!" The group of teenagers called out cheerfully.

"Yo! Glad to see everyone!" Carl looked around for a bit. "Well, everyone but Kazuto and Asuna, anyway."

"Yeah, they're on a date again!" One of the 15 year old boys called out, which caused general laughter among the group. Those two were just so adorkably amusing to tease whenever they were around.

Carl saw an open seat next in between Tomo, who had been named Argo in Aincrad, and Keiko, who had been named Silica. Pina and several other Feather Dragons were not being polite as they devoured the snacks that had been set down, to the amusement of all the kids.

It had been fun to pass out the baby dragons to the group. It reminded them that even though they had gone through very difficult times in Aincrad, they had come out the other side stronger and better, with solid friendships.

"Hey, you two. How you doing?" Carl asked the two girls, who gave him shy glances but greeted him warmly.

"Good. School has been keeping me busy." Tomo answered first.

"Yeah. Study is such a drag." Keiko pouted.

"Which subject is keeping you down?" Carl inquired while keeping an eye on the joking and laughing orphans and girls that were playing some old school console games on the screen in the corner.

"Maths! I hate maths!" Keiko complained cutely, causing Carl and Tomo to laugh at her expression.

"Well, I could help tutor you in math some time. I'm not too bad at the subject." Carl offered.

"Okay. I'd like that." Keiko blushed and nodded agreement.

"I could use your help too, Carl. I struggle with English, and I know you're a native speaker." Tomo interjected with a little blush.

"No problem. We can get a little study group going to make sure you two do great in your finals." Carl leaned back in his chair, noticing the body language and blushes of the two girls.

He sighed internally at the issue at play here. He entered the jump as a 20 year old. And now he was 23. While these two girls were originally about 14-15 when they entered the game. They were now 18, but they still needed to get through High School since their education had been on hold while they were in the game.

He could easily see that both girls were very interested in him. He was once more running into the issue of not picking one over the other or he would hurt one of them.

Then there was the problem of them still being in high school, even if they were already 18 years old. It just felt…odd.

'Well, there's only one solution to this. Ignore it so the sexual tension rises and the romantic misunderstandings keep piling up.' Carl thought sarcastically. 'No! Of course that's not the proper thing to do! I'll have to talk to the girls about the situation and see what they want to do about it.'

'They already know about my magic, what with having brought Pina and her feathered friends to the real world. So I can talk to them about the Jump Chain and explain about the past relationships I've had.'

"Carl! You're good at games! Come see if you can beat this boss for me! I can't get past it!" One of the 12 year old members of the orphans group called out, holding a controller out for Carl to come help him, to the jeers and laughter of the rest of the group.

"I'll be there in a moment to help, Sato!" Carl laughed a bit too, before turning to the girls at his side. "Keiko, Tomo. I think we need to talk a bit later about…us." Carl muttered so only the two blushing girls at his sides could hear. "It's nothing bad, but it seems we need to get some things out in the open so we don't misunderstand each other. Is that okay with you two?"

The two girls crossed eyes and did that unspoken communication that had nothing to do with magical or psychic powers. They turned back to Carl and nodded.

"Yes, that would be good." Tomo affirmed with a smile.

"Okay, Carl. But we're not going to wait for long to have that talk." Keiko added with a smile.

Carl then left his seat and joined the group of brats, er.. good young kids that he had saved in the game from working in the equivalent of sweat shops.

"Okay, let me show you how this boss is done!" Carl declared as he picked up the controller. "What game is this I'm playing again?" Carl then asked with just the right amount of confusion to fool the kids for a bit, until they saw his smile that he was having them on.

* * *

Carl smiled at the old memories of his time with his friends in the SAO world as he flipped on the television and powered up the console, bringing up one of his favorite old school games. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

As he played the game as Alucard, plumbing the depths of Dracula's castle, he thought about what had resulted in that talk so long ago.

His smile of reminiscence gained a faint hint of melancholy.

After playing games with the kids, he had brought Keiko and Tomo off to the headquarters building where they could talk in a room privately. He had explained to them about the Jump Chain, the worlds he had been to, and the past relationships he had. He explained how he would be leaving the world in six years to continue his journey, but that time would be frozen in their world until he returned for them if they chose to pursuit a relationship with him.

He told Keiko and Tomo how much he liked them, and could tell there was an attraction between them. And he left it up to the two of them whether or not they were interested in pursuing a relationship with him, and what that relationship would entail.

To this day Carl didn't know just what had caused the two girls to back off. They had stopped coming around as much to hang out, and buried themselves in their high school studies, and then college.

Carl respected the boundaries of their minds and didn't pry, but he still wondered just why they had backed off so abruptly when they had seemed so interested in a relationship with him before.

And while he didn't know why they backed off, he respected their decision and focused a large chunk of his time working with his grandfather in making the full immersion virtual reality dive gear ubiquitous and needed for training the various medical, military, and other high risk or dangerous professions.

But he still felt a sense of…lost opportunities, when thinking about those two girls that he met in a game so many years ago.

* * *

Carl stretched luxuriously at the dinner table after finishing his meal. After shaking off the melancholic mood he had fallen into, he had spent the past few days just enjoying his ability to control his form and be in his human body once more.

Keeping in mind what he had thought about combat in his T-Rex form, he had also spent some time in his shadow panther form, getting ideas on just how to improve his combat ability as a cat.

Due to the alternate T-Rex form he now had and the fact that when he entered the dinosaur world he had to start training his dino body from scratch, Carl had come to some conclusions. Since his human body never needed to be retrained, even when he was de-aged, Carl had decided that shenanigans were being played by the Jump Chain.

Which was like saying that water was wet, but sometimes it still needed to be said.

Each time he entered a new world as a human, since he didn't need to train his body up all over again, Carl assumed that his age was being adjusted while keeping his training. He definitely wasn't getting a new human alt-body every time he entered a new world.

So he figured the most likely thing happening was that he was being de-aged and his memories were suppressed until it was time to "wake up" at world insertion.

At the very least it made more sense to him that he was being inserted into the universe from his "birth", rather than spending the time and effort to fiddle with so many people's memories into order to accommodate his world entry.

It made sense to him seeing as how, before regaining his memories in Westeros, he had limited access to his various abilities, which he didn't think would be the case if he just had a series of memories implanted.

He liked to speculate sometimes about things that could just be explained away as "Jump Chain Shenanigans, don't look too close". He wouldn't really get an answer, and he could be wildly wrong, but it was fun to think about, and it passed the time.

After watching the dishes clean themselves via his magic, Carl exited his house and made his way to the jump document terminal. It was time to start the next world. Pressing on the touch screen, Carl saw the jump document show up for the next world.

**Azeroth**

**Welcome to Azeroth, a land of magic and endless war. A world where dragons soar and demons prowl the night. The two major factions, The Horde and The Alliance, battle for, well honestly no one knows anymore, they just like killing one another. But don't let the magical nature of this world fool you, for there is evil lurking everywhere, even in the heart of the planet itself. The Old Gods, the Twilight Cult, the Scourge, the Burning Legion, the Cult of the Damned, and many, many other threats abound on Azeroth.**

**As will all Jumps, you start off with 1000 cp to spend on whatever you like.**

"Azeroth. The World of Warcraft." Carl looked at the jump document with a big smile. He had spent some time playing the game back in the day. It would be fun to go there in person.

**Location**

**You may choose any location on Azeroth that was available during World of Warcraft Classic and on the two major continents of Kalimdor and The Eastern Kingdoms. Time is a bit iffy in WoW, so ten years for you will be the duration of two expansions. If you started in Classic Era, you will be on Azeroth until Burning Crusades has run its course. Or if you start at the Burning Crusades, you will be there until the end of Wrath of the Lich King.**

"Well, I really only played the first few expansions." Carl mused. "So I think I'll choose to start at the Burning Crusades. That way I'll be there until the Lich King has been defeated." Carl decided. He then chose to roll the dice and rolled a 1. His starting location was Westfall.

**Westfall: Rolling plains of grain with a beautiful ocean view of Murlocs. This location is also home to the Defias Brotherhood, but overall it is a relatively safe starting location.**

The next section was to pick a race. Carl knew from his time playing the game that Westfall was a location in the territory of the Alliance. It would be a bit difficult for him if he chose to be a Horde race in the middle of Alliance territory. If he was given an alternate body by choosing one of the Horde, he would probably be killed by the Alliance members before he could accomplish anything, since it was likely that having anything other than a human body would force him to train from scratch once more.

So Carl was determined to look very carefully over the list of races and pick something safe for him to train up.

**Azeroth is home to a large diversity of sentient and sapient species that range from Humanoid in appearance to, well, almost anything you can imagine. Choose your race, but be warned: some races aren't loved by all, and some may override your starting location to a more dangerous area. All races who are playable in game right now come with their own racial abilities and passives unless stated otherwise. All races are restricted to the classes they could take in the game unless otherwise stated.**

**See the note section for how certain race's racial abilities will work in other Jumps.**

**All races will count as a Drop In, no one will question your origin since there is so much war and loss of life. If you so desire, you may receive the necessary memories and background for your race via the perk [Operator] to begin your stay here as an Adventurer and blend in with the rest of your race seamlessly.**

"Well then. I guess I don't have to worry about my starting location that much, if my race probably overrides it." Carl shrugged off his previous worries and began reading the list of races.

"There's the races of the Alliance: Human, Dwarf, Night Elf, Gnome, and Draenei. Hmm, it seems that, unexpectedly, the races from later expansions are also available. Worgen, Pandaren, Lighforged Draenei, and Void Elves."

"Then there are the races of the Horde: Orc, Troll, Forsaken, Tauren, and Blood Elves. Then the Goblins, Pandaren, and Nightborne."

Carl was looking over the list, pondering about which race he should pick when he saw that there were more than just the Horde and Alliance races available. He perked up a bit at that bit of information. He would have to spend CP to choose them, but Carl was very interested. He began looking over the various races he could purchase, and was a little amused at some of them.

Some of the alternate races seemed interesting, while others were a huge no.

There were the Hozen, a monkey humanoid race from the Mist of Pandaria expansion. There were the fish humanoid race of the Jinyu from the same expansion.

Ogres, Naga, Furbolg, Murloc, and several others Carl wouldn't even consider. They just weren't something he would like to spend 10 years as.

There were the races from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The Vrykul were like Norse Vikings. The Nerubians were a spider-like insectoid race.

There were basically any race that was present in the game. But Carl just wasn't excited about any of them until he saw the dragons. As a result of the Dragon God Bloodline purchase from the ATG world, he was already nearly 10% dragon. So the idea of getting an alternate body that was fully a dragon was appealing to him.

Having the Dragon God Bloodline boosting up the Dragon bloodline was sure to make him powerful.

Carl began looking over the various Dragon Flights, trying to determine which one he would choose. Until he saw one dragon race choice at the end of the list that made up Carl's mind for him.

**Jump Dragon (1000 cp): This is your very own Dragon Flight designed specifically by you. Choose a color and an idea for your Dragon to represent and embody. Some restrictions apply; for one, you cannot choose an already existing Dragon species in WoW (so no Infinite Dragons, no Twilight Dragons, and no Netherdrakes). You also cannot choose to embody the exact Traits of an existing Dragon Flight. (So no magic and knowledge which is the Blue Dragon Flight, but power and magic would work).**

**You don't have to choose a color per se, but can choose something more etheric in nature like the Infinite Dragons, and finally you could choose not to be a typical Dragon like the rest of the flight but a Wyrm or a Cloud Serpent instead.**

**If you do not desire to be a part of any Dragon Flight, even one of your own creation, you can instead take this race at a cost of 600 cp. You will gain all the traits of the race, but you cannot take the perk [Oh Captain, My Captain].**

**Traits: Flight, Transformation – you can assume the form of any ONE species from this list (but that's all it is, an appearance, you get none of their traits), Dragon's Breath – you can choose one of the Breaths, but it cannot be more powerful than the Black Dragons Breath, choose one additional Trait in the same vein as the previous dragons or even one of their traits (again, it cannot be more powerful than the Black Dragons).**

**Gain the perk [Oh Captain, My Captain] for free. Must take the [Hunted] Drawback, but you can keep the cp gained.**

From his time as a T-Rex, Carl knew just how much the Dragon God Bloodline helped his dinosaur form increase in strength, size, and power. The thought of having a dragon body that would be enhanced even more than normal due to the bloodline excited him. He would be the strongest dragon around.

And while the description of the Jump Dragon said that his abilities couldn't be more powerful than the Black Dragons, it didn't mean that he couldn't be stronger than them, just that his dragon abilities were limited while in the world.

This was also the perfect opportunity to test to see if getting a dragon body would leave him in a blank slate and have to train his dragon body from scratch like he assumed it would. This would let him know if it was just the gauntlet of the dinosaur world that forced that situation, or if it was normal for when he got a new alternate body.

There was a big grin on Carl's face as he thought about how awesome the idea was, to fully be a dragon.

But before finalizing his decision, Carl he decided to look at the perk and drawback that came with the Jump Dragon race.

**Oh Captain, My Captain (600 cp, free Jump Dragon / Na'ru. Can only be purchased once): Congratulations on your promotion! You are now, or will be, the leader of your class's Order Hall! Alternatively, if you have chosen Jump Dragon or Na'ru, you become the leader of your own faction of Dragons or Army of the Light! If you choose to pick a Class Order Hall then choose the Order Hall associated with your class. This order hall, and all its members, will follow you into future Jumps, appearing wherever you desire and completely loyal to you.**

**The member of your Order are considered followers unless you choose to make them companions. Order Halls will retain any changes you make to them between Jumps as well as any training to the followers within. This Perk can only be purchased ONCE.**

**Jump Dragon Flight: A Dragon Flight made to your specifications. Since this is your Dragon Flight, and not an existing one, you can choose the location of where they call home, or roost, or nest. You can choose a mountain or island of some sort to reflect the aspects your Dragons represent. These natural wonders can contain large areas for your Flight to live that are sculpted and handmade, but it cannot be just a city in the middle of a desert.**

**Alternatively you can take an exact replica of the Wyrmrest Temple as your own and place it down somewhere on Azeroth other than Northrend. This building will be large enough to comfortably house your Dragon Flight for several generations. It will contain portals in its basement to a pocket dimension that you can keep and store your eggs so they can hatch in relative safety. You can, over time, shape this area into a city if you wish or import a city you already own into the setting. In future Jumps this location will follow you and can be placed anywhere you wish.**

**If you choose to have your Dragons home in something similar to the Emerald Dream you must have at least one portal or location from which it connects to the outside world.**

**Every Dragon Flight have Dragonspawn serving them. The origins of these subspecies of Dragons is unknown, though it is believed they were somehow created through a ritual or were former humanoids who spent years living alongside the Dragons and by doing so slowly evolved into Dragonspawn. Either way, you have a large number of these Dragonspawn who carry out many of the mundane tasks such as being guards, soldiers, servants, caretakers, or perhaps even farmers. They are devoted to your Flight, and your Flight only, seeing your word as law.**

Carl was liking the idea more and more of having his own Dragon Flight. But before he made his final decision, he decided to look at the drawback that came with it.

**Hunted (+500 cp): One of the evil factions of Azeroth is hunting you. Chose one: the Black Dragon Flight, the Burning Legion, Twilight Cult, Cult of the Damned, Scourge, Iron Horde, the Naga, Sylvannas, or Heyla. This group will be fanatical in hunting you down. Alternatively, if you are a Demon, choose: The Alliance, The Horde, Silver Hand, Kirin Tor, Cenarion Circle, Earthen Ring, Ebon Blade, Army of the Light, or any of the Dragon Flights.**

**They will actively seek you out to kill you. You can take this drawback as many times as you want, but will only receive the maximum 1500 cp. Should you possess any powers that allow you to travel through time or prevent key figures responsible for the creation of these organizations, they will never work. The Iron Horde will ALWAYS be created and the Cult of the Damned will exist no matter what you do.**

Carl was stroking his chin in thought over the **Hunted **drawback. He would only be in Azeroth for the Burning Crusades and Wrath of the Lich King expansions. The factions prevalent during those times was the Burning Legion, the Scourge, and the Cult of the Damned.

So, if Carl chose a faction that didn't rise to prominence and make trouble until later, would he avoid most of the trouble the drawback could net him? Or would they surface earlier in their eagerness to hunt him?

And it said that the faction would be hunting him specifically, not necessarily his Dragon Flight in general. So if Carl was able to lay low and hide among the heroes of the Alliance or Horde, how would the evil faction know where to find him?

Carl decided that having his very own Dragon Flight was worth the hassle of having a dedicated enemy. He added **Jump Dragon **as his race.

For the color Carl chose ethereal Silver as the base color of his dragon body, with glowing blue highlights. His dragon form needed to look cool.

Carl decided that the Ideas/Traits/Domains of his Dragon Flight would be Magic and Crafting.

Specializing in magic would help Carl be a high class mage in this world.

In the game each player character was restricted to two main professions. Carl wasn't sure how close the world he was jumping into was to the game. He was hoping that there would be less restrictions in the real world of Azeroth. He was hoping that with the addition of a focus on crafting, Carl could get around any restrictions there might be.

In addition, having his Silver Dragon Flight be masters of magic and crafting would give them plenty of ability to defend themselves with their abilities and created items. If they were experts at creating magical items of great use, they would also command great economic power. So the choice to have a focus on crafting just kept adding benefits.

Carl looked over the list of Traits. He made the selections for what type of dragons breath and the additional trait. Flight, Transformation: Night Elf, Dragons Breath: Magically burning fire, and Natural Mage.

Carl ultimately chose to have a Night Elf form since he was most familiar with The Alliance faction from his time playing the game. He could blend in with them and take on some of their quests while generally hiding from the faction hunting him. The Natural Mage trait that Carl grabbed from the Blue Dragon Flight would also help him be a very dangerous mage.

**Classes**

**You may choose only one class and it must align with the race you have chosen. You may choose one class for free. You receive one specialization for free, and you may buy additional specializations for 100 cp each, but only those listed for your class.**

**Even if you don't buy all specializations you will get the general powers of the class you have chosen (ie Mages will get Mana Table spell if they are a Frost Mage, but not Pyroblast).**

**Note: Your weapons are not limited to what the classes were in the game. If you are a mage who wants to wield a two handed axe, then go for it.**

Carl chuckled a bit at the idea of a heavily armored mage. He chose the Mage class and purchased all three specializations.

**Mage: Masters of Arcane, Frost, and Fire. Mages are capable of teleporting around the world to teleporting around a battlefield. Though not very durable they can deal out explosive damage.**

**Arcane (0 cp): Arcane Mages use arcane energies to destroy their enemies with overwhelming power.**

**Fire (100 cp): Fire Mages should be pretty self explanatory. Burn, baby! Burn!**

**Frost (100 cp): Frost Mages are masters at controlling a battle. Often freezing targets to the ground to give themselves distance, or summoning an ice elemental to do their bidding.**

A note on the mage class and their abilities made Carl happy to choose the mage class.

**Mages will be capable of creating portals to any major city they have been to in future jumps. For instance, if you just came from a DC jump and then followed this Jump with another DC Jump you can create portals to Gotham and Metropolis if you have previously been there. If you have Dalaran then you can create permanent portals to these locations, with a couple of caveats. One, the portals are two way, meaning others can enter your portal from the opposite end at any time. And Two, these portals will cease to exist when you move onto your next Jump. The Mage Table will serve food that is no different than normal food, meaning you can summon an endless supply of mana bread. Post Spark you can create portals that connect other universes together if you so desire.**

With his class selected, Carl moved on to the Perks section. As usual, he picked up the free perks first.

**Roll Out (0 cp): You are capable of summoning a mount to your side by focusing on the image of the mount for 1 uninterrupted second. Works on animals or vehicles. Does not work on spacecraft. For an additional 200 cp you can used this ability to summon small spacecrafts that you own that are no larger than a ship capable of holding eight.**

Carl thought about it for some time, and eventually decided to spend the extra cp so he could summon spacecraft. Not being able to pull out the Yamato while in the Dinosaur Gauntlet for a couple years had made things a bit more annoying for him. While he hadn't felt like he would fail without his ship and technology, having the option to summon his ship whenever he wanted was something he decided he was willing to spend 200 cp on. This way he wouldn't have to worry about any future gauntlets that cut off his ability to access his pocket dimension.

**Operator (0 cp): If you choose to take this red pill you will journey down the rabbit hole. You will receive the necessary memories and general knowledge to blend in seamlessly with your chosen race. Whether or not you choose to actually play along is up to you. This perk only give you enough knowledge to not be an oddball among your race, it does not give you secret or hidden knowledge.**

Carl figured this perk would give him all the knowledge and instincts he needed as a dragon so he wouldn't embarrass himself by tripping over his wings on his first day. It wouldn't do to have his Dragon Flight laughing at their leader's clumsiness!

**Elven Nature (Free Elves and Dragons): You are naturally graceful and long lived. The average lifespan of the Elves and Dragons is measured in Millennia and now yours is too.**

Carl chuckled at that perk. One of the benefits and reasons so many people were so desperate to practice profound cultivation was that it increased their lifespan. A Sovereign Profound Realm had a lifespan between 1,000-2,000 years. A Divine Origin Realm already had a lifespan over 10,000 years.

Carl wasn't sure if the long lifespan from the **Elven Nature **perk would add on to the lifespan he gained from his cultivation, but he was fine with trying to stack more lifespan. Especially since the perk was free for him.

After spending some time looking over the other racial trait perks to see if he wanted to add any, Carl chose to purchase the Blood Elves' trait.

**Addictol (100 cp): You cannot become addicted to any chemical, substance, or activity.**

Carl figured that if he ever made his way to the Dune universe, it would be good to never get addicted to the Spice. And he was sure there were other drugs out there that could hook him that he wanted to avoid. As strong as he was, if he went to another cultivation world, he would once more be on the low end of the totem pole. It was best to hedge his bets and protect himself from problems in advance.

**Dwarven Crafting (100 cp): No matter the fantasy fiction one thing always remains true. Dwarves are master craftsmen and can imbue their works with beautiful art and craftsmanship. Now, so can you. Capable of crafting weapons and armor that are pure works of art but incredibly lethal and durable.**

Carl almost didn't purchase the **Dwarven Crafting** racial trait, since he already had Crafting as a trait of his Silver Dragon Flight. But he eventually decided that 100 cp spent to add on to his crafting abilities was worth the small cost to ensure he was that much better at crafting his future gear. He was the leader, he needed to be the best, right?

**Multiclass (100 cp): What's that? You want to be a Rogue Warrior hybrid? Okay, sure thing. With this perk you may pick one other class and add it to your existing class as you please. You gain the benefits of both classes along with their discounted perks. You may choose as many of their specializations as you can afford. Each subsequent purchase of Multiclass doubles the cost of this perk from 100 to 200, then 400, etc.**

Carl chuckled aloud at the **Multiclass **perk. At only 100 cp it was too good to pass up purchasing it at least once. He really wanted to be a heavy class mage. Not to mention that adding the Paladin class would give him a healing specialty in addition to the tanking. Might as well throw in the damage dealing specialty as well for only 100 cp more.

**Paladin: Paladins are called and charged with protecting the weak and innocent as well as bringing justice to the unjust. They will not rest until they have vanquished all evil from this world.**

**Holy (0 cp): Holy Paladins use the Light to heal their wounded allies while vanquishing evil.**

**Protection (100 cp): Protection Paladins use Holy Magic, mace, and board to defend and inspire their allies. Capable of shielding themselves and transferring damage meant for others onto themselves. If you like Captain America, this is the spec for you.**

**Retribution (100 cp): Retribution Paladins are righteous crusaders bringing retribution to all evil entities.**

Carl chuckled at the idea of a mage wearing plate and tanking or healing. He wasn't sure just how close the world of Azeroth would be to the game, but he was enjoying the anticipation.

The previous game worlds he had gone to, Farmville and SAO, had been interesting. There had been both game and magical elements present in those worlds. He was even able to gather real herbs from the game world of SAO. So Carl was interested to see just how game like the World of Warcraft would be.

While thinking about his two classes, Carl made finally made the decision to add one more class. He already had an Intelligence based class in the Mage, a Strength based class in the Paladin (aside from the healer specialization that focused on Intelligence), and so adding the Rogue class would give him an Agility based class.

Not to mention that the Rogue was focused on stealth, so Carl was quite interested to see just how effective the stealth abilities of the Warcraft Rogue were. So he paid the 200 cp for another multiclass.

**Rogue: The Class everyone hates, for good reason (Don't be a ninja looter). Rogues are capable of invisibility and stealthily assassinating their targets. Or just spamming sap on people over and over and ganking low levels in starting zones as well as quest givers just because most rogues like being douches.**

**Outlaw (0 cp): I suppose there's one in every bunch. Though you value its approach, stealth is not your forte. Swordplay, footwork, hidden weaponry, and foul play are your tools for the job, preferring to outmaneuver an opponent face to face instead of knifing them in the back. Tactics favored by pirates and buccaneers, as it were. While such a tactic is quite effective, one can't help but feel you're deliberately going against the grain.**

**Assassination (100 cp): Masters of poison and death dealing. Just when you think you've killed a Rogue, you die because you forgot about the 50 different poisons he inflicted upon you.**

**Subtlety (100 cp): These Rogues are the masters of Stealth and subterfuge. You were born in the shadows, molded by them. These masters of stealth will stab you in the back, or front, and vanish before you can even realize what's going on.**

The Oultaw specialization was once called Combat back when Carl had been playing the game. Since he hadn't played the most recent expansions, Carl wasn't sure just when the change had been made. But he kind of liked the new name for the specialization. It added more flavor than the simple "Combat".

And while Carl already had many spells from the Harry Potter universe that helped him be stealthy, something about choosing to be a Rogue Class and upping his stealth game appealed to Carl. The skills would also greatly complement all the hunting skills Carl had just gained from the Dinosaur Guantlet.

**You Have the Powa! (100 cp): You are now strong enough to dual wield melee weapons that are more than twice your height as if they weighed nothing. Not only that, you are capable of wielding them with a skilled ease that would make Samurai jealous.**

Originally, Carl was going to wield a one hand sword and shield as a Mage / Paladin. But now that he was going to be a Mage / Paladin / Rogue, the idea of dual wielding two massive two-handed swords really appealed to Carl.

And while Carl believed he was more than strong and skilled enough to wield massive melee weapons without the perk, something told him that getting the perk would be the right thing to do in this world. Something made Carl think there might be some kind of inherent restrictions or negative penalties on what someone could do in the world based on their class and skills. So getting the perk for only 100 cp wasn't too big of a price to look cool with massive weapons.

**Surprise Mothafucka (Free Subtlety Rogue): Holy crap are you sneaky. Like seriously, you could be standing right in front of someone and they wouldn't even notice unless you bumped into them. This does not protect you against cameras or magical scrying, but bodyguards are basically useless against you.**

There was no reason not to add a free perk that enhanced his stealth abilities. Carl was grinning in anticipation of what he could get up to in the future.

**The Dark Crystal (200 cp): Draenei use crystals that are, possibly, native to their homeworld for almost all aspects of their daily lives. Even their technology, magic, and homes are made of these crystals. Certain Artificers are capable of 'Programming' these crystals to do certain things ranging from protecting an entire city in a shield or powering magitek spaceships that can travel the void of space. You now have their knowledge of these ancient arts and are capable of incorporating this magitek into your own technology or magic.**

Carl was always on the lookout for more knowledge and methods of improving his crafting and technology ability. Spending 200 cp to gain all this knowledge and bypass the need to hunt down a teacher that probably wouldn't give him the knowledge was worth it. And Magitek was just cool.

And the final perk Carl got was **Oh Captain, My Captain. **Carl thought for some time about having his Dragon Flight's home be a duplicate of the Wyrmrest Temple. After some consideration he decided that he didn't really like the idea. The tower would be a huge sight high in the sky, letting everyone in the surroundings spy on them.

Instead, Carl decided that he would have his Dragon Flight's home be a castle hold inside a giant mountain located on the eastern edge of the Redridge Mountains. It would have the ocean on the east, the Redridge Mountains zone on the west, the Swamp of Sorrows to the south, and the Burning Steppes to the north.

Carl wasn't sure if there were magical methods for the Alliance or Horde to detect who was a member of their faction, or if they simply went by appearance. If it was appearance, then with his metamorphmagus abilities and magic Carl planned to interact with both factions.

If there was a magical detection method, then Carl would see about joining the Alliance and work only with them, unless he could spoof the system. Carl had mostly played Alliance back in his original world, so he was much more familiar with them.

**Inspirational Sight (150 cp): Your mere presence inspires others. Those who have lost all hope in a cause will find themselves reinvigorated in your presence. Those who spend time around you will become more and more loyal to you as time passes.**

Carl picked up the **[Inspirational Sight]** perk because it gave him a discount for being a Paladin, and he felt that his subordinates becoming more loyal wasn't a bad thing. There was nothing more despicable than the actions of a traitor. So preventing traitors from hiding in his ranks and striking at the worst time was an important matter.

**Ain't Nobody Got Time For That (200 cp): You no longer need a wand, staff, gesture, or words to cast a spell. Merely thinking of the spell you wish to cast is enough to do so. This does not remove the need for reagents or other materials that are mandatory for a certain spell.**

In addition to the perk being discounted, Carl thought the **Ain't Nobody Got Time For That **perk was very useful. While he had trained himself in the Harry Potter world to use wandless magic, it had taken plenty of training time to do so. Having a perk that bypassed that training for all future magic he learned was worth the cost in his mind.

With all his perks selected, Carl moved on. The next section was Loot. Carl perused the items list to see if there was anything interesting. He picked up the free ones as a matter of course.

**Hearthstone (free): You gain a magical rock with a rune carved into the surface. When held in your hand and focused on, this rock will bind to a safe location that you own, allowing you to transport back to that location at any time as long as you channel your focus into the stone uninterrupted for three seconds. If you lose your new pet rock, it will reappear within your inventory or warehouse courtesy of the GMs.**

**Basic Adventurers Gear (free): A set of white gear appropriate to your class. This is the lowest of the low quality armor and a weapon of your choice. Its barely worth a copper.**

**Artifact Weapon (First purchase free with Oh Captain, My Captain): If you have chosen a class you may choose the artifact weapon of your specialization for the aforementioned price. If you have multiple classes or multiple specializations you may choose ONE artifact weapon for ONE of your specializations. You can also choose any appearance for your artifact weapon that existed within the game. You may choose to import a weapon into this one or vice versa. The imported weapon will gain all the stats and abilities of the Artifact Weapon, including any sentient beings trapped within. After this Jump ends you may choose to rid your weapon of any awareness they might have if you get annoyed from their constant chatting. If you did not take the perk Oh Captain, My Captain, you will receive a replica of your chosen weapon. The real weapon will still make its way into the hands of the ones chosen to lead their class order hall. Multiple purchases allow for you to have a duplicate of another Artifact Weapon so long as you have the Class AND Specialization.**

Carl hadn't played the most recent expansions of WoW, so he had no idea what the Artifact weapons were at first. But after looking at the list, he found that they were basically a class weapon. He decided to import the Blue Orchid in and merge it with the **Artifact Weapon** and chose to have it look like Ashbringer, which was a legendary Paladin two handed sword.

**Artifact Forge (Free with Oh Captain, My Captain): This forge grants you every appearance in game of your Artifact Weapon and allows you to alter the appearance of your weapon at any time. In future Jumps it will allow you to alter the function of your weapon at any time. Turning swords into spears or axes into daggers. I'll even allow you to use it to change a pistol into a rifle, or something similar. The forge will also serve as a medium allowing you to more easily enchant and create powerful weapons which you can imbue with powerful magical effects.**

While Carl didn't really see the necessity for the **Artifact Forge**, he could easily see the coolness factor for it. It could alter his weapon to look however he wanted, and it was free. Carl was always happy to take free items, especially when they added to the fun factor. And if he ever got tired of the Blue Orchid looking like Ashbringer, he could change it up.

**Grand Mount (Free Paladin): This is a mount capable of bearing your immense, or tiny, weight around Azeroth. As is, it is only a ground based mount that cannot fly and can run at speeds around 50 mph. For an additional 100 cp your mount can now run at speeds exceeding 100 mph. For a further 100 cp you can choose both a flying mount and land mount. These mounts can be anything in game, unless they are class or Order Hall specific. Death Knights, Paladins, and Warlocks gain their base land Mounts for free.**

Carl thought about it for some time. While he didn't really need a mount, since he could fly as a dragon, he thought he should upgrade the mount in order to be able to hide his origins from the enemies that would be hunting him. If he was turning into an ethereal silver dragon that glowed blue every time he needed to go anywhere, it would be pretty easy to target him. So Carl spent the extra 200 cp to upgrade his mount all the way.

**Adventurer's Bag (100 cp): A bag that is bigger on the inside. This bag will alter its appearance to blend into any future Jump setting. This bag comes with 20 slots which you can stack multiple items of the same type up to 999 times within a single slot. You can purchase this item multiple times to increase the number of slots in your bag. Each purchase will increase the number of slots within your bag by 20.**

Carl decided to add one **Adventurer's Bag** to his purchase. It just felt right to have a bag while going into the World of Warcraft, even though he really didn't need it. Since he might lose access to his pocket dimension at first because of his alternate dragon body, Carl decided it was a good thing to have a bag like that.

With the Loot section done, Carl then turned to the Drawback section. He saw that there was a limit of 1500 cp he could gain from the drawbacks.

He already had one instance of **Hunted** mandated by his purchase of **Jump Dragon. **After thinking about it for some time, Carl decided to go ahead and add two more instances of **Hunted**.

At first, he was going to add The Naga, until Carl remembered just how ubiquitous the Naga were, even before they broke out in the Cataclysm. So Carl decided not to choose them.

He instead chose the Iron Horde as the first enemy. While their remnants were around as the Fel Orcs in Burning Crusades, they wouldn't really be a problem until the Warlords of Draenor expansion, when the time portal connected past and present. Carl figured he would be long gone before they could make too much of a nuisance of themselves.

Next Carl chose Heyla. She was originally a Titan forged Watcher and Sorceress. But then she was turned into one of the undead spectral Val'kyr. She didn't really appear until the Legion expansion, so Carl thought he probably wouldn't run into her, for the most part.

And lastly, Carl chose the Cult of the Damned. The Cult had been around in the original game, but they pretty much went into hiding during the Burning Crusade expansion, and only had a small presence in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. They didn't really become a bigger power until after the Cataclysm, where Deathwing broke the world.

So while they had agents that ran around before the Cataclysm expansion, as long as Carl remained in disguise, they shouldn't be able to figure out who he was in order to be able to target him. And he should be gone before that happened.

Of course, if any of these factions started getting too annoying, Carl always had the option of running away temporarily to level up and then come back and destroy them another day, or just hiding out for the rest of his time in world.

Carl sighed as he finally got to the end of the jump document. His choices were made, and he still had 3450 cp banked. He paused for a moment before finalizing his choices and entering the world.

Was he sure that he wanted to have three enemies from the **Hunted** drawback? Was the extra 1000 cp worth the hassle he was sure to have? Carl pondered that question as he watched the timer count down the final hour before his break time was up. He didn't have much time to decide.

Ultimately Carl decided that he would go ahead and keep the drawbacks. He would have to trust that the enemies he gained wouldn't be completely overpowered compared to his current "expansion". Even if those enemies jumped out before their time, Carl figured that they wouldn't be any more powerful than the rest of the enemies he would have to face.

If that wasn't the case, then he would just have to get strong and muddle through as best as he could. Before getting into the world, he really didn't have any idea how his power and strength compared to the enemies of the World of Warcraft. Carl decided he wouldn't let his fear to cause him to cower away before he had even entered the world.

With his course decided and his will set, Carl clicked the finalize selection button and the world around him faded to black.


	76. Azeroth 1

Carl opened his eyes and stared at the scenery in front of him blankly. He was having trouble remembering who he was and where he was. But the view was nice, at least. He was looking out over the ocean from the hills. There was a lighthouse on a little island a little distance out from the shore.

He yawned hugely, his wide maw exposing his sharp teeth. Lifting his head on his long sinuous neck, he looked around to see where he was.

He found himself draped over what looked like a house roof jutting out of the rocky outcrop he was laying on. His wings were folded into his body, and his tail hung down the side, twitching now and again.

The sun felt so good on his scales…

Wait a second.

Wings? Tail? Scales?

Didn't he usually not have those features?

Suddenly, the oddness in his mind _shifted_. And he remembered.

He was Carl the Jumper, and he just arrived in the World of Warcraft.

But at the same time, he was Carl of the Silver Dragon Flight.

He remembered hatching from an egg. He remembered being raised with his nest-mates. The games they played. The lessons they had in magic and crafting. Fighting to show that he was the best. Struggling to master all the skills so he could be the leader of his batch.

Carl smiled at remembering some of his close friends and the fun they got up to. He remembered his father, the leader of the Dragon Flight. How Carl swore he would be the next leader.

Carl's draconic smile dropped from his face when he remembered the Raid. Cloaked enemies that burst into their Dragon Hold, killing, chasing, capturing!

He remembered his father holding off several of them, yelling for Carl to Run! To escape and survive!

The fires, the chaos, the yelling and agonized screams had been a nightmare of his for years.

In following his father's orders, he had fled. He had made his escape. The chasers couldn't find him, couldn't catch him.

But he got so lost. He was still only a whelpling, and he was so small and weak compared to anything he encountered outside the dragon hold.

He barely survived. He learned to be stealthy. He learned to survive in the shadows, never being seen as he grew up, hunting the smallest of prey just to fill his belly.

Carl never could find his way back to the Dragon Hold. He had no idea where it was, or if anyone survived that night of nightmares. That chaotic night, where the Raid took place.

Eventually he found himself a place to survive in the wild jungles along the coast he found himself in. He hid himself among the thickest of trees, where the larger predators could not fit and chase him down.

And he survived. He grew up knowing that strength and cunning were important attributes. He managed to keep himself alive with his superlative hunting skills and by being very cautious.

Over the years as he grew up, he remembered the few lessons he had before the Raid. He remembered what they said of magic and how to use it.

And he practiced his skills in shaping his magic. It was hard at first. His magic reserves were comparatively large, so forcing his magic to do what he wanted was a struggle at first.

But he persevered. He learned to tell his magic what to do. He learned to cast a fireball to burn his enemies. And while the fireball spell wasn't nearly as powerful as his fire breath, it was at least versatile and a longer ranged attack than his fire breath.

He also learned to enhance his claw strikes as he attacked his prey from the rear, making sure to strike hard first and continue to attack until his prey died.

After he had a close call where his prey turned on him and hurt him greatly, he told his magic to heal him, and it did. He then figured out how to tell his magic to fortify his body to protect himself from getting damaged by enemy strikes in the future.

He moved many times as he outgrew his hiding places. He always found another lair to sleep in that would keep him safe.

It had been many years since he fled the Dragon Hold, and he hadn't seen any dragons at all, let alone a Silver Dragon. He grew into a full sized adult dragon.

But one day in the jungles he was ambushed by a troop of trolls in his lair. Before the ambushers attacked, he had a sense of being targeted. He knew that sensation, and knew that he needed to act immediately.

He climbed up the trees surrounding his lair, unfurled his wings, and flew away with only a single glance back to see the mass of trolls throwing spears and magic his way. Looking at the numbers, he knew he would have fallen if he had remained to fight.

So he escaped and flew north along the coast. He rested for a moment on the hillside where that cave entrance with roof built over it was. There was no activity in the cave, so he thought it would be safe for a short rest.

And that was exactly when his memories returned to him. The time when he remembered he was Carl the Jumper.

With all these new memories, Carl's head still felt a little jumbled. He sunk into meditation and used his Occlumency skills to order his new set of memories. He created a new section for his Azeroth memories and filed them accordingly.

Once he had finished ordering his new memories, he began thinking of his current situation. Thinking back on his memories growing up as a Dragon, Carl recognized many of the places that "he" had travelled through while growing up from his time playing the World of Warcraft game.

And he recognized the place that he was currently resting. He was in the southwestern part of Westfall. The cave he was resting above was the exit to the Deadmines instance dungeon.

Each of his entries into these Jump Worlds was interesting. In some of them he was just chucked into the world. In some, it felt like he lived through the time growing up and had his memories unlocked at the proper time.

In this world it felt like the memories were put in his head. Carl couldn't point to exactly what led him to that conclusion, but that's what it felt like happened this time.

Looking down at his badass dragon body, Carl preened and smirked a bit. Being a dragon was so cool.

Sinking his mind into inspecting his body, Carl saw what he expected. His dragon's body was starting off from scratch, just like his T-Rex body had started with no training. His current body had never trained in Ki techniques. It had never cultivated Profound Energy. And his magic was weak. Well, relatively weak compared to before.

Even though his magic was currently comparatively weak, with just a look at his dragon body Carl could see that it was very well suited to magic. His memories showed that he had been using rudimentary and untrained magic all his "life" here in Azeroth, and done very well for himself.

But comparing the feats he was capable of with training to what his immature, untrained, and uneducated dragon self had done, he had a far way to go with his magic training.

Despite his new and untrained body, he was very happy to see the presence of the various bloodlines present in his body that he had purchased with CP in the ATG world. There was the Golden Crows's bloodline, the Dragon God Bloodline, the Nine Exquisite Body, the Heart of Snow Glazed Glass, and the Evil God's Profound Veins. Even the Phoenix bloodline was present thanks to the cheat he got from Spere 037.

Just like his T-Rex body, all those perks were available for him in this world where he first got his alt-form. If it worked the same as his T-Rex alt-form, then it was likely in future worlds he wouldn't have access to those perks and bloodlines with his Dragon alt-form unless he used Spere 037's terminal to add them to his body.

Carl guessed that having all those perks and bloodlines available when he first gets the alt-form is a kind of courtesy and good customer service. But he would have to manually choose what perks to add to this body in the future, otherwise he would be a normal plain Dragon.

So he was pleased to see that his current dragon body had all the perks and abilities he had purchased previously. He would just have to begin training this body from scratch, since it came with the factory default settings.

Another thing he was thankful for was his inner world that stored all the various types of energy was shared between his bodies, so he didn't need to work on filling it back up again for each body. Not to mention that he would have access to his dimensional storage once he trained back up to the sovereign profound realm.

"Whoa! What's a dragon doing here?!"

An excitable voice interrupted Carl's inspection of his body. Opening his eyes, he saw a group of five people gathered on the ground just outside the cave tunnel that Carl was currently laying on.

"So cool. But it's a silver dragon. Have there been any news about a Silver Dragon Flight on the forums?" A female human priest doubtfully asked.

"No, but it would be so cool to have it for a mount in the expansion!" A male dwarf warrior mentioned.

Carl got a strange look on his face as he looked and listened to the group of adventurers below him.

'I'm right here, you know? You think I can't hear you talking about making me your mount?' Carl sardonically thought, questioning the intelligence of the group.

But at the same time, Carl had some serious doubts about what was going on here.

First of all, it was strange that people in Azeroth were talking about expansions and forums. It almost made him think that they were player characters, and they were talking about the upcoming Burning Crusades expansion.

Second, the moment he laid his eyes on the group of adventurers, Carl finally noticed that a heads up display, or HUD, popped up in his vision. And he could see the levels of the people in front of him when he focused on them. They were all level 20-26 according to their portrait frames that popped up next to them.

'Is this more of a game world than I thought?' Carl wondered.

"Hey, that dragon is only level 1! I can totally tame it!" The male Night Elf hunter exclaimed. "I just need you guys to distract it so he doesn't interrupt the taming spell!"

Carl got a look of consternation on his face. There was no way hunters could tame Dragons, especially because they were intelligent creatures. There was no way someone could tame him! But he didn't want to chance it. He certainly didn't want to bother with these…players?

Not when he was apparently only level 1 and hadn't gotten any training in to enhance his abilities. He would be rofl-stomped in nothing flat by a full group of five.

Were these players from the regular world? Was this more of a game world than he expected? And why the hell was he only level 1 when he had been killing mobs for many years, according to his implanted memories?

He had many things to consider here. He wasn't going to sit around and let these yokels try out their strategy of distracting and taming him. The way they talked about their plan directly in front of Carl where he could overhear them easily led him to believe that this world was a strange mix of real life and game.

It had to be some kind of game world. No one would be that stupid to discuss their plans in front of the enemy in real life where they could hear, right?

There were no natives of Azeroth that weren't aware how smart dragons were. They would never let a dragon hear their plan of attack. This led Carl to think that the adventurers thought of him as an NPC, not a real, thinking creature. Since they hadn't instigated combat, or aggroed him, they apparently thought that Carl wouldn't attack them or instigate action.

And it was true that he didn't want to attack them at this moment. While he would normally be fearless in fighting, he hadn't had any chance to train his body or assess his strength. He had no idea how much stronger than normal players being a dragon made him. He didn't want to chance death and jump failure on something so uncertain!

There was definitely something odd about his insertion into the world. The jump document did say he would be a drop in with the appropriate memories. Seems it was true, since he was starting at level 1.

But if he was only level 1, why was he able to see these player's levels? In the game, if he wasn't a part of the same faction, then any enemy with 10 levels more than him should be shown as a skull. Was it judged by power levels?

Carl sighed at the oddity of his existence in this world as he ignored the rest of what the players in front of him were saying as he prepared himself to act.

He didn't want to fight these players. He had no desire to test just how big of a difference the level gap would cause in their abilities. He still remembered in the SAO world how he couldn't do more damage than his equipment and stats said he could, despite being a master class martial artist and much stronger than a normal human.

And right now he hadn't trained up his new body any. So while he may be really strong for being a dragon, he was completely unsure of his capabilities in this game-like world. It wasn't the time to go into a fight blind.

Besides which, he wasn't sure that if he attacked and managed to kill the group of Alliance adventurers that it wouldn't flag him to the rest of the Alliance faction as a kill on sight enemy.

He still needed to interact with the Alliance, so Carl decided to retreat for now while he was uncertain about a great many things.

After he had gained his bearings and figured things out, then he could be more confident and bold in his actions.

So while the five adventurers were still sitting in front of Carl and discussing what they wanted in payment in order to help the hunter, and how they would go about it, Carl took a deep breath.

A loud "Huaaawk" sound echoed out before Carl spat a loogie at the hunter. The gooey mess smacked him in the face. Without a harrumph, Carl stretched his wings and took flight, leaving the gobsmacked group of heroes behind.

"Looks like the dragon didn't want to be your pet there, Abugaw." Carl heard a mocking voice before he got too far away from the group.

"Disgusting!"

"Ewww!"

"You can't tame a dragon anyway, huntard. It would have been a waste of our time."

As he flew away, Carl saw the small village of Moonbrook that was taken over by the Defias Brotherhood was laid out on the ground near the mountains. Carl could spot the building where the entrance to the dungeon instance was.

Carl made a note that he would go and check out the dungeon instance some time later. If this world had a large amount of game elements, then it would be interesting to run a dungeon.

Catching an updraft, he rose higher in the air as he sought out an isolated peak that he could land on to be able to think for a while. So far, if he was at the beginning of the Burning Crusades expansion like he expected to be, then there were no alliance or horde members that could fly around this area.

So he should be safe for the time being.

After a few minutes of flight, Carl saw a suitable peak. He glided in for a landing, flapping his wings sharply to pull up at the proper time to slow down and land on his back legs first before settling down on all four legs. He folded up his wings and settled on his haunches.

Looking around the immediate surroundings with his sharp eyesight, he came to the realization that his Dragon form had amazingly sharp and dynamic eyesight. He knew that many of the predatory birds had very good distance viewing, but apparently so did Dragons.

Apparently they needed it to clearly see their prey on the ground while flying high. He only needed to focus on the tower in the distance and he could clearly see everything happening at Sentinel Hill.

He could even see two of the five Alliance players that he had just run into talking with the NPCs at the Alliance base and turning in quests. The hunter even had a golden light burst up around him for a second when he turned in a quest, which indicated he had leveled up.

Carl breathed in slowly for a minute and held it. Five minutes later he slowly exhaled for a minute. His Dragon form had amazing lungs! He wasn't even feeling the strain of holding his breath for several minutes. And that was in an untrained body!

He returned to breathing normally. Carl curled his tail up around his feet as he sat on his haunches and looked at it curiously, studying the scales that covered his body. His ethereal silver with blue glowing highlights really did look awesome.

'Well, I should get started on doing some Ki training first.' Carl thought. 'But I gotta check something first, though.'

Carl reached out for his magic, followed his instincts and had it work _just so._ A moment later, he felt himself shrinking down and becoming bipedal.

Standing up on his two legs, Carl opened up his Warehouse portal and walked inside. He strode purposely to his house and stood in front of a mirror in the bathroom.

The face of a Night Elf looked back at him. His hair was a silvery blue color. His skin was a dark bluish, almost purple color. His floppy ears stuck way out.

"Strange to see myself as a Night Elf after having played that game so much." Carl muttered as he poked and prodded his new features. His long eyebrows were almost too much as they were nearly 10 inches long, jutting out horizontally from his face and defying gravity.

After measuring his new Night Elf body, he found that he was 7 foot 2 inches.

"Not as tall as my T-Rex human form, but still damned tall." Carl chuckled. "At least taller than the average NBA player. And very well muscled, too."

Carl stopped flexing in the mirror, glad that no one could see him now.

Before leaving his warehouse, Carl stopped for a frosty mug of Root Beer. Ahh, that hit the spot.

Once he was back on the mountain peak he had picked to be his temporary base, he shrunk his Warehouse portal back down to a microscopic size so it was still open and the farms weren't frozen in time. Reaching out for his magic, he once more returned to his Dragon form.

He wasn't sure what the effect of training in Ki and Profound Energy would be if he did it in his Night Elf shape shift form as opposed to his Dragon form. So he would start the training in his actual body first.

Looking around the peak, Carl still felt a little uneasy. Even though he knew, or at least assumed, that the players couldn't fly, he still didn't feel fully confident that he was safe.

So he put up some temporary wards on the clearing around him to make noticing him next to impossible and give him a warning if someone did manage to get close.

When he was done, he felt a little winded. His magic was only that of a level 1 noob, even though he was a Dragon with 6 drops of Dragon God blood, he was still a noob. But at least he had some warning and hiding wards up, so he could get started on making himself not a noob.

Settling down in a comfortable sprawl, Carl brought up the mnemonics and formula of the Great Way of the Buddha and began absorbing the surrounding energy into his body as Ki.

He soon lost track of time as he fell into a training trance.

* * *

Several hours later Carl finished the first stage of the Great Way of the Buddha technique. This was the third time he was training it, and it had gotten even easier to complete the steps.

He took the time to stretch, spreading out his wings, arching his back, stretching out his tail. His claws dug into the ground as he stretched first his front legs out in front of him; then his back legs one at a time.

His stomach gurgled in hunger, so he shook himself and shrunk down into his Night Elf form. Reopening his Warehouse portal on a nearby rock face big enough, Carl entered before shrinking the portal as small as it could go without closing.

No one was likely to find it if it was on some random mountain and too small to fit a needle through. (Knock on wood.)

Instead of heading for his kitchen to cook a meal, Carl continued on through his Warehouse until he saw the door he was looking for labeled "Hunting/Grazing Grounds".

He found himself in the hunting lodge once more. Looking around and smiling at the nice digs, since it felt good to own something nice like the lodge, Carl didn't slow down as he made his way to the balcony.

Once outside, he changed back to his Dragon form and took to the skies, soaring out as he looked around for some prey to fill his belly.

Several minutes later he spotted some flying Pterodactyls. Smirking down at the preoccupied aerial dinosaurs, he judged their relative positions and speeds. Folding in part of his wings, he tipped over and dived.

Speeding down, he watched the dinosaur carefully for any indication it was going to dodge. The ignorant dinosaur continued on is merry way, unaware that death was swooping down on it.

Bam!

The collision immediately knocked the large flying dinosaur unconscious. Gripping his breakfast with all four legs, Carl once more stretched out his wings and glided down to a nearby clearing.

Without any more ado, he began tearing up huge chunks of meat, raising his head and gulping them down his gullet.

Just like when he was in his Shadow Panther or T-Rex form, the blood and meat of a fresh caught prey just tasted so good. Carl spent some time devouring the Pterodactyl, enjoying his first hunt in his Dragon body.

Sure, he had memories of hunting. But he wasn't really counting them, because when he woke up and "remembered" his early life, he found out he was only a level 1. That meant that more than likely all those memories of hunting prey were not real. If they were, he would have leveled up at some point, right?

This world insertion just had to mess with his head. He had just come to the conclusion that when he entered the world his body was regressed in age and his personality matrix was living the whole life until his blocked memories were released, thus "waking" him up.

And now here in this world the Jump Chain gives him a situation that looks very much like his memories are faked and his body was only just created and placed into the world as he was woken up.

Shaking his head, he refused to think of it any further, for fear of doubting his familial bonds with those he knew in past worlds. It just didn't really matter, anyway. The Jump Chain is full of magical shenanigans. And even if the initial connection was faked by the Jump Chain, the subsequent 10 years or more he spent with them meant that they were still his loved ones. Or as Naruto would say, his "precious people".

Once he finished eating, he cast some cleaning charms on himself and then leapt into the air, flying back to the hunting lodge. The bones and scraps he left behind for some scavengers to enjoy.

With his hunger sated for the time being, he exited his Warehouse and returned to the mountain side he had temporarily settled on. Lying back down in a comfortable position, he began utilizing his profound energy cultivation technique. Thankfully this world didn't restrict his cultivation like the Dinosaur Gauntlet had.

In just a matter of hours, he had already solidified his realm in the first level of the Elementary Profound Realm. It really was getting easier each time he started from scratch to advance his training.

Carl had decided that he would train for some time in his Profound Cultivation as well as Ki before he left to do anything in this world. It would give him a measure of strength to protect himself with while he leveled up.

When he had been meditating and filing away his memories, he had paid particular attention to the memories he had of fleeing the Dragon Hold. He wanted to find that place as soon as possible to see what he had to work with.

It was his Dragon Flight, after all. They would be joining him on the Jump Chain. But the disaster that struck them in his memories had him worried about what he would find. Would there even be any Dragons left alive when he got back? Would he have to work hard to get them to make him their leader and follow him? Or would the Jump Chain fiat kick in and smooth everything out?

He had selected the location of the Dragon Hold himself, and judging from the memories of his escape from the enemies, Carl figured that it was where he had put it, in the mountains between the Redridge Mountains and the Swamp of Sorrows.

So he would be returning their soon to investigate what was remaining of his Silver Dragon Flight. But for now, more training!

* * *

Carl was just finishing up a training session when he a shadow passed over the clearing on his mountain top and over him.

His head snapped around, his eyes scanning for the source of the shadow. For something to cast a shadow like that meant something was flying around nearby, and he didn't want to be surprised by some threat ambushing him.

Based on the direction the shadow was flying in, and judging by the angle of the sun in the sky, Carl soon spotted what had cast the shadow.

He focused his vision on it, and was shocked. In the air above him he saw another Silver Dragon flying by. He narrowed his eyes at the sight of the Dragon. How much of a coincidence was it that he just happened to see a member of his Dragon Flight so soon and by chance?

Was it the Jump Chain fiat, ensuring that he connected with his Dragon Flight, since he paid good cp for it?

'Well, whatever caused it, I need to talk to that Dragon.' Carl promptly crouched down and flung himself into the air, unfurling his wings and flapping to gain additional height and forward speed to chase down the Silver Dragon in his sights.

After several minutes, he was soon close enough to call out in the Draconic language to gain the Dragon's attention.

When the other Dragon turned his head and saw Carl, he almost stopped flapping his wings, so great was his shock. Carl felt a bit of concern and embarrassment on behalf of Dragons everywhere at the idea that a Dragon would fall out of the sky, even if he was suffering from a huge shock for whatever reason.

"Young Master Carl, is that you?" The other Dragon called out.

Carl himself was startled, but continued to maintain his flight. He came to a halt in air as he maintained his position relative to the other Dragon.

Hearing that the other Dragon knew him, he narrowed his eyes in thought, sifting through his memories. There was one Dragon in his memories that resembled this one in front of him, but he never heard the other Dragon's name.

"I recognize you, though I don't know your name. And yes, my name is Carl." Carl responded.

"Young Master Carl, my name is Mortic, I was a common and humble blacksmith Dragon back when you were introduced to the Flight. I still remember the day when your father, Lord Camden, proudly showed you off to the rest of the flight as his successor to the leadership of the Flight."

Carl "remembered" that day very well. The crowds of Dragons in the banquet were quite rowdy, and the Dragonspawn worked overtime bringing food and drink to the feast.

"Follow me; we have some things to talk about." Carl ordered as he wheeled around to return to the clearing on the mountain peak where he had been training. The older Dragon didn't hesitate and followed Carl down to land.

While Carl was still somewhat guarded, the older Dragon's immediate obedience to his words and the knowledge that said the Silver Dragon Flight would be loyal to him caused Carl to relax a little bit while confronting an unknown variable.

The Dragon named Mortic also recognized Carl from his features taken from his father, the previous Flight Leader, as well as from the glimpse he had of him as a whelpling. He knew his name, which indicated he very well knew who Carl was, which lent credence to him being a loyal member of the Silver Dragon Flight.

Carl was also pleased to see that the **Probing Eye** perk he picked up from the HSDK world worked just as well on Dragons as it did on humans. So he could see that Mortic fully intended to be honest and forthright with his answers.

Once the two dragons were sitting across from each other, and Carl had recast some privacy and hiding spells to keep their conversation uninterrupted, he turned to finding out as much as he could about Mortic and the Silver Dragon Flight.

"It has been many years since I saw any other Silver Dragons, Mortic." Carl kept his attention on the older dragon, watching his reactions. "Tell me what you remember about that night when we were attacked, and what has been happening with the Flight ever since."

"Yes, young master Carl. The night of the Raid I was busy in my little corner, forging a new sword that had been ordered by a Gnome. I had just quenched the blade when I heard a commotion out in the halls. I made my way to see what was happening, and saw cloaked figures attacking our Dragons and Dragonspawn everywhere."

Mortic paused to gaze into space, reliving that horrible night.

"I joined the effort to attack back, but there were too many of them and they were too strong." Mortic shook his head in dismay. "We were near the egg crèche. The Warrior Oliver, who was in charge of defense, singled me and two other Dragons out. We were to grab as many eggs as we could and escape the death trap. Warrior Oliver and his men covered our retreat."

"We managed to get away, but Fausic, Mauret, and I had only managed to save a small part of the eggs. A short time later, six of the Dragon eggs hatched. While my two fellow dragons watched over the whelplings, I snuck back to the Dragon Hold to see what had become of the place and find out if there was still a flight. All that was left was 21 Dragonspawn that managed to escape the destruction."

The pain easily visible on Mortic's face told Carl everything about how much despair that discovery had shook the older Dragon.

"After talking with the Dragonspawn, I rejoined the two Dragons that were watching over the six hatchlings and the remaining eggs of both Dragons and Dragonspawn that still had some time before they hatched. We made our way back to the Hold. We repaired what we could, and continued to live on quietly, afraid that if anyone saw us, we would be attacked again."

Carl spent some time digesting the information from Mortic's words.

"Who was our enemy that staged the Raid?" Carl asked.

"We don't know. They all wore dark clothes and masks. They never said a word, as far as I know." The older Dragon looked apologetic to not have an answer for Carl.

Carl hummed in thought as he considered what he was going to do. There were nine Dragons and 21 Dragonspawn in his Dragon Flight. And judging by the timidity and fear evident in Mortic, they were a broken lot. Crushed under the terror and helplessness of the Raid.

Not exactly the big and dangerous Dragon Flight he expected to get after shelling out the cp. But, they were his. And he wasn't going to abandon them.

"Why were you flying around so openly then, if you were afraid of bringing our enemies back down upon us?" Carl finally asked Mortic.

"I…I don't really know why, Young Master Carl. I just had a…feeling that flying in this area was the thing I absolutely had to do. And now that I've seen you, Young Master, I must say that it was likely divine intervention to be reunited with our future Flight Leader!"

Carl simply smiled and nodded at the other Dragon. Jump Chain Shenanigans could be considered divine intervention.

His original plan had been to train up his Ki and Profound Cultivation to a certain level. Once he was able to use his profound energy to access the Heavenly Time Pearl, he could enter the time compression and train all the way up to Sovereign Profound Realm, access his dimensional pocket, and pull out the Yamato.

Once he had access to his technology, finding the Dragon Flight's castle Hold would be that much easier.

But now that he had a guide here in front of him to guide him in, it would be no problem to rejoin his Dragon Flight.

He still planned to do things a certain way and ease into his new role. But starting out at his Flight's Hold where he could set up base was the right way to go, now that he had a guide to get there and wouldn't have to fly all over the place in plain view of anyone around.

"Okay, then. Let's set off for the Hold, Mortic. I'll need you to lead the way." Carl gestured for the other Dragon to go ahead and take off and he would follow.

"Of course, Young Master Carl."

The two Dragons threw themselves into the air, and Carl followed the other one to the east.


	77. Azeroth 2

"We've arrived, young master." Mortic's emotions were hard to hold back as he showed Carl to the entrance to their Dragon Flight.

Carl landed next to Mortic and looked at his surroundings, faint memories surfacing in his mind from years ago. His wings were folded on his back and his tail swayed back and forth as he entered his old home.

The inside of the cave entrance looked like a natural cave at first, but once they passed the first turn, the walls took on a more crafted look. Carl wondered if they had left the entrance natural looking as camouflage, to keep it from being spotted so easily.

The artistic pillars with carvings of all kinds of animals and plants were interspersed around the cavern, giving one a feeling of exquisiteness. At the end of the entrance Hall, Carl saw a pair of large, ornately carved stone doors. The doors easily opened from just a word by Mortic.

"How has the Flight been since I left, Mortic?" Carl asked.

"It has been…difficult, Young Master." Mortic grimaced. "Many of us were captured in The Raid. Many more were killed. For years we feared you were among the captured." Mortic paused, and Carl didn't seek to interrupt the heavy air of grief. "There are only a handful of us left. And those of us who are adults were too old and don't have the strength to do much more than hold on. We've been surviving, but it has been difficult."

Carl hummed in response. He was reviewing what he remembered of the flight before he made a run for it. The more he remembered, the angrier he got. He knew, or assumed, these were implanted memories. But the moment he came here, to this world, they were made real.

He remembered his hatching, and how his parent Dragons watched over him and his siblings in pride as they learned and played.

He remembered growing up in the hatchling weir deep in a pocket dimension deep in the mountin. He rambunctiously played with his siblings and cousins, the human equivalent of tag and hide and seek, as well as dragon games, such as catch a wing.

As they grew older, they were introduced to games by the adults to hone their dragon traits. They played with mana, feeling and playing with it. They studied tomes and played with well crafted toys that taught them the basics of crafting.

He and many of his brood siblings would sneak around the crafting halls, watching the adult dragons in various forms as they crafted many wondrous and magical items.

Carl had no idea if the other dragon flights had schooling. But the Silver Dragon Flight that focused on Crafting wasn't going to leave their young dragonlings ignorant. They had various classes and training sessions.

That warm time in his memories ended in blood, when he escaped from those shadowy robed figures that were trying to capture him. He saw many of his siblings caught, and he could do nothing about it.

Carl's jaw clenched as he looked at the empty halls as he followed Mortic. He realized just how bad the raid had been. His memories had dozens of dragons flying or walking around these halls. Now, they were empty, leaving an echoing and hollow feeling inside him.

They finally arrived at one particular hall, which was actually lit up and warm. Inside the door, Carl saw two elderly dragons looking over and teaching six smaller Dragons that were less than half Carl's age and size. There were only 21 dragonspawn doing chores in the area.

The dragonspawn were like draconic centaurs. Their lower bodies were that of a dragon, four legs and a tail. Their humanoid torsos, arms, and heads were layered in scales instead of skin and hair. They were the same silver and blue color of the Silver Dragon Flight.

Carl looked over at Mortic after a moment of watching the young dragons learning. "When will I meet the rest of the Dragon Flight?" Carl asked the old dragon.

"This _is _the entire flight." Mortic whispered with a tone of grief and shame. "Aside from the few eggs we saved."

Carl's eyes widened in shock at the news. He had memories of dozens of dragons, and hundreds of dragonspawn.

"This is all that's left?" Carl whispered back in shock. He was finding it hard to swallow the news that there were so few of them. He had hoped that Mortic's previous reporting of numbers was only what he and the two elder Dragons had saved. He had hoped more had escaped and returned.

"We were only able to save two newly laid batches of eggs." Mortic whispered in a hoarse voice. "But that's it. The raiders came so suddenly, and attacked so fiercely, we were overwhelmed before we were able to organize a defense. They captured or killed so many of us. They smashed so many of our eggs. I couldn't protect them at all."

Carl body was trembling in extreme anger. He found himself doing some breathing exercises to keep from exploding.

After some time he gained control over his rampant emotions. When Carl finally gained full control once more, he realized that his dragon memories and hormones definitely affected him strongly. His new body felt emotions quite strongly. It made sense, because he was effectively a dragon teenager.

"Who were they?" Carl rhetorically asked. "Why did they attack us?" Carl asked Mortic in a low tone.

"Our Dragon Flight's specialty has been both a blessing and curse to us." Mortic sighed as he avoided Carl's gaze while looking over the young dragons learning from the old dragons.

Most of the young dragons were in their dragon forms, but a couple of the young students were shape shifted into their Night Elf form so they could crowd around the books they were reading together.

"We have a specialization of magic and crafting." Mortic began explaining with a sigh when Carl steadily gazed at him, silently demanding answers. "We always strove to push the boundaries of our skills. Like combining our crafting skills with magic. The magical weapons and armor we made were the best in the world. Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Leatherworking. You name it, if it was even vaguely connected with crafting, we made it, and we made the best."

"But in order to become better artisans, we committed two significant blunders. The first was that in order to gain more materials to continue to develop our crafting skills, we traded what we made in order to gain wealth and materials. This let everyone know just how good the products we made were."

Carl followed Mortic as they left the study and training room behind without interrupting the lessons. Mortic continued showing Carl around so he could familiarize himself with the mountain.

"When one has a treasure, others will covet that treasure. And we had a treasure that was desired by everyone." Mortic continued in a mournful and regretting tone. "We became complacent and overly proud of our skills."

Carl felt a chill flow down his spine and wings. He could see how the various unscrupulous factions would have wanted to steal the things they made. Treasures were always coveted.

"The other big sin we committed was that we focused too much on crafting. Slowly over the years, we spent less time on training to fight, and more time on crafting. So over the years we became weak. We were a soft target, easily overcome. We relied too much on our assumption that everyone else needed us to make tools for them, and assumed no one would dare cross us. Despite being able to craft the most exquisite weapons and armor, we didn't know how to use them to protect ourselves."

Carl joined Mortic in sighing at that point. It was a bleak look at how such a glorious race lost their ability to defend themselves and fell to the bottom.

"So who was it?" Carl asked again when it looked like Mortic wasn't going to continue "Do we really have no clues?"

"We don't know. They were in disguise. And they were already inside the mountain before we knew it. They somehow bypassed the defenses."

Carl growled at that information. It meant there was likely a traitor in their midst. Traitors deserved death. If he ever found out who it was…

"So we don't know who they were, and they are still out there somewhere, probably waiting for us to get just strong enough to raid again?" Carl summed up.

Carl was rewarded with a sad smile from Mortic.

"You've summed up the situation succinctly, young master." Mortic affirmed. "This is the old Lord's quarters. It is yours now."

Carl gazed at the large and ornate doors they stood in front of. He got the feeling that the only reason so much of the beautiful stone artwork remained was that it was not done in precious metals, but stone. If they were gilded with gold, for instance, then it would have been dug up and stolen by the raiders.

Taking a deep breath, Carl entered the previous quarters of the leader of the flight. Looking around the room, Carl realized there wasn't anything left over. It was a bare set of rooms, not even a desk or bed left behind.

"After the raid, we three elders gathered the remaining eggs, the few remaining Dragonspawn, and cleaned up as best we could." Mortic mentioned as Carl gazed at the empty room. "Most of our records were destroyed or stolen. We've been teaching the new hatchlings from our memories, but so much was lost."

Just those few sentences from Mortic let Carl immediately know the poor state of the remnants of his Dragon Flight.

Carl felt regret at that moment. While Mortic didn't know who their enemy was, Carl had a pretty good idea due to having picked three instances of the **Hunted** drawback.

He had picked three enemies in this world. The Iron Horde, Helya, and the Cult of the Damned. Carl had picked them as enemies because they didn't become the major threat of the world of Azeroth until after the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Carl had assumed it would limit his interactions with the factions, since they would basically be inactive.

But Carl had miscalculated greatly. Just because these three groups of enemies weren't currently strong enough to dominate the world, didn't mean they couldn't stage a raid on one single Dragon Flight that had grown weak. And now Carl's people had suffered greatly because he wanted to maximize his cp gain.

Carl realized that while each of the enemies weren't the major enemy faction of the Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King expansions, it didn't mean they had zero presence in the world. Obviously they had been in the world for many years and had many members, which made them dangerous.

Meanwhile, Carl's Silver Dragon Flight now only had three elderly dragons, six young dragons, younger than him even, 21 Dragonspawn, another six Dragon eggs, and 19 more Dragonspawn eggs.

Carl began furiously thinking of ways to secure the remnant of his forces so they wouldn't be snuffed out in a moment by the enemy.

But there were many variables that Carl couldn't account for at this time. Based on what he had seen already of the world by running into those player characters, and seeing that they had been to the instance dungeon of the Deadmines, Carl was unsure just how much of this world was like a game, and how much of the oddities was simply the expression of magic in this world.

Earlier in the day, after seeing the band of adventurers who sounded like player characters, Carl had looked over his self portrait in the corner of his field of vision that showed he was level 1, and had a green bar for Health, a blue bar for Mana, and a yellow bar for energy, which was the Rogue's usable pool of energy . He had felt a sense of magic from the visual construct, so he had sent a probe of magic to it.

As a result, his character screen had popped up, startling Carl quite a bit.

Was this world a game? Did this world's magic express itself in a game like way? What about the player characters that were talking about expansions? Was there some strange connection between this real world and some other Earth's video game? If he died here, would it be like a game and he came back to life after his spawn timer counted down, or if his spirit made its way to a graveyard? Or would death be the ending of his Jump Chain?

Carl certainly wouldn't test out the speculation that he could make use of the graveyards to spawn like the players could. Chances were that a death even here would count as a failure for his jump chain.

Carl had put aside his questions for the time being since he was only level 1 with no knowledge about the world. He had avoided the confrontation with the players because there was no benefit to him sticking around. He wouldn't get any answers from fighting random players.

After the chance meeting with Mortic, it had taken them a couple hours to fly from Westfall to the Redridge Mountains where the Hold was, and it was already evening.

Looking at the expectant face of Mortic, Carl sighed.

"Mortic?" Carl looked levelly at the old dragon. "I'm going to spend the evening thinking the situation over. I'll meet the rest of the dragons in the morning. In the meanwhile, let them keep to their routine. I'll have more orders on how we'll proceed in the morning meeting."

"Yes, young lord." Mortic replied, but continued standing there, staring.

"Was there anything else Mortic?" Carl inquired.

"No, young lord." This time Mortic got the hint Carl was giving him and excused himself from the Lord's Chambers to go and do whatever he usually did, leaving Carl alone in the empty chambers.

Carl took another long breath in and out while mentally cataloging the various things he needed to take care of.

After some time, Carl reached inside himself for his magic, and pulled on it just so. His large dragon formed shimmered with light. The light shrunk down to the size of a humanoid, before fading away, leaving behind the sight of Carl's Night Elf form.

Carl looked down at his heavily muscled 7 foot 2 inch form. His silvery hair fell below his shoulders and his long ears flopped behind his head when Carl moved his head.

Carl chuckled a bit as he looked over his Night Elf form. It actually felt pretty good to be over a foot taller than he usually was, more dominating, especially in a world that relied so much on strength.

The Orcs were likely to be about the same height as him, while the Tauren were likely to be taller, so he wasn't always going to win out on the height field, unless he reverted to his normal dragon form. Then he would tower over all the Alliance or Horde races.

Opening his character screen again, Carl looked over his specs. He ruefully shook his head at seeing the level 1. Carl assumed that since he only just now arrived in world, all the memories he had of hiding and fighting various creatures for survival didn't actually happen, since he didn't level up at all.

With the amount of magic and reality bending power of the jump chain, Carl couldn't be totally sure about that assumption. It didn't even really matter anyway. He was here, in the present, and had to do everything he could to salvage the situation.

Looking over his stats, Carl realized that he was much more powerful than a normal level 1, judging by his 2,000 hp and 4,000 mp alone. Looking at his Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intelligence, and Spirit numbers, Carl saw that he really was stronger than a normal level 1.

'It's probably because of my race, being a dragon and all.' Carl thought as he looked over his character screen. 'The Strength, Stamina, and Intelligence stats are much higher than the rest. Probably also because I have three classes, instead of just one.'

Looking over his character and equipment screen, Carl saw what he would expect to see if he was playing the game. An image of his character and what he was wearing was surrounded by equipment slots. On the left and right were a vertical line of eight equipment slots, with three more on the bottom of the screen.

On the left were slots for his head, neck, shoulders, back, chest, shirt, tabard, and wrist. On the right were slots for his hands, waist, legs, feet, two rings, and two trinkets. On the bottom were a slot for a weapon for each hand and a third for a ranged item of some sort.

For a Mage, the ranged slot could be for a wand. For a Paladin, it could be a relic of some sort. For a Rogue, it could be a throwing weapon, bow, crossbow, or gun.

The only filled equipment slots were his chest, legs, and feet. He was wearing some normal looking linen clothes that were white in quality.

Generally speaking, the equipment quality started at grey color as utter trash, white was normal, green was uncommon, blue was rare, purple was epic, and orange was legendary.

Each of the pieces of equipment could enhance his main stats, as well as provide an armor bonus, and add to his secondary stats or effects.

The main stats were Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Stamina, and Spirit. The secondary stats were things like critical strike rating, hit, dodge, block, etc. And the effects could be anything that enhanced his abilities, like making him run faster to taking less time to cast a fireball.

Carl saw that his white starter equipment provided a grand total of five armor between the robe on his chest and his pants.

"Truly pathetic." Carl laughed at his starting armor. It was the next thing to useless.

Looking in the lower right corner of his vision, Carl saw a small backpack image. Sending a magical thought probe to it, Carl saw that it was his Adventurer's Bag that he had purchased for 100 cp. It had 20 slots, which was pretty good size for a bag, most of the player characters were stuck with only 16 slot bags at the start during this expansion.

Inside the backpack three slots were already filled. The first slot had his hearthstone (that wasn't set for anywhere yet), The Blue Orchid, which currently looked like Ashbringer, and an Artifact Forge.

Mentally interfacing with the Artifact Forge, Carl immediately knew how to use it to alter his weapon's shapes. In the future he could also use it to forge weapons and armor, as well as cutting and shaping gems and other such jewelry. He could use it as a medium to imbue his equipment with magic. It was an all around useful tool for any kind of crafting Carl cared to try.

'Well, at least the 0 cp I spent on this Artifact Forge was well spent.' Carl sardonically thought.

Looking at his magical HUD once more, Carl saw some icons just to the left of the tiny backpack. Probing each of them, Carl found that each icon had a specific purpose. One opened up his spellbook that listed all the spells he knew.

As a level 1 Mage he had rank 1 Fireball and rank 1 Frost Amor, a spell that enhanced his armor and slowed enemies by chilling them.

As a level 1 Paladin he had rank 1 Holy Light, a healing spell, and rank 1 Seal of Righteousness, a spell that enhanced his damage with Holy damage.

As a level 1 Rogue he had rank 1 Sinister Strike, a damage dealing attack with a melee weapon that adds a 'combo point' each time he attacks with Sinister Strike. A rogue could gather up to 5 combo points and use them in finishing moves that would use the number of combo points to enhance the damage or effect. The other spell he had as a rogue was rank 1 Eviscerate, a damage dealing finishing move that dealt more damage the more combo points he had.

He also saw there was a map icon. When he mentally selected it, a mini-map showed up in the upper right hand of his field of vision. Playing with it, Carl found that he could expand the map to fill up his vision. Carl could zoom out and see the entire world of Azeroth, or zoom in and see only his immediate area. He kept the mini map small and in the upper right corner of his vision.

Looking at the rest of the icons, Carl saw that there was an icon for his talents selection, which was currently greyed out. If it was anything like the game, he would get access to it when he got to level 10.

He would gain talent points as he leveled, which he could assign to the talent trees to enhance his various spells and abilities, or learn new ones.

There was an icon for his Achievements, which was currently greyed out. In the game he could gain titles and prizes for completing Achievements. None of the titles or prizes increased his combat capability, they were just for fun.

Carl had no idea if the Achievement system here would continue being so useless or if it would serve a purpose.

Next he looked at his quest log, which was currently empty. Apparently he would be gaining quests to do things in this world.

Next he looked over a social tab that told him he had no friends and no guild.

There were two more greyed out icons, one for Player versus Player, and another for Dungeon finding. Would he be able to look for groups for PvP and Dungeon instances? Carl was wary about the idea of PvP instances. He remembered dying quite a lot in the various battle ground back in the day, and wasn't sure he wanted to try his luck any time soon.

There was an icon for his pets and mounts. He didn't have any pets currently, but Carl saw icons for three mounts. One was his Paladin charger mount, another was the Yamato, and the third was his Profound Ark.

Carl selected the Yamato, and was pleased to see it appear in front of him after a second of summoning. He was very relieved that he had access to his ship already. When he was in the dinosaur gauntlet, he had been forced to cultivate as fast as he could before he could retrieve his ship and make use of the technology.

Putting aside his ship for the moment, Carl looked at the remaining icons in the lower right of his magical HUD. One of them opened up his reputation tab. He saw that he was friendly with the Silver Dragon Flight, and neutral with the various Alliance factions. Carl speculated that since he had interacted with some Alliance players earlier, that was why he even had them on his reputation screen, since he had no other factions there.

The final icon opened up a list of his skills. At the moment, it showed Class skills, Weapon Skills, Armor Proficiencies, and Languages.

His class skills showed the nine proficiencies that he had purchased for the three classes. Fire, Frost, and Arcane for Mage. Holy, Protection, and Retribution for Paladin. And Outlaw, Assassination, and Subtlety for Rogue.

His weapons skills were currently sitting at 1 / 5 for the various weapons he could wield. Every level up his weapons skills potential would increase by 5. In the game there were calculations that determined hit rate against enemies based off weapon skill and level. A higher level enemy was harder to hit, especially with a low weapon skill.

Since there were no limits to what weapon he could wield, he had all of them listed. Swords, 2h (two handed) swords, maces, 2h maces, axes, 2h axes, daggers, unarmed, staves, polearms, bows, crossbows, guns, and thrown.

He saw that he could wear cloth, leather, and mail armor, and wield a shield. He guessed that he wouldn't be allowed to wear plate armor until he reached level 40.

And he had a 300 / 300 proficiency in Common, Dragon, and Orcish.

"Well, at least I'll be able to talk to both factions." Carl mused. "Although this is making me wonder more and more how game like the world is, seeing all these interface pages."

With all the various functions of his magical HUD looked over, Carl turned his attention to the Yamato. Mentally interfacing with his ship, Carl had it teleport him to the bridge. He was quite pleased that even though he was a dragon now, his ship still recognized him or his magic. He chalked it up to the magic of the jump chain.

Interfacing with the computer, he set it the task of scanning the mountain stronghold of the Silver Dragon flight and designing and building a warding system for it and the surrounding area. The first thing was to secure the remnants of his flight. The dragon flight that would be following him from world to world now was quite pathetic. But he could protect and build it back up, starting from now.

Not to mention that if his dragon flight continued to perfect their crafting skills, they would continue to run into jealous thieves in future worlds. So it was good to start laying a foundation for them to be able to protect themselves, as well as carry out assigned duties in whatever world they ended up in.

With the defense needs of the flight being addressed by the Yamato, Carl made his way to the medical facilities. Frowning at the small size of the ward, Carl instead made his way to the holodeck. He programmed a large space with medical recording equipment.

Stepping inside, Carl spent some time making sure that all the equipment worked properly. He had the Yamato VI set up a study and examination of his new body. He then transformed into his dragon body and began a series of tests and calisthenics designed to determine his capabilities.

Once he had run through the first set of tests, he then transformed back to his Night Elf form and ran the same set of tests. The tests were exhaustive, and Carl was happy once they were done. He planned to run each of the dragons in his flight through a similar set of tests in the near future to gain as much data as possible. With his years of experience in training Humans, he was sure that he would soon have a very efficient method of training for himself and his dragons.

With the testing done, Carl turned to the next thing on his list. He retired to his quarters on the ship and began meditating.

He had years worth of memories of running around and fighting outside stuffed in his head that he wanted to go through again. It would give him insight into how his dragon form moved and attacked so he could build a martial art for his dragon form.

Not to mention his new skills as a Rogue, Mage, and Paladin needed to be added in there, as well as the new knowledge of Crystal Artificing that he found in his brain when he looked at the page that had details about his professions.

After spending a bit of time organizing all his new memories and knowledge, Carl then began practicing his ki training.

As eager as he was to see how leveling up here in the World of Warcraft would affect his magic, and record that process with his technology to gain insight into it, he needed to get strong so he could survive. So a bit of the basic training before he ventured out was needed.

It was a world that was built on the very idea of everyone fighting in war. Two factions battle for dominance, and all that.

* * *

By morning time, Carl was reasonably satisfied with his progress. Getting up from his bed, he made his way to the bridge to see how the VI of the Yamato had done on designing a defensive wards for the Flight's home.

Looking over the specs of the defensive system the Yamato designed, Carl was pleased. He was even happier when he found that the ship had finished manufacturing the Ward Stones. Storing large amounts emergency materials in the Yamato's storage holds had been the correct choice, since it allowed the Yamato to make use of them to build the defensive ward stone overnight.

To experiment, Carl tried putting the six foot tall ward stone into his backpack and was happy to see it fit like a charm, taking up only one slot. Magic backpacks, gotta love em.

With everything in the Yamato done for the time being, Carl exited the ship and put the Yamato back in the mount summon space that he now had. He then turned back into his Silver Dragon form and exited his new chambers, a little surprised to see Mortic standing there waiting for him.

"Good morning, Young Lord. Did you sleep well?" Mortic asked with a bow of his draconic head.

"It was a pleasant rest." Carl deflected. "Take me to meet the rest of the flight. It's time to get to know them."

With a nod, Mortic led the way to a dining hall. When Carl arrived, he saw the six young and two elder dragons chowing down while the dragonspawn were serving large portions of food. Carl chose not to interrupt their meal, and joined them instead. He began the process of getting to know them over breakfast.

The two other elder dragons were named Fausic and Mauret. Carl could see that they, like Mortic, were only level 40. Truly, the Silver Dragon Flight hadn't kept up their martial strength.

He wasn't truly sure if there were limits to how strong the inhabitants of Azeroth could be, but if there were, then before the Burning Crusades expansion came out the level cap was 60. So he knew that the two old dragons, if they were indicative of the flight as a whole, had not maximized their level or strength.

The six cheerful young dragons were a stark contrast to the three elder dragons. The young dragons had only hatched after the Raid, so this life and the dragons around them were all they knew. They had heard the stories from the elders, but it really meant nothing to them. The fact that they were cheerful and upbeat actually made Carl impressed a bit by their good attitudes.

There were three girls, named Jayne, Joyce, and June. The three male dragons were named James, Jeff, and Jonah.

The edge of Carl's mouth twitched when he heard all the J names. He didn't know what to think of it, and just moved on while memorizing their names.

Carl spent the rest of the morning talking with the young dragons as he got to know them, what they had learned, and what they liked doing. Carl was taking mental notes of just what further lessons to teach the young ones to help them survive. At some point he would also have to work on leveling them up, since they too were only level 1.

He could already tell that he would have to figure out how to train the dragons in their humanoid forms, as well as coming up with methods of fighting in their dragon forms. Beyond that he would need to come up with tactics of how to fight as a mixed group, with the humanoid forms mixed in with the dragon forms. Their sheer size in their dragon forms made it difficult to attack together as a group.

One of the things Carl noticed was that he didn't get a sense of a specific class from any of the younger dragons, while Carl himself had the Rogue, Mage, and Paladin classes. Carl had the idea that once he had paved the way a bit with the Alliance, he would bring these youngsters to get a class and help them level up.

He didn't want his dragon flight to be vulnerable and easily attacked in the future, so they would all have to become strong.

"And what's your name?" Carl asked a nearby dragonspawn who was waiting to see if there were any orders for him. He looked quite surprised at first to hear that one of their Lords wanted to know who he was.

"Goram, my lord."

"You seem to be in charge of managing the dragonspawn, Goram. Is that correct?" Carl asked, ignoring the looks of confusion on the dragon's faces over why he would talk to a dragonspawn for anything other than orders.

"Yes, my lord. I'm the oldest of those remaining and am in charge." Goram respectfully answered.

"Good. I want you to gather up all the dragonspawn and join us. I need everyone who is a member of the flight to be present when I set up our new defenses, otherwise they will be evicted or even hurt when the defenses become active."

"Does that mean we need to bring our unhatched eggs, my lord?" Goram asked.

"No. If they are hatched inside the wards they will automatically be recognized as a member of the flight." Carl smiled at hearing Goram's question. It meant he was a decent thinker. It's too bad he was only level 34. He couldn't exactly be a great guard of the flight yet. Another thing to do, level up the dragonspawn as another layer of protection.

So many things to do.

Goram bowed and went to make sure all the dragonspawn were present. Once everyone had gathered, Carl led them to the room the Yamato had designated would be the new ward room. It was the nearest room to the center of the mountain hold, and it was close enough to the magic ley line that the Yamato had sensed to hook into the magic flow and power the wards.

Just to be certain that the wards didn't lose power, there was an expanded wizarding space inside the wardstone that held a large Potentia power array. The magic from the ley line would constantly flow through the wardstone and ensure the power array remained fully charged. That way, if there was any disruption to the ley line, the wards wouldn't fall and could remain for many decades before needing a new power source.

The dragons shifted to their humanoid forms before filing inside the newly designated ward room. Carl was pleased to see that all the dragons could pass for Night Elves. That would make it easier for the group to travel incognito outside their mountain when it came time to go level up and gain strength.

Carl pulled out the ward stone and placed it according to the Yamato's calculations. He first placed his drop of blood and used his magic to be recognized as the owner with the highest clearance.

Once done, Carl began gathering blood samples and magical signatures from those present. For the time being, Carl gave each of them resident status. This identity didn't give them any power to make changes, add new residents, or visit security areas without special permissions. The only level of security lower than resident while still being allowed inside the mountain were Guests. Once Carl got to know them better, ensured they were loyal, and increased their strength, he would raise their security levels and privileges so they could be the pillars of the Flight.

With the new defenses in place and backed by over 100 Potentia power cells, Carl knew it would take an extraordinary amount of force to hurt his people, so he felt quite relieved for the time being.

He encouraged everyone to go about their normal daily routine while he and Mortic adjourned to a meeting room. Carl had to work hard to ignore the almost worshiping gaze that Mortic now leveled his way. Every one of the Silver Dragon Flight was especially sensitive to mana. So they all had felt just how powerful their new defenses were, provided by their newly returned leader. Mortic especially was feeling hope for the first time in years.

Mortic was just an average low level blacksmith, so he felt completely unprepared for the role of leader and protector that he had been thrust into. Seeing the returned young flight leader having already done so much gave him immense faith in Carl.

In their night elf forms, Carl and Mortic sat down across from each other at a stone table.

"Mortic, with the disaster of the Raid, you did well to protect what you could and keep them together." Carl started with some encouragement for the old dragon's deeds. "It really is a miracle you were able to do what you did, and you should remember that with pride in your deeds."

"Thank you, young lord. That means a lot, coming from you." Carl ignored the sight of tears as the emotional old dragon felt like all his efforts were truly worth it.

"Now, that said, I need you to continue to work hard here in teaching the young ones." Carl continued. "I'm going to be leaving within a week's time."

"Young Lord!" Mortic desperately looked at Carl with pleading eyes for him not to abandon them.

"Don't worry! The defenses will continue to hold while I'm gone. And I'm not abandoning the flight." Carl reassured the old dragon. "But there are some things I need to do that can't be done while sitting in my room. I need to go out and get stronger. There are bound to be great events that might negatively affect our dragon flight. I need to be aware of these things, so I need to make allies."

Seeing that Mortic had once more calmed down, Carl continued.

"Not to mention that I need to find those of our dragons who were captured. I need to find some word or hint of where they are. Then we can see about attempting to rescue them. But that is a longer term goal. For now, I need to get stronger. Then, I need to make the rest of us stronger. Once we have strength, many problems can be solved that didn't have a solution before."

"So, while I am traveling, getting stronger, and gaining allies, I need to know that our home is well ordered and working hard. Can you do that for me, Mortic?" Carl asked.

"Yes, young lord. I'll ensure everything is running smoothly here." Mortic nodded firmly. He would live up to the expectations of their young flight leader!

"Good. Now, I want you to be especially aware of certain things while I'm gone. First…"

Carl spent the next hour explaining to Mortic what he expected of him, asking questions to get to know their situation better, and settling Mortic's fears of not being able to fulfill his responsibility.

Once the meeting was done, Carl returned back to his room and once more summoned the Yamato. Teleporting inside the ship, Carl made his way to the medical facilities and once more went through the series of tests. He had run out of time earlier that morning, and needed to gather data now that he had advanced in his Ki training.

Thinking about the future training of his Dragon Flight, Carl ordered the Yamato to manufacture another holodeck, or Room of Requirement. He would install it in the mountain. It would also serve as a means to gather all the data on his dragon and dragonspawn's bodies so he could formulate training regimens.

Once that was done, Carl began training again. If there was anything he learned from his time in the History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi world from his martial arts masters, it was that training was a continuous effort. Never stop training!

* * *

The next morning, Carl installed a computer and communications device in his room, before finding a suitable room to install the Room of Requirement. It took some time to get it set up, but once he did, Carl took great pleasure in showing the room off to his flight.

The dragon and dragonspawn's excitement soon disappeared as Carl ran them through a series of calisthenics and exercises to determine their body's foundation and abilities.

Carl smirked a bit at their cries of despair the harder he had them work out. It was music to his ears, and nothing compared to what they would experience in the future.

After two weeks, Carl had set up everything he needed to at the Silver Dragon Flight. His people had defenses, food, and assigned responsibilities to carry on in his absence. It was time to get out and begin leveling up. Time to explore Azeroth.

Carl left in the morning while his flight saw him off. Once out of sight, he pulled out the Yamato and boarded. The cloaking technology should keep him from being detected. He flew the ship towards Elwynn Forest, where Stormwind, the city of the humans of the Alliance was located.

One of the things that was different in this actual world, despite the game elements present, was the size of the world. The map was exactly the same as in the game, it was simply proportionately larger than the game world he had played in previously. Which also meant that there were many more features and thing around than there were in the game. Carl spotted many farms that provided food for the Alliance in the forest below as he stopped near the capital city of the humans. Many of these farms were not present in the game, but they were needed for a real life kingdom to feed itself.

Finding a remote place where no one was present, Carl teleported down to the ground. Instead of putting away the Yamato like before, he ordered it to hover above his location in stealth in order to monitor and record the changes in his body when he began leveling. Carl then made his way to the nearby Northshire Valley.

If he was going to become a member of the Alliance, no matter how temporary, he decided to start in the Human starter area. Based on his magical HUD, quests were available in this world. So he would start doing quests to gain reputation with Stormwind while leveling up.

With his neutral reputation the guards around the valley didn't attack him, though they did eye him warily. After some time running, Carl found himself in front of Deputy Willem. Carl spent a moment eyeing up the shiny golden armor the Deputy had. For only a level 18 he sure had some fancy equipment.

Seeing the golden exclamation point above the Deputy's head, which indicated a quest, Carl sighed. He wasn't sure if he was more relieved that there were quests, or disturbed at the evidence of more game like elements in this world.

Whatever, he was here to grind. Carl opened dialog with the Deputy and accepted the quest to speak with Marshal McBride inside the nearby building.

It was time to get immersed in the World...of Warcraft.


	78. Azeroth 3

Carl stood at the edge of the forest, the monastery building in Northshire Valley standing behind him. Inside the forest he could see level 1 and 2 diseased wolves roaming around aimlessly.

Was the disease addling their minds? Were they acting so aimless because of the game-like elements of this world forced them to?

Carl shrugged. Their nameplates were yellow, indicating they were neutral and wouldn't attack unless attacked first. The quest he received indicated he needed to kill 8 of the diseased guys, so Carl summoned up the Blue Orchid from inside his inner world space.

Carl easily held the two handed plain style claymore looking sword in his right hand. Earlier on he had thought that the Ashbringer style look had made it stick out a little too much for a low level character, so he disguised the Blue Orchid to look like a normal sword.

Before instigating combat, Carl cast Frost Armor on himself, and smiled a bit at the faint air of frostiness that seemed to wrap him up in a hug. It felt so good, probably because of his extraordinary affinity for water and ice.

He then cast the Seal of Righteousness, a Paladin buff that would increase his damage.

Then, just by looking at the nearest diseased wolf and thinking of it, a fireball formed and sped to impact on the wolf's side. Snarling, the creature lunged at Carl, snapping at him. Using his sword, Carl redirected the things jaws away from landing a hit.

Carl's eye twitched in irritation when he saw that his health still took a hit, losing a couple hp. The couple of hp lost was a drop in the bucket, but that wasn't the point. This game like world was clearly messing with him. He had parried the attack, preventing it from landing on him, but still took damage.

Angrily, Carl slashed the wolf with the Blue Orchid. The wolf dropped dead in front of him. Looking at the corpse, Carl calmed back down quickly.

Touching the body, Carl found another game like element. Some fur and teeth popped out of the body. Looking at the corpse, which didn't look any different prior to looting the body, Carl expressionlessly picked up the items and put them in his storage.

Carl had quite a few properties in the world, and he had seen that they were doing business since he had watched them depositing money into the inter-world account that Uncle Pennybags gave him from the Monopoly world.

By now his accounts were quite large, and he had tens of thousands of gold. So keeping the items from these kills that could only give him some few coppers was actually a waste of his time. But…it just felt right to sell off the loot from his first kill. Kind of like the tradition of saving the first dollar someone earned in their business. He would keep the couple coppers he got from his first loot in a frame in his office.

Carl spent a moment more looking at the wolf while thinking over a few conjectures he was developing in his mind due to the combat. After a moment Carl continued to quickly kill the rest of the wolves needed for the quest. Soon enough he fulfilled the quest and turned it in to the quest giver.

A golden light flashed and surrounded him. He sensed an incremental increase in his magic. Looking at his character screen, he saw that he was now level 2. Carl went inside the building and found an empty room where he sat down and started meditating on the differences he felt in his magic, now that he had leveled up.

After some time, he rose to his feet with a thoughtful look on his face. Putting away his thoughts, he exited the building and continued the next quest, killing some rat faced Kobolds behind the building.

He had the Yamato invisibly hovering over him, so it was recording all the information about him and his magical level up as he quested. Collating the information recorded by the Yamato with his personal meditation and sensation would give him that much more information to work with.

Once he finished the quest killing Kobolds, he once more leveled up. Carl returned to the room inside the building and meditated once more on the feeling of leveling up.

There were two basic things that Carl had encountered in this world that greatly caught his interest. The first thing was how, even though he was dodging and parrying the wolves and kobold's attacks, he was still taking damage, as well as how he couldn't yet kill them in a single hit.

The idea had sprouted in Carl's mind that this was how the world's magic manifested. Every creature seemed to have magic inside them, flowing and shaping them. The level system seemed to be an outward indication of how strong their magic was.

And even their physical attacks were imbued with magic. Which is why their attacks could still do damage to him. Even when he physically blocked the attacks, the intent based magic of their attacks still landed on him, damaging his HP.

This led Carl to believe that even the Warrior or Rogue classes, which were ostensibly physical attack classes, used magic. The fact that they leveled up and gained strength or agility simply showed that their magic was inwardly focused so it enhanced their bodies and physical attacks, rather than outwardly expressed. As was the case for Mages who could cast Fire and Ice spells.

The second thing that had caught Carl's attention was the regimented level system that magic took on here. It actually somewhat reminded Carl of how the Profound Cultivation practices were. They too had levels in each Profound Realm. As the cultivator gathered more profound energy and enhanced themselves, their bodies were altered to be able to handle more energy and be stronger and sturdier. And each level was considered a sort of plateau, a new level.

The same thing seemed to be happening here, but with Magic instead of Ki or Profound Energy. So Carl was very interested in learning the secrets of how to develop a Magic cultivation system.

The magic of this world seemed to be focused on battle as a means to level up a person's magic and body. With each enemy defeated, a person gained a small amount of magic or Experience Points to fortify his body with. The people of this world could also offer someone small amounts of magic through issuing Quests. Once the quest was complete, the gathered magic imbued the quester's body.

And when they accumulated enough magic, they leveled up, which meant they were able to handle more magic, causing their bodies to become stronger, or making their available mana pool for spells larger.

Carl once more communicated mentally with the Yamato to be sure it was getting good readings of the changes in his body as he leveled up. Records and scientific methods of analyzing data and changes were an excellent way to guide his discoveries.

Despite the need for personal experience and practice to be capable of wielding the esoteric forces, a regimented and logical way of attacking problems could help shorten the journey of discovery.

Once Carl was assured that the Yamato was still getting good data, he left the room he was meditating in and continued questing. There were more Kobolds out there for him to kill and loot, slowly upgrading his magic a bit at a time.

* * *

The massive wooden gates of Stormwind were opened outward. The stone towers on either side of the gates had a large lion head carving glaring out, daring any intruders to make trouble inside the city on pain of death. Blue lion head banners were hanging from the towers.

A faint smile was lifting the corner of Carl's mouth. Seeing the city in real life in front of his eyes was very different from seeing it on the screen of a game. Especially since the game had such an impact on Carl's life in his original world, traveling to the real world setting engendered such interesting feelings.

It would have been a more touching moment if it wasn't ruined by the sounds of combat and loud cursing and swearing behind him. Especially that one guy who kept yelling "ROFLMAO!" over and over.

Turning around, Carl looked over and watched dozens of Alliance player characters engaged in duels outside the gates.

They were loudly talking about their adventures, about who they thought would win the duels, about various topics of the game.

One of the topics that caught Carl's interest was the opening of the Dark Portal. The Dark Portal was located in the Blasted Lands, which were in the southeast of the Eastern Kingdoms continent. The Dark Portal opening was what signified the start of the Burning Crusades expansion, opening up the floating continent of the Outlands for exploration.

From the talk, Carl realized that the opening of the Dark Portal happened when he had woken up above the exit cave of the Deadmines a couple of weeks ago.

'Damn, I'm pretty far behind the curve level wise.' Carl thought. He had spent the previous day doing all the quests he could in Elwynn Forest and Goldshire, the Alliance town there. He was now level 10. But all the highest level players were already level 60 when the portal opened. At least, according to how the game had gone.

And now, with the Dark Portal opened, the max level had gone up to 70.

Without more data, Carl wasn't positive if those level caps from the game held true here in this game-like world or not. But what he did know, is he had to pick up the pace if he wanted to catch up to the front runners.

A pop up notification appeared in Carl's vision at the same time a challenge flag was thrust into the ground in front of him.

[BubbleHearth wants to duel you. Do you accept? Yes/No.]

Carl looked over and saw a level 60 paladin in full PvP gear (player versus player) jumping up and down and turning around randomly.

He selected 'no'. Why would the weirdo even propose a duel against a level 10?

'What was I thinking about before the interruption?' Carl thought.

A pop up notification appeared in Carl's vision at the same time a challenge flag was thrust into the ground in front of him.

[BubbleHearth wants to duel you. Do you accept? Yes/No.]

Carl's eye started twitching. Looking over at the paladin, he saw the guy was naked except for his drawers.

[Bubblehearth dances with Carl.]

Another notification popped up as the nearly naked Paladin began dancing with him.

Carl selected 'no' on the duel invite.

A pop up notification appeared in Carl's vision at the same time a challenge flag was thrust into the ground in front of him.

[BubbleHearth wants to duel you. Do you accept? Yes/No.]

Carl began grinding his teeth, selected 'no' and began running to the gates of Stormwind. Inside the city the strange Paladin couldn't continue challenging him to a duel.

Once inside, Carl resumed walking, relieved to be away from the crazy naked Paladin.

After some thought, he remembered what he had been thinking about.

The thing that was causing Carl concern was that, since he had a new dragon body that hadn't been trained up, he needed to re-train it on Ki and Profound Cultivation, in addition to spending time leveling up. There were too many demands on his time, so he needed to fix the problem.

The only reasonable answer for this lack of time, in order to accomplish all of his goals was to use the Heavenly Time Pearl.

Previously, in the Dinosaur Gauntlet world, he had inexplicably been banned from gathering Profound Energy from the world, so he had used his inner world's supply of Profound Energy solely for leveling up his cultivation.

But here, in the World of Warcraft, he didn't have that ban. So he could use his inner energy to power the Heavenly Time Pearl to level up his Ki and Profound Cultivation without too much time passing in the outside world. Then he could spend all his time leveling up.

With his decision made, Carl continued towards his destination while enjoying the look and feel of Stormwind. The statues looming over him alongside the bridge into Stormwind proper were well crafted and loomed appropriately.

Carl passed over the bridge and found himself in the Trade District. He ignored the sellers and stores, and made his way directly to the inn. He was going to rent a room, but found that the Inn was one of his properties. Chuckling a bit inside, he still "rented" a room, which set his hearthstone point to Stormwind.

Once he was in the room and locked the doors with orders not to bother him for the next day to the VIs, Carl entered time compression and began training immediately. By now, on his third time of training up a body and having trained hundreds of students, it was a very well known routine, so he easily and smoothly made speedy progress.

* * *

The next morning, in an empty room in an inn in Stormwind, a light flashed and a figure appeared.

Looking around the room, Carl saw that it was empty and relaxed a bit. He left the room and checked in with the managing VI about how business was going in Stormwind, and if there was any information they had gathered from the other properties around Azeroth.

The VI was actually pretty good, and passed information he had overheard about the various areas around Azeroth, and some of what people learned and found. Every little bit of information was important, because Carl couldn't assume that everything would be like in the video game. There were bound to be differences which could trip him up.

One of the good things about the managing VIs was that they could communicate with each other, so they had a wide gossip net spread everywhere. Everything they learned in the various cities was passed on to Carl.

He learned from the VI that he had inns in all the major cities of the world on both the Alliance and Horde side, as well as the goblin cities of Booty Bay, Ratchet, Gadgetzan, and Mudsprocket. He also had inns in Shattrath City, which was the main hub of adventuring in the Outlands.

Carl made sure that the VIs would be especially aware of any information concerning the enemies he gained from the **Hunted** drawback. Especially any word on where the captured Silver Dragon Flight members were kept. He wanted to rescue them, or at least avenge them, before he left this world.

Leaving the inn behind, Carl made his way to the Dwarven District in Stormwind, where he found the Blacksmithing and Mining trainers. Paying a nominal fee, he was quickly made an apprentice Blacksmith and Miner, instantly gaining the basic knowledge of blacksmithing and mining inserted into his mind.

With the air of testing his luck, Carl made his way over to the nearby Engineering trainer, and paid the fee. Much to Carl's delight, he was able to learn engineering as well.

That was one way in which this world, for Carl at least, differed from the game. In the game, each player character could only learn two main professions. But now Carl had three professions learnt.

He swiftly made his way to the Old Town district and learned Cooking, Skinning, and Leatherworking. In the Trade district he picked up the Fishing skill. In the Cathedral Square he picked up First Aid. And in the Mage Quarter he picked up Herbalism, Alchemy, Tailoring, and Enchanting.

Carl knew that in this expansion there was also the Jewelcrafting profession, but at this time he would have to go to Exodar to pick up the skill. So Carl made his way back to the Trade District and looked around. Very soon, he found his target.

"Hey, I'll pay you some gold to open up a portal to Exodar for me." Carl's target, a level 64 female mage, blinked at him for a moment when he suddenly talked to her.

"How much?" HunnyManaBuns asked Carl.

"How does 10 gold sound?" Carl replied.

"Sounds great!"

Carl soon got a party invite, accepted, and passed the 10 gold to HunnyManaBuns. She then opened up a portal to Exodar, and Carl entered the portal.

[Send me a message anytime you need a portal!] HunnyManaBuns enthusiastically told him over the party chat.

[Sure thing.] Carl lied. Once he leveled up a bit, he wouldn't need any help with the portals. He was a mage himself, after all.

Carl looked around at the crashed space ship that was now Exodar, the city of the Draenei. Seeing that he arrived safely, he left the party group.

Carl looked around curiously at the glowing city ship. The Draenei's knowledge of artificing with crystals had allowed the thing to fly away from their doomed home in the Outlands, and crash landed here in Azeroth.

With **The** **Dark Crystal **perk he purchased, Carl was able to understand all the artificing he saw around the city. Many of the items were simply there for lighting. But others provided life support functions, support to keep the ship from falling apart, heating, a public announcement function, and many others.

Carl spotted a guard nearby and asked for directions, and soon found himself possessing the Jewelcrafting profession.

Before leaving the city, Carl made his way over to the Auction House. Since he had so much gold, there was no real reason not to make use of it to make his journey easier. When he talked to an Auctioneer, they brought out a graphic interface for Carl to use to search the auctions.

Carl soon found a Gnomish Army Knife, and purchased it for 11 gold. The knife was something made by Engineers, and it could act as a multifunction tool to replace a skinning knife, mining pick, blacksmiths hammer, Flint and Tender (starting fires for cooking), Gyromatic Micro-Adjuster (Engineering), and Arclight Spanner (Engineering).

Carl then searched the auction and found four more Travelers Bags for his use, though they were only 16 slots each.

He knew he could use his pocket dimension or Warehouse to easily store anything he needed, but it just felt right to purchase the bags. He could only blame his many years of playing the damned game for his need to even have the bags in the first place.

Scanning the auction house, Carl soon purchased at least one of every crafting material there was. He was going to add them to his Farms and start producing crafting materials while he was busy leveling up.

He stopped by the mailbox and picked up everything he purchased into his bags.

With everything done in the city that he needed, for the time being, Carl ran up the ramp to outside the city and started making his way east along the road on Azurmyst Isle towards the Azure Watch.

When he was out of sight of the city, and no one was around, Carl summoned up the stealthed Yamato to hover over him. Opening up his map, Carl smirked as he saw on his map all the nodes of herbs and mines being shown. With a thought, all the mines and herbs being shown disappeared from his map. A thought command then brought them back. Various skinnable creatures then showed up on the map, before disappearing with a mental command.

While he was in time dilation, Carl had figured out how to have the Yamato send data to his magical HUD. With the Yamato's scanners, it could keep track of everything within the zone Carl was in, and send that information to him, to be displayed on his map. That would save Carl a load of time in trying to find the quest mobs he needed, crafting materials, or being aware of incoming enemy players that might make his life difficult.

Opening up the portal to his Warehouse, Carl soon added all the materials he bought from the auction house to his Farms, and instructed his VIs to start producing them. He would be adding the various animals of Azeroth to his farms soon, so that he could use them to gather crafting materials for Leatherworking and Cooking.

Exiting the Warehouse, Carl started making his way over to the Azure Watch to pick up some quests to help him level. While he was traveling Carl made small detours to grab copper mines and pick various herbs. While his Farms could make the materials, he wanted to level up his gathering skills since they would give him small boosts to his abilities.

Within no time, Carl had arrived at the small town and gathered the available quests. Looking at his map to see where the first group animals he had to kill were, Carl got started.

* * *

Carl landed inside the Deadmines dungeon instance. He moved forward, and looked behind him to see four more figures materializing.

[Hey guys.] Carl said in party chat.

[Welcome.] Igottotems, a Draenei Shaman started jumping around in circles.

[Sup noobs.] Ikickpuppies, a Human Rogue joked while immediately entering stealth.

The Night Elf Hunter Radablast pointed at his cat pet, while the Gnome Mage Plainyogurt started dancing.

Carl felt the corner of his eye twitching. If he ever needed more proof that the adventurer heroes were somehow connected with a bunch of people sitting at their desks playing a game, it was how these guys were acting.

But just because a large number of these yahoos were only playing a game didn't mean that it was only a game for Carl. Especially since his Silver Dragon Flight would be following him to different worlds, it was very important for Carl to advance quickly and get stronger. And if he had to make use of a bunch of random players to help him run dungeons, then he would.

While Carl was confident in his strength and abilities, the first time he went in a dungeon he wanted to be sure he wouldn't be overwhelmed and killed. These enemies in the dungeons were elites, which meant they had a lot more health and hitting power than a normal mob at the same level.

So until Carl was sure he could solo these dungeons, he would test the waters with a full party.

Igottotems was the healer, Carl would be the tank, and the other three were the damage dealers.

As the Paladin tank, Carl had a shield in the left hand, the Blue Orchid (which currently looked like a one handed bastard sword) in the right hand, and he was decked out in mail armor. He had on his Righteous Fury spell to attract the aggression, or aggro, of the mobs.

After buffing the group, Carl moved ahead of the group, using his Paladin attack spells to aggro the Defias laborers in the first part of the mines.

The first group came over, and Carl began swinging his sword, killing them with one hit. The damage from his Consecration spell attracted the rest of the group to him, but they died before they got to him.

Carl looked around, a bit shocked at being able to one shot them.

He knew he had been killing the normal mobs out in the world with a single hit ever since he upgraded his gear and spells from the trainers, but he didn't expect to kill elite mobs of the same level as him with one hit, or a couple ticks of his damaging spell.

Looking over at the four player heroes, they didn't look like they noticed anything unusual. Shrugging, Carl figured he could finish the dungeon with them first.

He looted the bodies by kicking them and moved along the path of the mines, killing the various Defias bandits. The party was moving quite smoothly, and the fast pace kept anyone from pausing to talk or joke around. Too much anyway.

The first Boss was the Ogre Rhahk'Zor. He stood a couple feet taller than Carl, naked except for the red loin cloth and bracers he wore. There were two Defias bandits that came with him, but Carl dropped his Consecration spell and they dropped almost instantly, along with the dps' attacks.

The Ogre died before he could do much damage to Carl. The notable item they looted from the Ogre was Rhahk'Zor's Hammer, a two handed mace weapon that only added some stamina.

Another game like element showed itself at that point, as a loot roll option appeared in front of Carl's face. He could roll Need, Greed, Pass, or Disenchant on the item. Carl hadn't raised his Enchanting skill up too high yet, since he was only level 21 and couldn't keep learning more until he leveled up more. Carl figured he could always use more enchanting materials, so he selected Disenchant.

Carl moved through the double doors that opened on the death of the Ogre and continued killing mobs. A few moments later, everyone in the group had selected an option for the loot rolls.

He didn't win the roll, the Hunter had rolled need and won the item. Carl rolled his eyes. Hunters always wanted weapon loots.

A short time later, Carl saw a fork in the path, and went left. He found the rare mob Miner Johnson, who died immediately. He dropped a nice shield for Carl, which boosted Strength and Stamina. Carl rolled need, and a short time later he lost the roll.

The healer Shaman had rolled need as well and won. Carl sighed in exasperation. Joining the group was already getting to be more of a hassle than it was worth. But he was determined to finish up the dungeon first, then he would never group up with a randomly selected group of noobs again.

Since Miner Johnson hung out in a dead end, Carl turned around and led the way to the other fork in the mines path, killing the various Defias bandits along the way. He soon enough came to a large room that had enormous timber lying haphazardly in front of the door. There were Goblins standing around the edges of the room, and a large mechanical Shredder robot on two legs piloted by the Goblin boss of the room, Sneed.

Carl began attacking the various Goblins around the room, and was hit several times with an ability that was annoying the hell out of him. Even though he could one shot these guys, they could still stun him with an axe toss. Carl was wishing he could learn that spell / attack.

In retaliation he began using his Paladin spell, Hammer of Justice, to stun them.

They soon engaged the boss, and a few hits from the group broke the mechanical shredder. Sneed dropped out of his machine, only to die a few seconds later.

Sneed dropped some cloth gloves that the Mage won, and Sneed's Shredder dropped a dagger that the Rogue won, even though the Hunter also rolled need on it.

Another door had opened on the death of Sneed, so Carl quickly lead the group through, killing their way to a large foundry room. There was a ramp that led to the left and downwards, and in the middle of the enormous room was a giant kiln filled with molten metal.

The foundry room was filled with Goblins. Some of them summoned up mini mechanical shredders before they died, which made the fight take two seconds longer than it would have. After cleaning up the room, the fight against the Goblin boss Gilnid went easily. The only annoying thing about the various Goblins were their Molten Ore ability that nearly halved his movement speed for 10 seconds before fading away.

He dropped some leather pants that the Hunter won the roll on, while Carl moved into the next passageway that opened up.

They were back in the tunnels that looked like a rough mine, with more Human Defias bandits. At the end of the passageway, they found a locked door that had a cannon pointing at it. They had picked up a barrel of gunpowder in a short side tunnel, so the gunpowder was used on the cannon to blast open the doors.

A few Defias pirates showed up, and were summarily killed, along with their ill tempered parrots that tried to peck his eyes out.

Behind the blasted door was a cavern whose bottom was filled with water, likely from the nearby ocean. A large pirate ship sat in the water, and some docks lead to the left where a ramp was extended up to the ship.

Carl led the way along the docks, killing all the pirates. At the base of the ramp leading to the ship was a large treasure chest. When Carl approached the chest, a large dark Tauren with one of his horns cut off appeared out of nowhere and thunder stomped, stunning the group for a couple of seconds.

The moment Carl regained control, he immediately slashed out and used his judgment on Mr. Smite. A moment later, the humanoid cow-like Tauren was dead under the group's combined attacks. Carl won the roll for a one handed axe, Smite's Reaver. The weapon promptly turned into a shard from being disenchanted and fell into his bag.

Carl lead the way up the ramp and through the ship, killing the various Defias Pirates as they went. They arrived at the top, and immediately killed a large Goblin Pirate, Captain Greenskin, who dropped a magic staff that the Shaman won.

Inside the nearby cabin, Carl attacked Edwin VanCleef, the Defias Kingpin. A few of his men showed up and attacked, but soon fell to Carl's Consecration.

Carl didn't even bother rolling for the leather chest piece that dropped. He took an unsent letter from the body that started a quest, as well as getting VanCleef's head to turn into the quest giver back at Sentinel Hill.

Jumping down the other side of the ship, the group soon killed a Murloc boss named Cookie. Carl won the Cat Carrier item that dropped off him, and ignored the wand that also dropped.

He immediately used the item to get a Siamese cat pet.

[Whooo! That was great! Let's do it again!] The Rogue immediately said in party chat.

[Same.] The hunter said.

Carl decisively left the group and teleported out of the dungeon, back to Sentinel Hill at Westfall, where he had queued up for the dungeon at. It was one of the menu functions that the game like world gave him. He could queue for a specific dungeon and find party members to join him for the dungeon run.

"Never again will I go for a random pick up group." Carl vowed.

"What was that, Paladin?" Gryan Stoutmantle asked Carl. Carl was standing at the base of the defensive tower that made up the military base in Sentinel Hill in Westfall, and the commander of the base, one Gryan Stoutmantle, was standing nearby.

"Oh, nothing." Carl absently replied. "By the way, I've taken care of VanCleef." Carl handed over the head of Edwin VanCleef.

"Very good, Paladin! This will help us in the skirmishes we have with the Defias Dogs." Stoutmantle exclaimed before handing over the reward for the quest. Carl chose a pair of mail leggings that increased his strength and stamina.

With all the quests done in Westfall, Carl used the Gryffon flight service to make his way to Stormwind to turn in the quest that he got from the letter that he got from Edwin VanCleef's body. He learned a bit about VanCleef's history, and how he used to be a part of the stonemason's guild. When the nobles refused to pay wages to the workers after they rebuilt Stormwind, but tried to bribe him with a government job if he would sell out his brothers in the stonemason guild, he stormed out of the city with his men and started the Defias Bandits, raiding and stealing to express their outrage.

The follow up quest had Carl sent to the Stormwind Stockade to question Warden Thelwater about Bazil Thredd, who was the one of VanCleef's lieutenants.

When Carl approached the Warden, he had some attitude toward Carl.

"What are you bothering me now for!? We're in the middle of a riot in the prison. If all the cells weren't broken open, I'd throw you in one for bothering me!" Warden Thelwater yelled. Despite his hard attitude, the man still completed the quest for Carl and gave out another quest.

"Let's get one thing straight, Carl: I don't trust you. But, with the situation as it is, you probably won't make a difference."

"So here's how it's going to be: go down there and have your talk with Thredd. If you're really on our side, then kill him and bring me his head when the job's done. And if it turns out you're on his side, and don't come out…when we find you, you'll die along with the rest of the maggots."

"Okay, I'll see what I can do about this pest problem you seem to be unable to solve, Warden." Carl snarked back a bit.

Keeping in mind his promise not to go and rely on randomly found players, and keeping in mind how easily he killed the mobs in the Deadmines, Carl entered the Stockades immediately and by himself. The narrow hallways with cells on either side were filled with Defias captives.

Carl began attacking them, a few at a time. The annoying thing Carl found was that they tried to run and grab help when they were hurt enough, so he started using Arcane Explosion and Fire Blast on those that tried to run away. They didn't get far.

He worked his way easily through the mobs, and arrived at a hallway then ran crossways to the one he was in. Directly in front of him was a cell with Targorr the Dread, an Orc Prisoner. The large Orc was dual wielding one handed swords.

Carl started off with a Backstab from stealth for one of the prisoners that was standing near Targorr, which killed the rioting prisoner in one hit. Targorr and another prisoner immediately attacked, which Carl blocked and counter attacked with his sword and fire blasts.

Targorr and the other prisoner were soon lying on the ground, dead. There wasn't any notable loot he got from the low level boss.

Carl then took the hallway that ran to the West. At the end of the hall, after wiping out the prisoners, Carl found Dextren Ward. After killing him Carl made his way back and down the other hallway.

At the end of the hallway, Carl first found a large Ogre named Hamhock. Carl blasted him from afar with Icebolts. The slowing effect kept him from being able to reach Carl before he died. It only took a couple Icebolts.

In the cell at the back of the area, Carl found Bazil Thredd. Carl tried to talk to the man, but he just yelled and attacked Carl, so he killed him with a couple Sinister Strikes. Carl didn't even get to use the combo points, the man died so quick.

Carl was starting to get the idea that he was overpowered for his level.

Picking up the man's head, Carl made his way out and turned in the quest to the Warden. He got some information from the Warden about how Bazil was receiving visits from a quiet type man by the name of Maelik. Despite being suspicious of the man, his papers checked out so the Warden couldn't do anything.

Carl took that information back to Baros Alexston, who sent him on to Mathias Shaw, who was the head of SI:7, an information gathering organization of Stormwind. Carl found out that Maelik was an alias for an assassin by the name of Marzon, who had ties to a noble of Stormwind by the name of Lescovar.

Since it was difficult to gather evidence against a noble, Shaw had Carl visit an acquaintance by the name of Trias, whose operations were run out of a cheese shop in the Trade District.

After hearing the whole tale and who was connected to who and what they were suspected of, Trias sent Carl to one of his Gnome operatives named Tyrion who was watching Lescovar. Inside the Stormwind Castle Carl found Tyrion and his spybot construct. In order to draw out Lescovar and Marzon and gain evidence, Tyrion needed to disguise his spybot.

So Carl ended up running outside the city to find a lady named Clara who ran an apple farm. With two fresh apples and three pieces of silk, Tyrion disguised his spybot as a hot female messenger.

It seemed pretty silly to Carl at first, but the moment Tyrion used the apples and silk, a three and a half foot tall robot turned into a five and a half foot hot human female. It had to be magic, of course.

Carl continued hiding behind the tree with Tyrion until Lord Gregor Lescovar and Marzon came to the garden and talked about their plans. With enough evidence, Tyrion had Carl slay the two traitors.

So after a bit more running around to inform everyone of the results of the operation, Carl ended up in front of King Varian Wrynn in the throne room of Stormwind. To the king's right stood the little prince, Anduin. Behind the king was an impressive throne. It looked to be made out of gold, bronze, marble and precious blue stones. On either side of the throne, where armrests would be, were two golden lion statues, snarling and glaring at any petitioners.

After presenting the report to the king, Carl was commended and given a ring with +3 to Strength, Agility, and Spirit, and + 4 to Intelligence, and Stamina.

Overall it wasn't a big boost for Carl, because of how much he had been enhanced by his Ki and Profound Cultivation. But Carl was pleased with the gift. It would give him something to study to understand how to craft the same enhancements into any weapons, armor, or jewelry he made in the future.

Now that all those quests concerning the Defias and Westfall were complete, it was time to go quest in the Redridge Mountains zone. Which meant it was time for a trip back home to the Dragon Flight.

* * *

Carl arrived at the Dragon Flight Hold early in the morning, when the sun was just beginning to shine. He interacted with the wards as he entered the hold, noting that they were holding up well and that there were no attempted incursions.

Walking along the halls in his Night Elf form, he soon arrived at the dining hall. The group of dragons and dragonspawn inside the hall was eating their breakfast when Carl entered.

"Lord Carl is back!" Jayne excitedly yelled as she transformed into her Night Elf form, that looked like a 10 year old girl. She jumped over and hung off Carl's shoulders. The other five young dragons soon followed her example, and Carl had six young elves excitedly hanging on him and talking his ear off.

"The room you built is amazing! I've never gotten to go outside and fly before! I never knew how amazing it felt to be able to spread my wings and _fly._" Jeff excitedly babbled.

"Yeah! Yeah! We can even play tag in the air, it's so fun!" June added on, not to be left out.

"I never knew there were so many different plants and things to see!" Joyce whispered in Carl's ear.

Carl chuckled and listened attentively to the children's talk of the things they learned and played with in the Room of Requirement. The young dragons had been stuck in the dragon hold all their lives, in fear of their enemies attacking them too. So they never got to go out, stretch their wings, and play.

Carl hated his drawback enemies for what they did to his flight, but seeing the effect it had on these young dragon whelps, it especially pissed him off.

"Well, you know that when you grow up a bit more, I'll take you out to explore and have some fun and adventure." Carl promised the young dragons after some time of listening to their talk of their past weeks.

"Yeah! Yeah! Lord Carl promised! You can't forget later!" Jonah excitedly exclaimed.

"Yup, it's a promise. Now why don't you go finish your meal while I talk to the elders." Carl suggested, and watched as the exuberant dragons dashed back to their abandoned meals.

"Welcome back, Lord Carl." Mauret greeted Carl with a smile. The old and grey haired female dragon in elf form sat across from Carl. "Thank you so much for the Room of Requirement. It has made such a difference in their lives. I've never seen them so lively." She continued, looking fondly over at the dragonlings as they continued eating their meal.

"It does our old bones good to see the excitement of youth." Fausic agreed as he sat next to Mauret.

"Welcome back, Lord Carl." Mortic greeted as he sat down on the other side of Fausic.

Carl was amused to see that the way that Mortic addressed him had changed. Probably due to two things. The concrete benefits he had brought to the down and out Dragon Flight brought him a lot of respect, and his increased level and strength radiated from him. The three old dragons in front of him could feel that Carl was already much more powerful than they were.

Looking at their low levels, at only the early 40s, Carl started thinking of ways in which to rejuvenate their youth and help them gain strength. He would have to see how effective cloning could be for the three old dragons. If he could give them younger and fitter bodies and train them up, it would immediately increase the security and strength of the Dragon Flight.

Throwing those ideas in the back of his mind to work on in time compression, Carl began talking about what he had learned over the time he had been gone and leveling up. He hadn't found any information yet about their enemies or where the captured Silver Dragons were, but he was keeping an eye out.

He told them what he knew about the Dark Portal opening to the Outlands, about the Burning Legion, the army of demons that were trying to gain control of the world, and how he would be going there once he leveled up in order to bring back more resources and magical items.

Carl talked for some time about the training he had in mind, and got the opinions of the old dragons who had been around for some time, which had Carl revising his plans a bit here and there.

When Mortic mentioned some of their old trading partners and suggested maybe contacting them, Carl shut that idea down.

"We really don't have enough knowledge about who colluded with our enemies." Carl explained. "Right now, we are secure within our wards. It's giving us the breathing room necessary to once more get stronger. But until we can protect ourselves, I'm not about to let information that we are on the rise to leak out. It would invite another attack."

"Lord Carl is right, I didn't think it through all the way." Mortic mumbled, ashamed at himself.

"Don't worry about it too much. With your help and hard work, we'll regain our strength and take back what is ours." Carl comforted the old dragon.

Once Carl saw that the three elders were once more in a positive and proactive mindset, Carl started giving them some orders on how to adjust their teachings and training.

After the meal was over, Carl called Goram over as the leader of the Dragonspawn to talk about their training, education, and general duties. In that meeting, Carl learned about how the Dragonspawn had been taking care of the meals and providing resources.

When Carl heard about how it was getting harder and harder to provide the needed food with their limited numbers, he almost face palmed that he didn't check on the issue when he was there previously. It didn't take too long to get it set up so the Farms restocked the larder of the Hold so they always had plenty of food.

Carl then spent a week getting everything set up properly for his Dragon Flight. He added many miscellaneous things that would improved the quality of life there. He inscribed many rune schemes to upgrade the facilities.

Preservation spells keeping the food fresh. Cleaning spells everywhere, but especially the bathrooms. Fresh air charms, heating, cooling, and various other small effects.

Carl especially made sure there was more than enough food to feed the developing young ones, who needed the best nutrition to be able to maximize their growth potential. And it just so happened that he had the best materials available for magic and profound energy, which would help develop his dragons to their best capabilities.

When Carl had been in the time pearl, he had also designed and built education units that would work just fine for the dragons and dragonspawn. So he spent time installing those units and making sure everyone knew how to operate them. That would quickly take care of their basic education needs, and introduce them to the basics of the sciences and technology.

The week wasn't only spent in serious business. Carl took enough time to have breaks and play with the young dragons, both in their dragon bodies and in their shape shifted elf bodies. It was a fun time, and it helped Carl get to know the six young dragons quite well.

Despite how much fun Carl had, he knew he had to get working. So at the end of the week, he departed to continue questing in the nearby areas of the Redridge Mountains and Duskwood.


	79. Azeroth 4

The murky woods barely let the sunlight through the canopy. Here and there a squirrel ran through the branches. Wolves and spiders the size of wolves roamed around the forest floor.

One particular wolf felt a sharp and debilitating pain in its backside, before falling over dead. There was a figure standing over the wolf's corpse that wasn't there before.

Carl looked down at his knife for a moment, before carefully wiping it clean on the wolf's fur.

"So I know Ambush is a commonly used ability by Rogues to attack from behind. But I never really considered exactly where that attack would land on a four legged creature. Talk about a pain in the ass." Carl muttered to himself as he looted the wolf corpse of the last bit of meat that he needed for a gathering quest and then skinned the beast.

Over the past couple of days Carl had spent his time between questing in the Redridge Mountains, capturing the wild life to add to his farms, and play/training the young dragons. It had been a busy time, where he didn't bother sleeping at night. He didn't suffer any from lack of sleep, now that he had trained up his body to a decent level.

After skinning the wolf corpse Carl began running south east towards Darkshire, the small village and quest hub for the Alliance in the Duskwood. He was already level 28 from quests and killing various beasties, so he was a little higher level than normal for Darkshire. But the next zone he was going to was Stranglethorn Vale, which was south of Duskwood. And STV, in Carl's memories, was chock full of PvP battles.

So Carl wanted to finish all the quests he could in Duskwood first. He was considering going up north to the Hillsbrad foothills instead, if there was too much enemy activity in STV. He didn't really fear being killed by enemy players, since he felt he could escape easily enough by vanishing or simply flying straight up in the air where they couldn't follow. But he didn't want to get entangled in pointless activities when he was trying to level.

Carl arrived at the small village and entered the circle of houses that were situation at a three way crossroad. To the east was the Deadwind Pass, where the raid instance Karazhan was located. It was one of the first raids available for players at level 70 in the Burning Crusades expansion. And further east from that was the Swamp of Sorrows. There were only a few quests and a dungeon instance in the Swamp, but Carl wasn't ready to head over there anytime soon.

He wasn't going to the Sunken Temple dungeon instance until he was level 50.

The warmth from the fire crackling away in the wide fireplace hit Carl as soon as he entered the Inn. The inn was not one that he owned, but the quest giver worked in the kitchens of this inn.

"I've got your wolf flanks here, Chef." Carl directly stated as soon as he entered the kitchen.

"Good! Just put them on the chopping block, I'm making some kebabs tonight with the meat. Here's your reward." Chef Grual replied, handing over a recipe for Seasoned Wolf Kebabs and a handful of silver.

Carl immediately opened the scroll with the recipe and learned it. The recipe immediately disappeared from Carl's hands, while the recipe and instructions appeared in Carl's brain. Carl casually waved farewell to the chef, and made his way back outside.

Walking straight ahead, Carl entered a smithy where he repaired his equipment and sold the junk he had picked up. Although he was only getting some small amount of silver from looting his kills, and he already had plenty of gold, Carl continued his practice of looting everything. He didn't lack storage space, and every little silver was more wealth.

With his business in Darkshire taken care of for the moment, Carl ran over to the gryphon keeper and hired a flight over to Sentinel Hill in Westfall. It would be quicker to run east from there and cross the river into Duskwood for his next set of quests.

While flying on the back of the gryphon Carl once more thought about why he wasn't using his apparition or sling ring to teleport everywhere to make his questing faster. He never knew who might be watching at the destination, and it might attract unwanted attention. He was trying to stay incognito as a normal adventurer so as not to arouse the suspicion of the enemies who had staged the Raid on his Dragon Flight.

So he stuck to methods that normal adventurers had available. It wouldn't be too late to wait until he had developed his dragon flight into a powerful force that could protect themselves. Then he would find his enemies and throw away all the self imposed restrictions and demolish them.

Dismounting from the gryphon, Carl took a moment to really stretch out the kinks in his body. Relying on someone else to fly him places was really uncomfortable when he could do it himself so much quicker and smoother.

Carl arrived at the river that separated Duskwood and Westfall and immediately dove in. Controlling the water, he propelled himself across to the opposite shoreline with barely any effort. The sunny amber fields of Westfall was contrasted strongly by the deep greens and shadows of Duskwood.

After climbing out of the river, he checked over the mobs in the area, and charted a course that avoided most of the random monsters that he wasn't hunting. One of the things about the game that he had been annoyed by was having to run back and forth a lot. That annoyance was magnified by 10 when he wasn't just controlling a digital avatar but having to do the running around himself due to quests.

So while killing those random monsters would benefit him a small amount of magic / xp that would count for him getting stronger, it was more beneficial, time wise, to avoid them. Carl had been getting plenty of practice at that, so he was adroit in running through the forest while avoiding giant spiders.

Ducking down behind a tree at the edge of the Raven Hill Cemetary, Carl scouted out the lay of the land.

Carl raised an eyebrow at the number of zombies roaming around the cemetery. There were a lot more than he expected there to be. Looking at their levels, they were actually a few levels above his, in the early 30s.

'That's strange.' Carl thought. 'These ghouls are ten levels higher than the other monsters that roam around Duskwood. Is this the discrepancy between the game and real life?'

While Carl was looking at the undead, the smell of rotten flesh drifted into his nose. He wrinkled his nose at the foul smell, thinking of how many undead he was going to be fighting in the future in Northrend when it was time to fight the Lich King.

'Well, there's no real reason to delay.' Carl thought as he activated stealth. His movement speed when in stealth was slowed down, so running around permanently stealthed would take forever to get anywhere. But there was nothing better than suddenly appearing behind an enemy with a slash of his sword.

The first zombie Carl targeted looked particularly ragged, like it had been dragged through the shredder and only its ligaments were keeping it together. With one slash of his sword, the zombie's head was separated from his shoulders. The magically animated corpse paused for a moment mid step, before toppling over.

Carl kicked the body lying on the ground. While leveling he found he didn't have to touch the corpse with his hands, he could just kick them and with an application of will and he would loot drops from them.

Carl pocketed the silk cloth, fishing bait, and silver that dropped off the zombie, but ignored the tomb dust and zombie flesh. There was no way he would try cooking with zombie flesh, it was just useless.

When he heard a groaning / moaning headed his way, Carl paid more attention to the zombie that were attracted by his presence and attack on the zombie at his feet. Three nearby zombies were shamble running his way.

Pointing at one of the zombies with the knife in his left hand, Carl sent a fireball his way. Carl's fireball had ranked up several times from the Mage class trainer, and Carl had practiced putting more magic into each fireball.

A powerfully hot fireball exploded on the leftmost zombie, burning it to a crisp. Without missing a beat, Carl cast Exorcism on the middle zombie. The holy type magic was particularly effective against the undead, causing the middle zombie to fall apart. A pile of bones and rotten flesh that rapidly dissolved into nothing was all that was left.

The last zombie was now within sword range of Carl. He used Sinister Strike with Blue Orchid on the last zombie. The enhanced blow beheaded the final zombie mid swing. The body collapsed to the ground with a wheeze.

Carl kicked each of the corpses to loot them, and pocket the silk and silver, while ignoring the useless trash.

He glanced at the quest counter that showed he needed to kill 19 more Plague Spreader zombies. Only the first zombie he had killed had been the correct type of zombie, but there were so many other types here that he couldn't avoid fighting them.

Locking his eyes on the next target, Carl activated stealth mode and ghosted over to the next target. It died just as easily as any of the other zombies, so Carl continued the slaughter.

Carl had long noticed a huge pile of disturbed earth in the middle of the cemetery, so he was making his way over to it. He was pretty sure that there were tunnels dug into the ground where he would find more zombies to kill.

Arriving at the pile of dirt, Carl confirmed that it was a tunnel leading into the ground. It was a surprisingly large tunnel, more than large enough to fit his dragon form inside if he crawled and scraped his wings along the walls.

Carl made his way down the ramp, killing zombies as he went. Occasionally there would be an animated skeleton knight or mage along the way. After the first skeleton mage landed an ice bolt on him, Carl made sure to target them first. He found the few seconds of slow down effect particularly annoying, so he made sure they didn't land any more spells on him.

Occasionally there were too many skeletons and zombies around to kill all at once, so Carl used Counterspell to stop their spells and easily ran through their ranks, slashing left and right, occasionally popping off spells of his own, and dropping Consecration where zombies could run through the area of effect holy damage spell.

After some time of traveling through the dirt tunnels, Carl was surprised to find the tunnel turn into a well built stone tunnel. That was really strange, because he was sure that zombies wouldn't have built something like that. At least not unless something of intelligence were able to command and direct them to do so.

With his curiosity pricked, Carl continued to follow the tunnels, even though he had completed the quest.

The tunnel split came to a fork, one side going left, the other going right. Carl chose the left hand fork to explore first.

The tunnel continued for over a hundred yards, and Carl moved forward, killing zombies or skeletons every several feet.

The tunnel then turned into a large hall that had large stone tables set up in rows with alchemical test tubes and concoctions on top of the tables.

Carl still hadn't seen anything that could have directed the undead in the cemetery to construct what he had seen, but this laboratory was certainly a clue. Carl began looking around for any notes left behind.

After tossing the lab, Carl was disappointed to find out that there were no research notes or memoirs left behind to give him a clue as to who was behind this place, or what they had been hoping to accomplish.

Carl then made his way back down the tunnel, and took the other fork. This tunnel, while fortified with stone, was much larger than the other fork. It was the size of the original dirt tunnel that Carl had come in by. It was also had a downward slope and was traveling deeper into the ground.

Just ahead of him, Carl saw that the tunnel opened up into a large cavern. Carl entered the cavern in stealth in order to scout out the situation before he exposed himself.

A moment later, he was glad he had. He stood stunned, staring at the sight in front of him. If he hadn't been in stealth, he would have been a sitting duck.

The sight that had so stunned Carl was a huge ritual circle, that had obviously been used for some necromantic ritual. Inside the circle was the bloody remains of a Silver Dragon. Small scraps of dragon hide and the skeleton were all that remained of the poor dragon.

There were still a few zombies that were gnawing on the bones. Carl vision suddenly narrowed, seeing the continued desecration of the Dragon after their death infuriated him.

Carl didn't lose his reason though, and glided up behind those bastard walking corpses. With three swings of the sword, Carl ended the zombies unlife. The dozen of other undead in the area noticed Carl when he made his first attack and started swarming him.

It didn't do them any good. Carl was a whirlwind of blade and flame, burning and slashing the unlife out of the zombies.

With the zombies taken care of Carl pulled out a recorder and filmed the ritual setting. He would have to do some research into what his enemies were doing with his dragons. He also had the Yamato send some probes to scour the tunnels for any trace evidence. Just because there were no papers left behind didn't mean who ever set this up hadn't left behind traces of their presence.

He would find those traces and track them back to the source.

Carl laid a hand gently on the skull of the dragon in apology for their unjust and painful death and vowed to end their killer and their organization. Vengeance? Justice? In this particular case, wasn't it the same thing?

Up until this moment Carl hadn't been taking the world very seriously. Since there were so many game elements, it felt like there wasn't much urgency or need for Carl to be proactive. He "knew" the game plot and what would happen in the expansions, so he had been somewhat lax in his approach.

But now, he was slapped in the face with the tragic consequence of the Raid on his dragon flight. His enemy wouldn't be sitting still, and they were using and abusing his people.

So Carl needed to up his game.

Carl gathered the bones into his pocket dimension for burial later. There was no way he was leaving them behind in this filthy place.

While making his way out of the stinking tunnels, Carl communicated with the VI of the Yamato, detailing plans to start manufacturing stealth satellites they could send into orbit to start spying on every inch of Azeroth.

There would also be some probes sent through the Dark Portal to the Outlands to start gathering intel there. Eventually Carl would make his way there, so it was good to have all the intelligence he could before arriving there.

In the meantime, Carl would have to speed up his leveling. He pondered about how to do so in a reasonable manner without exposing his true nature to his enemies.

His enemies had plotted in the dark to attack his Silver Dragon Flight, while his dragons had been naively out in the open and unsuspecting of the disaster bearing down on them. Now it was his turn to strike from the shadows and overwhelm his enemies.

With a nasty grin on his face, Carl began running south to the next location. He had some Ogres to kill and a box to return to the owner.

* * *

Over the wild jungles of Stranglethorn Vale flew a lone gryphon. Below, the raptor dinosaurs looked up when they heard the gryphon screech. They had no way to reach the high flying beast, so they ignored the beast as it overflew their territory, continuing their daily lives.

Carl had looked down when the gryphon he was riding screeched loudly, but didn't see anything in particular of interest that would have caught the gryphon's attention.

Soon enough the gryphon came in for a landing in the wooden dock city of Booty Bay. It was a neutral city of Goblins, both Alliance and Horde members were welcome to come and do business.

Once the gryphon landed on the high platform, Carl dismounted and looked out over the city. The whole city was built over the ocean water of the cove on harbor piers. It was multi level with ramps all over the place leading to other levels.

The city was doing a brisk business, as goblins, and the various races of the Horde and Alliance were milling around, doing business and accepting or completing quests.

Carl summoned his paladin charger mount and leapt off the platform, landing on the sturdy roof of one of the buildings. Guiding the mount to run forward and to the right, he kicked the horse at just the right time to leap to the next building. He urged the charger to continue on, and jump down to the walkway, barely avoiding landing on a Gnome that was passing by.

Ignoring the Gnome's curses, it wasn't like anyone would have noticed if he had trampled the little guy, Carl's mount galloped along the pier, curving around alongside the cliff it was built next to.

A few minutes later, Carl arrived just as the ship that regularly departed for Ratchet was pulling away from the dock. Leaping his charger across the gap, Carl safely landed and pulled back on the reins to bring his mount to a standstill.

Looking to his left, Carl saw an Orc and Troll adventurer also mounted on their wolf and raptor respectively. Carl gave them a lazy wave, which they returned with a raspberry and a yawn.

The two Horde players were a few levels below Carl, who had reached level 45 after questing in Stranglethorn Vale. They didn't look like they were going to be trying anything shady on the boat, so Carl sat back and ignored the two.

In the game, when the boat traversed the oceans between continents there was a loading screen and then the journey was shortened to a few seconds.

Here, though, there was no such convenience for Carl. But oddly enough, Carl noticed that the two Horde players suddenly went blank and still as statues shortly after the ship departed. They remained in that state until only a few moments before they docked at Ratchet in the Barrens zone.

'Seems like there's some timey-wimey remote connection jiggery pokery going on there so the "players" don't get bored.' Carl guessed at the nature of the two Horde character's odd behavior. Since it seemed that the avatar bodies were connected with game players elsewhere, it was the most reasonable explanation he could come up with.

For a moment Carl felt bad for the players, since they didn't get the full immersive feel and sensation of the World of Warcraft. But he soon threw those feelings away. There was no purpose for him to care about the players or their gaming experience. He had things to do.

As the boat slowed down to come alongside the dock at Ratchet, Carl didn't wait any longer. He spurred his mount and jumped the gap to the dock. His charger's hooves were pounding on the wooden dock as he galloped along, soon arriving at the flight master.

Dismounting he engaged the flight master in conversation. A few silver exchanged hands, and Carl was mounted on another gryphon flying south. Carl spent the time flying south looking over the lands of the continent of Kalimdor.

Carl had already seen the land he was flying over from his satellite feeds, but feeling the wind and smelling the air brought a different mood to the experience. The salty ocean breeze of the coast along the Barrens. The swampy humidity of Duswallow Marsh. And finally the dry desert heat of Tanaris.

It was all so interesting to see the world in real life.

The gryphon landed just outside the walled city of Gadgetzan.

The moment Carl landed, his danger sense went wild. He threw himself to the side, barely avoiding the Ambush of an Orc Rogue.

Carl immediately cast Frost Nova to freeze the Rogue in place. Carl gained a second to pull out the Blue Orchid and start attacking. The rogue flashed behind Carl with Shadow Step, but Carl was not surprised and blinked forward, away from the Backstab.

Carl immediately used his Hammer of Justice to stun the Rogue, and then went to town on the player character. He liked PvP and ganking people? Carl was going to make sure he got his fill of PvP.

Carl laid down consecration to do some area damage from the spell, began backstabbing the Rogue with Blue Orchid, and letting his poisons that he had previously applied to his sword / dagger combo that he dual wielded do damage.

A short time later, before the Rogue could even get out of the stun from Hammer of Justice, and Carl was staring at the corpse in satisfaction.

Laughing out loud at the short but intense battle, Carl mounted up and began riding west. He was enthused that he was able to kill a level 66 rogue at level 45. And he was even more happy that he was able to sense the incoming sneak attack and avoid it. Thank you perks that gave him spider sense!

In the midst of that moment of crisis, where he had actually unintentionally dodged the magic attack of the Ambush, Carl had come to a realization. If his enemy's mental focus and intention to strike him would cause the blow to land, no matter how he physically dodged, but he had somehow dodged the Ambush despite that, then the reverse must be true as well. So Carl had focused all his magic and intention to dodge the Backstab and he had been successful in deliberately avoiding the attack.

So he came to the conclusion that if his magic and will was greater than the enemy's, and was focused on dodging, then it would override the other side's intention and magical ability to strike.

Carl had focused his magic and all his mental resources on one idea: dodge.

And it had worked beautifully. His magic had been summoned by Carl's intent, and easily made the Rogue's magical attack miss. That allowed Carl to gain the advantage in the short battle.

While he was galloping west toward the instance dungeon of Zul'Farrak, Carl made a mental note to gather and study the PvP trinkets that allowed someone to get out of any movement inhibiting attacks, like a rogue's stun. He couldn't afford to be stun locked and die due to running into multiple rogues who got some lucky hits on him. If he could keep such a trinket on him at all times, or craft a better one, he could have a safety net to ensure his life.

Carl soon arrived at the glowing portal into the instance dungeon and rode directly inside. Zul'Farrak was a base for a group of Trolls that weren't part of the Horde.

In the sandstone walled base, Carl looked over the multiple groups of 3-4 trolls that milled around together. Carl spent a moment to renew his Paladin and Mage buffs, and reapplied his poisons on his weapons.

Carl had taken to using the Blue Orchid as a bastard sword, and used an offhand dagger. He had gotten the Blue quality Rare ranked Coldrage Dagger as a drop from the final boss of the Razorfen Downs instance. There was only a single enchantment on the dagger that occasionally cast a Frostbolt at the enemy when the dagger was used to attack.

Over the past several days Carl had mostly been focusing on leveling, but he had still spent some time in time dilation to practice his crafting skills. By this point, he was confident in being able to forge a better dagger than the one he had gotten from the dungeon, including adding much better permanent enchants to his stats.

But he was holding off on crafting an upgraded off hand weapon for the time being. In the Zul'Farrak instance dungeon were two Blue quality swords that dropped. Jang'thraze the Protector and Sang'thraze the Deflector. When these two one-handed swords were combined, it created the two-handed Purple Epic quality sword, Sul'thraze the Lasher.

Carl planned to run the dungeon until he got both those one-handed swords. Besides the fact that it would be the first Epic quality weapon he got when he combined them, which was valuable to study, Carl was interested in studying how the two Rare quality swords combined into an Epic quality one. He was interested in finding out if he could replicate the effect through crafting.

At the very least, it would increase his crafting knowledge. Once he figured out how to craft Epic weapons and armor, Carl would make sure to keep himself outfitted with the best he could craft.

While practicing his various professions, Carl had learned that the armor and weapons quality relied on the quality and purity of the materials used to craft them. The higher the quality of materials, the more magic and enchantment it could hold. The more magic it could stand to hold, the higher the quality.

So with those goals in mind, Carl set his eyes on the first group of Trolls that were chilling in a group. He snuck up on them in stealth, and opened with an Ambush that killed the first Troll. A Fire Blast took care of the second Troll.

One of the remaining two Trolls pulled out a sword and swung on Carl, but he marshaled his intent and dodged the attack both physically and magically. He needed to practice that particular skill more now that he had the idea down.

A slice with Blue Orchid saw the Troll dead, separated from his head. Carl cast Judgment of Light on the final Troll that was charging up a Shadow Bolt. The Paladin Judgment combined with additional damage from the Seal of Righteousness was enough to end the Troll's attempt to cast magic, and ended its life.

By this time the whole process of looting was second nature to Carl. His focus was already on the next group. So when he finished looting, he once more entered stealth and snuck up on the unfortunate Trolls.

Rinse and repeat.

* * *

Carl was sitting in the corner of the Learning Hall of the Silver Dragon Flight. He was watching the six young dragons going over their arithmetic lessons, memorizing formula and doing practice problems.

There was a little smile on the corner of Carl's mouth as he watched over the young dragons learning earnestly. He had come back to the Flight just that morning to spend some time with his people and go over the reports his spy satellites were sending him.

Normally his spy satellites, once spread around the world, would have ferreted out all the needed information and sent it to him. There would be no more secrets hiding from him.

But there were complications here in the World of Warcraft. There was so much magic present in the world, which was especially dense in concentration in the bases of the various powerful factions, that the interference caused information gathering to be difficult.

At the very least Carl now had a list of locations of the various bases around Azeroth, due to the concentration of magic indicating that something was going on there. It was a very long list.

Carl sent out an order to the VIs to keep track of who entered and exited the various bases. At the very least he could discover who owned which base. Once Carl knew where the various bases of his three enemies were, he could then employ stealthed spy probes to enter the various bases to gather more information.

After seeing the fate of the unlucky dragon in the cemetery previously, Carl had felt a sense of urgency to save the rest of the captured dragons. He didn't even know if any of them were still alive. But he had to do what he could for his people / dragons.

Once he sent out the orders for the next round of intel gathering, Carl started designing new remote controlled bots with the Yamato VI. While Carl would like to personally be involved in every rescue of his dragons, he realized they were likely spread all over the world and he might not be able to be in so many places at once. So he was working on the assumption that he wouldn't able to be there personally to save each Dragon.

But now that he had the location recorded of the various bases, he could start deploying a sort of relay type teleport assist probe. When Carl knew where the Dragons were, he could send in the probe under stealth and it would teleport the Dragon outside the defenses of the base. Then the next probe or satellite would pick up the transmission and send the Dragon back to the Flight.

The infirmary was already being set up by Petes to handle the influx of injured Dragons that might not be in their right minds due to whatever was being done to them.

Carl had no idea what atrocities they had suffered. For all he knew they had brain washed his Dragons to be their loyal attack dogs. So he needed to be able to restrain them until they could be checked and ensure their minds were free of inimical influence.

"Lord Carl! It's time for lunch, are you joining us!" The sweet sing song voice of Joyce interrupted Carl's designing work.

Looking up, he saw the group of six young Dragons looking at him hopefully. Carl put away his data pad and stood up with vigor, raising one arm to dramatically point forward, causing the young Dragons to giggle at his exaggerated actions.

"Of course! It's time to slay a good meal and banish it to the bowels of my bowels!" Carl declared.

Once the young Dragons saw that Carl had put away his work and was joining them, they cheered and swarmed around him. Carl let the cheerful babble of young voices soothe the anger he had been nursing ever since he found the Silver Dragon remains in Duskwood.

Carl threw all the heavy concerns in the back of his mind as he joined the banter of his Dragons at their meal. Despite his heavy concerns, these young dragons reminded him about what he already had in his life. What he needed to protect.

* * *

"My lord, what is all this?" Mortic asked from where he stood at the doorway.

Carl looked up from where he was testing the restraining field in one of the medical bays he had set up in one of the halls of the Flight Hold.

Mortic looked so hesitant to intrude and disrupt Carl's work, it made him faintly smile. Carl looked down at the healing bays he had installed in the hall and realized how odd it would look to someone who never ran into technology more advanced than the slapdash and dangerous Gnomish Engineering.

Gnomish Engineering was notorious for failing and blasting the user at least one or two times out of five uses. The small smile on Carl's face twitched at the idea that his technology should be compared to such…unstable, half arsed junk. Looks like he needed to speed up the education of his Dragons.

"Come in, Mortic. You won't disturb anything." Carl finally replied to the old Dragon's query. "These are healing bays. When I rescue any survivors of the Flight and bring them here, these will assess anything wrong with them, and begin the process of healing them."

Mortic's eyes widened in excitement at the matter of fact way that Carl said he was going to rescue their kin. Over the short time Mortic had known Carl, he had started to develop a huge trust in their new Leader. Mortic was also excited about the magical devices that Carl said could heal injuries.

"Let me know how I can help you, my lord." Mortic finally got out.

"Well, right now I'm testing the confinement field. No doubt some of them won't be in their right minds. So it would be helpful if you could assist me in testing the functions." Carl offered.

"Of course, my lord." Mortic seemed enthused to be able to do something.

Carl then showed the old dragon how to test the restraining field's functions. Using physical force, magic, even changing into their dragon form and using their flame breaths were all part of the testing function.

Mortic enthusiastically dove into the testing. Once Carl saw that the old Dragon had the hang of it, he continued on the other side.

After some time, all the restraining fields had been tested and confirmed to work properly. Carl and Mortic left the newly built medical bay and started back towards the dining facility.

"I've already gotten news of the survivors." Carl passed on to Mortic. "I'll be starting the operation tonight to rescue them. Send word to Goram that they should prepare food. Something light, since many of them have been starved for some time."

"Yes, my lord." Mortic could barely contain his excitement. After so many years, they were finally able do something more than just hide the pitiful remnants of their Flight away. He had spent so many years in fear that their enemy would come back and finish off the rest of them. But now, with the return of Lord Carl, everything was changing for the better.

"All right, I'll leave you here." Carl said when they were outside the dining hall. "I've got some last minute reports to go over before I start the rescue operation."

The old Dragon in Elf form bowed to Carl before silently entering the dining hall. Carl continued on to his chambers.

The inside was vastly different from what the empty and bare chambers it had previously been. The space of the room was expanded greatly, and a large energy production and computer control center had been installed in one half of the room.

Looking over the last reports of his spy probes, Carl saw that everything was in place and ready.

He had been getting reports trickling in over the past few days of the survivors. But in order to not beat the bush and scare the bird away, he had held off on acting on the intel he gathered until he was set to act and save all the Dragons at one time.

If he started saving his Dragons before he knew where all of them were, the enemy might have taken extreme measures. Either hiding the Dragons in more well defended locations, or just killing them to prevent their "prizes" from being captured.

But now that he had the location of all the Dragons that were still alive, as well as the locations of the Dragon's remains that didn't make it, he was ready to act.

Carl sent the order to the VIs to rescue his Dragons.

All over Azeroth, in the hidden bases of the Cult of the Damned, Silver Dragons were disappearing in a flash of white light. Left behind in the place of the Dragons were constructs that looked like Dragon corpses.

There was no way to keep such a big rescue operation quiet or hidden. But he could lessen the impact and alarm of the enemy if he left behind a body. That way they would just think that all the Dragons gave up and died together.

Of course it would raise questions and doubts that all the Dragons died on the same day. But it was better than letting the enemy know that someone had penetrated their defenses and taken away their captives. That would be the equivalent of poking an ant's nest. And he wasn't yet ready to poke that ants nest.

Carl stayed at the computer all night, monitoring the progress of the health check of the rescued Dragons, as well as keeping an eye on the reports from the enemy's bases.

In the morning, Carl saw that the leadership of the various enemy bases found out their captives had died over night. Carl monitored and tracked the means they had of communicating with their organization and each other.

The more information he gathered on the Cult of the Damned's organization and communications ability, the more pleased Carl was. It was all ammunition that would allow his forces to annihilate them.

Carl could have used his technology and production capability to completely decimate the Cult at this time. But he felt it was important to give that task to his Dragon Flight. Especially the Dragons who had been in captivity for over a decade, suffering at the hands of the Cult. It was important that they get the chance to vent their feelings and get some payback.

It would also set the tone for the organization. They needed to be able to protect themselves and be powerful enough to get stuff done. If not, they might as well simply hole up in their Flight Hold for the rest of their lives.

Carl would definitely make allowances though. If some of his Dragons were so broken that all they wanted was to live their lives in safety and craft weapons like they used to, he would grant them that right.

They had already suffered so much due to his picking of a Drawback, that he felt he owed them as their leader. If they needed protection, he would provide it. If they needed instruction on how to kick ass, he would be their man. Er, Dragon.

Finally, Carl was satisfied that the operation had gone smoothly.

Even though there was reports that some of the Cultists had seen the flash of light when the Dragons were teleported out, they had no idea what that flash was. None of them were hurt, and the bodies of the Dragons were still there. So ultimately the oddity of the flash of light and the dying dragons had no ready answers for them. As a result, they simply adjusted and continued their normal operations.

With that assurance that the rescue was complete, and that the enemy was still unaware of what they were doing, Carl left his command center and made his way to the infirmary. He had some Dragons to talk to after they were healed up a bit.


	80. Azeroth 5

The enlarged medical hall was silent when Carl entered. He had been in contact with the managing VI while he was making his way over, so he knew the medical condition of the 15 Dragons that had been rescued.

Carl was a bit disappointed that he hadn't been able to save more of the captives. More than 5 dozen had been captured in the Raid, but they were unlucky and were killed in rituals or tortured to death before Carl even knew about the problem, let alone able to act to save them.

The only comfort Carl had was that at least he had saved some of them, as well as taking back the remains of those who were killed in order to put their remains to rest. He wasn't about to leave them in their uneasy place of torture.

Carl sat down nearby, waiting for the healing to take effect and for his Dragons to wake up. While Carl was waiting, he looked over the reports of his satellites.

He looked over the number of player characters, which fluctuated depending on the time of day. He saw that after several weeks many of the adventurers were already level 70, but none of them were above level 70. And after several days of remaining at 70, none of the characters being tracked gained anymore levels.

So Carl could safely assume that the max level would remain at 70 for now due to the world's magic. Whether that restriction would apply to him was something that he would find out soon enough. Chances were that he too would be stuck at level 70 until the next expansion.

He was now level 51 and was close to being able to go through the Dark Portal. He had already checked and found there was a level restriction magic on the Dark Portal which kept those under 58 from going through to the Outlands.

Apparently the magic didn't bother with objects like his satellites, since they weren't alive.

Carl decided to not try to break the magic preventing him from going through the Dark Portal. Since it was tied to a portal that traversed space, he didn't really want to mess with it. What if he broke it the portal and ended up killing himself when going through it?

So for the time being, Carl relied on his satellites to keep track of the goings on while he took care of business here.

Speaking of his satellites, Carl had spread them over all of Azeroth and found that he wasn't able to see certain areas. Areas he knew were continents that would be featured in future expansions. Northrend was a key location of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Vashj'ir was an underwater landmass in the Cataclysm expansion.

Naturally the Maelstrom wasn't yet present because Deathwing, the mad Black Wing Dragon, hadn't broken out of his prison yet.

But he also couldn't see Pandaria in the south, the continent that was featured in the Mists of Pandaria expansion.

As a result of this obscuration by what Carl could only assume was the world's magic, Carl couldn't scan the levels of the various creatures inhabiting those continents to see if their levels were stuck at 70 for now, or if they were the levels of their corresponding expansions.

It seemed that there were magical shackles on the world that kept things progressing at a certain pace. The next continent of Northrend would only be opened for exploration and leveling once it was time.

Carl was actually relieved by that fact, since it kept some of his enemies shackled and unable to act freely against him for the moment.

A loud gasp followed by a groan interrupted Carl from reading his reports and musing on the aspects of reality in this world.

Looking over, Carl saw that one of the Dragons had woken up and was looking around blearily. The Dragon seemed to be especially disoriented at the moment. All of the Dragons were in their original Dragon form, lying on massive beds.

Some of them were missing limbs or wings, had eyes poked out, or missing all their teeth. But all of them bore many scars as a result of the torture and humiliation they suffered.

Carl shifted to his own Dragon form and approached the Dragon who was finally waking up and trying to struggle to their feet.

"Easy there. You're safe." Carl said in as soothing a tone as he could manage.

The injured Dragon looked over at Carl and their eyes widened in surprise at seeing another of their kind there, and unharmed.

"You're being healed at the moment, which is why there are restraints keeping you in bed. It is to keep you from thrashing about and ruining the healing process." Carl continued explaining.

The Dragon seemed to relax minutely at Carl's words.

"Where…?" The Dragon who was missing many scales and horns hoarsely asked.

"You're back in the Silver Dragon Flight Hold. We've built up the defenses so the enemy can't break in again. They can't even find us. You're safe now."

The Dragon seemed to believe Carl and relaxed a bit more.

"Who…?" He struggled to speak, his vocal chords obviously hadn't been used for much except screaming for some time.

"My name is Carl, the Flight Leader. What is your name?" Carl calmly answered.

"Stovos." The Dragon, now identified as Stovos, replied before falling back into a healing sleep.

Carl looked down at the sleeping Dragon for a few minutes, sighed, and then returned to his chair and continued reading reports once more in his Elf form.

It looked like it would take some time for the group of Dragons to recover. Once he made sure none of them were out of their minds and dangers to those around them, he would introduce the three elders and six younglings to them to help them with their recovery.

While Carl was determined to do right by the group of rescued Dragons, his gut was telling him to level faster, gather the new materials and crafting items from the Outlands, and work hard to strengthen his Dragon Flight.

Carl began making plans to bring the Dragons up to full health. Up to and including cloning new bodies for those with too debilitating injuries. As well as clone bodies for the three elder Dragons. Renewing their youth with a new body should restore their drive and enthusiasm.

But he needed to test out the cloning process for Dragons. They were a very magical species, so he needed to be sure to have the materials and process top notch to not affect their natural affinities for Magic and Crafting.

And while the Heavenly Time Pearl didn't allow people to age while inside it, Carl had technological methods to compress time so he could help the young Dragons grow up quicker so they could help with all that needed to be done.

* * *

Over the next few hours Carl greeted each of the Dragons as they woke up. He made sure they all knew they were safe, and that they needed to rest and heal. Some of the Dragons remained awake, while some of them fell back into real sleep to recover.

Stovos, the first Dragon that woke up, proved himself to be made of stern stuff as he woke back up after a short time and this time remained awake.

Rubiana was another early waker, and she was a Dragon who was full of questions. Carl was pleased to see that her spirits hadn't been broken, and patiently answered all her queries, whether it was about who he was, or what the equipment was. She seemed very interested in learning more about the technology.

Carl smiled inside when he heard her eagerness to learn. It seems he found himself a science geek that would be excited to learn. He had met many of those types of people in the Stargate universe, so he was interested in seeing what she would come up with in the future.

Once the scans and tests showed that each of the Dragons were not brainwashed or under any control spells, Carl began releasing them from the infirmary. He would introduce them to one of the three elders and have them brought to the dining hall to meet the rest of the Flight.

Carl joined the last of the 15 dragons to be released as they made their way to the dining hall. It was an emotional time for the Dragons. The captives never thought they would be freed and be able to return home. The three elders that had avoided the disaster of the Raid were touched to see their rescued friends and relatives. And the young Dragons who had hatched since the Raid were ecstatic to meet new Dragons.

Even the dragonspawn that were serving the meal seemed excited to see the increased numbers. Carl made a note to find out exactly when the next batch of Dragons and dragonspawn were going to be hatched.

After the meal and the emotional reunion, Carl had Mortic assign rooms to the newly arrived Dragons. While they were doing that, Carl returned to his quarters and entered the Heavenly Pearl.

Once he landed in the world of time compression inside the pearl, Carl contacted the VIs and ordered them to get started on building the needed equipment for the cloning and transfer of consciousness.

He had already gotten DNA samples from each of the Dragons, and in the morning he was going to offer them a chance to get new bodies that were whole and undamaged.

* * *

The lighting in the lab was generally dark, with small lights here and there piercing the gloom. In the middle of the lab was a long rod of iron that was placed vertically and rose up through the open roof.

Lighting could occasionally be seen striking the iron rod, with snake like tendrils of electricity running down the rod.

Against the edges of the room were 18 enormous cylinder shaped containers. The containers were large enough to fit an adult Dragon.

Carl stood at the door of the room, mouth twitching at the sight of a stereo typical mad scientist's lab.

"Who knew my VIs had a sense of humor?" Carl rhetorically asked.

"Of course you knew, Lord Carl." The Yamato VI answered Carl's question. "You were the one to program it into us, after all."

"Hoisted on my own petard…" Carl muttered as he entered the room and checked over the vitals of the cloned Dragon bodies. He saw that everything was looking good, and the transference of consciousness had been smooth.

With the good report, Carl hit the button to wake up the Dragons. With a hiss of escaping gas, the 18 cylinders cracked open, revealing the Dragons inside.

A short time later, the 18 Dragons were excitedly inspecting their new bodies. The room suddenly didn't feel quite so spacious with so many full sized Dragons bouncing around and inspecting themselves with their long necks, tails, and wings going all different directions.

"Thank you, Lord Carl!" Mortic was the first to spot Carl standing by the doorway and exuberantly expressed his gratitude. "This is a wonderful dream come true!"

The rest of the group followed Mortic's example and loudly passed their thanks for all he had done for them.

"I'm glad to see you all doing so well." Carl smiled back at the group warmly. "Now that you're healthy, I intend to have a training session in the next day or so to ensure that everyone can defend themselves. I don't want anything as horrible to happen to you again, so I want you to be strong. Are you up for that?"

"Yes!"

"Never again!"

"Thank you Lord Carl!"

The cheers and loud yells of agreement was answer enough for Carl. He could see that the life and enthusiasm was returning to the eyes of the Dragons he had rescued.

Even though he had "purchased" them with CP from the jump documents, at this point Carl didn't feel like he owned them. He felt like they were his people. His new organization, his new family.

He wondered if this is what Mafia Dons felt. A sense of responsibility over the younger members of their organization; almost like a family.

'Well, if this is going to be my crime syndicate, than I am going to make them strong.' Carl thought as he chatted with the Dragons about his plans and the training session.

* * *

A couple days later, the entire Silver Dragon Flight convened in the Room of Requirement that Carl had installed in the Hold.

After a head count, Carl saw that everyone was present. With little fanfare, he activated the time compression device that he had the VIs and Petes manufacture. He didn't want to use the Heavenly Time Pearl for this training session, since he wanted the young Dragons to grow up while they were training.

Once Carl double checked that everything was working properly with the time compression, he began the training session. The time compression wasn't as good as the Heavenly Time Pearl, but they would be able to fit ten years into one week real time, which was enough to get the basic training done while the young Dragons would have time to grow to adulthood.

No one was excused from the training. Even the dragonspawn needed to get strong enough to protect the Flight.

Despite the difference of training Dragons and dragonspawn, the training was remarkably similar to how he trained his students in the Stargate universe.

He included more than just physical training, since he wanted his Flight to be strong and resourceful. Not to mention that if they had a different language than the commonly known ones on Azeroth they could communicate without giving away their plans to their enemies.

So as a result every one of his Flight learned the Alteran language, at the very least. They also went through the basic technological education so they could have a command of the various tools and technology in the future.

They would be following Carl from world to world from now on, and he didn't know what kind of situations they would be thrown into in the future. It was better to have knowledgeable and capable subordinates.

Carl was happy to see how his Flight bloomed and engaged in the training with gusto. Especially the six young Dragons that had never really faced the dangers and hard times were enthusiastic.

Carl was also happy to see Goram and the rest of the dragonspawn taking to the learning and training with gusto. Seeing their growing enthusiasm to learn and ambition to become more than simple servants made Carl quite happy.

He knew that in the past, and in other Dragon Flights, the dragonspawn were the next best thing to slaves. They were born and bred subservient to the Dragons. And while that basic biological mandate to put the Dragons first probably wouldn't disappear, Carl was happy to see them learn and break out of the ignorance and slavery attitude they had been molded in.

Carl wasn't afraid of his subordinates becoming too talented and rebelling against him. He was just afraid he wouldn't have enough people to accomplish what he decided to do in the worlds he traveled to. Having an organization that he had already trained standing ready to accomplish things was a great time saver for Carl.

Two years into the training the last batch of Dragon and Dragonspawn eggs hatched. The small whelplings were kind of cute, actually. The training schedule had to be adjusted at that point, since they needed someone always available to take care of the young Dragons and Dragonspawn.

While they could have had the VIs monitor the young ones, Carl felt that the human, er…dragon touch was needed to raise the young the right way.

Carl even took his fair share of babysitting duties while his students did their exercises. He got some practice in on splitting his attention in multiple directions as the group of little rambunctious whelplings seemed to be trying to get into everything.

By the time the ten years of training was complete, the young whelplings were 8 years old, only a couple years younger than the six Js were when Carl first arrived. They had also gone through a couple years of training in the Ki techniques in order to give them a strong foundation.

While Carl could have continued the training until all of them were adults, he felt it was necessary to pause it for the time being so the group could begin leveling up a bit now that they completed the basic training.

Carl shut down the time compression, bringing them back into normal time.

The young Dragons and Dragonspawn that had never been outside the Room of Requirement were fascinated with the Hold, and scattered out to explore. They had been born inside the wards, so they were classified as residents so Carl didn't worry about them getting hurt. He did have the VIs keep track of them to make sure they didn't wander outside alone though.

That night they had a feast in the dining hall all together. By this time even the older Dragons felt that the Dragonspawn were no longer servants, but comrades in arms and fellow flight members. And with the technology and magic they had, they no longer needed living servants to provide the food and cleaning.

Before the end of the training the Flight had already split into groups of five or six to go outside the Hold and level up the lower leveled Silver Flight members. Once everyone was at the same level, they would continue questing and leveling until they reached the Outlands.

Currently the Silver Dragon Flight consisted of 21 adult Dragonspawn and 24 adult Dragons. They made up nine groups of five, which was just right for the magical party system that the World of Warcraft had.

The basic plan called for four or five groups of five at a time to go around leveling as a group to ensure they would be able to help each other survive any ambush or encounter with enemies. The remaining groups would stay behind to watch after the young ones. After a couple days they would switch out.

The groups of five would be leveling in the same general area so they could quickly converge and support each other in the case of attack.

They would also have stealthed probes following them at all times to ensure communications between groups as well as emergency teleportation away from danger in case the enemy was too strong for them to handle.

Carl paid special attention to the stealth tracking abilities of the probes. He had already been ambushed by one Rogue in the Tanaris Desert the moment he had dismounted from a Gryphon transport. He didn't want any of his Flight members to be killed by an attack from a high level Rogue before they could support each other.

So being aware of any approaching stealthed adventurers was high on Carl's priority. Thankfully he had picked the Rogue class himself and was able to give his technology plenty of opportunity to study the stealth magic so he could develop countermeasures.

While the Dragons had their natural shifting ability to remain in Night Elf form, the Dragonspawn didn't have such an ability. So during the ten years of time compression, Carl had designed some form shifting trinkets that would work just fine until they reached the Sovereign Profound realm and gained their own humanoid forms.

While he was in the Alliance Capital he had purchased some shape shifting trinkets from the auction house. The only downside of the trinkets he purchased was that the shifted form would dispel upon getting hit by an enemy.

So after figuring out how to replicate the enchantment, he had combined that technique with the various magics from previous worlds to create trinkets for the Dragonspawn that wouldn't break if they took a hit from an enemy.

These trinkets would allow the Dragonspawn to be able to freely travel with the Dragons and level up without allowing their enemies to know that the Silver Dragon Flight was still around in the world.

And finally, Carl and the members of the Silver Dragon Flight hadn't let down their intrinsic Draconic trait of being highly skilled in crafting. They were outfitted with the best gear for their levels they could wield. And with the enhancements to their bodies that Ki training and Profound Cultivation granted them, they were able to wield powerful weapons beyond the normal capacity of someone at their same level.

The only failure of Carl's time in the training session was that he still hadn't figured out how to craft a Magical Cultivation technique. He already had techniques to be able to absorb natural energy and use it as Ki to enhance the body. He had techniques to absorb Profound Energy and use it to increase the Soul Power, or Cultivation, and in turn enhance the body.

He still hadn't figured out how to absorb Magical energy and enhance the mind and body. He knew it was possible since that was what was happening every time he leveled up or killed monsters here in Azeroth.

But figuring out a technique to naturally absorb magical energy from his surroundings was taking longer than he expected.

Carl wasn't discouraged though. He had nearly ten years to figure it out. He also had the Heavenly Time Pearl so he could extend his time in the world if he needed more time to figure it out.

So with all those plans already in place, Carl enjoyed the feast that the Silver Dragon Flight threw for itself to celebrate the end of the training. Once the feast was over, Carl departed alone to continue leveling up. The rest of the leveling groups would leave in the morning after they had settled back into their home.

* * *

Carl pulled his charger mount to a stop along the road he had been following through Feralas. Looking north of the road, Carl saw one pillar that was about 18 feet tall with a glowing blue fire on the top. Opposite the pillar, on the other side of the faded path, was a broken and fallen pillar that would have been the twin of the other pillar when it was still standing.

The ancient feel of the ruin of a pillar and the completely neglected pathway let Carl know he had arrived at the correct location. Directly north of him was the instance dungeon of Dire Maul.

According to the lore of the world, Dire Maul was a city that was built 12,000 years ago by Highborne Elf Sorcerers. It was known as Eldre'Thalas. It was a city where the inhabitants studied the arcane arts and secrets.

It fell into ruin during the Great Sundering, and now it is inhabited by Ogres, Satyrs, and the specters of dead Highborne.

As Carl headed north, he could see the signs of the Ogres occupation. A large tree trunk had been carved into the shape of a wailing face and planted vertically into the ground as a totem, with green spectral fire glowing in its eye sockets. Presumably the Ogres had planted the gruesome looking totem to scare any who dared intrude in their territory.

A post was planted alongside the road with the skin of a humanoid stretched out on the horizontal bars. The bloody sight didn't endear the Ogres to Carl.

Coldly glancing at the skin stretched out on the post, Carl cast a Fireball that immolated the grizzly totem. He then continued on north.

He soon saw some Ogre Mages wandering around the path. Thinking of how the Ogres had skinned some intelligent humanoid in torture and stretched his skin, Carl didn't feel any remorse for killing the Ogres that he saw.

The video game nature of the world he found himself in sometimes made him forget the brutality of the world that seemed to be based on war. The instance dungeons where the enemy mobs continued to respawn to be killed over and over again made it seem like the violence didn't really mean anything when they could easily live again.

But then Carl would remember what was done to his Dragon Flight. And he would see things like the skin of a person stretched out on a post.

And he would realize that he didn't understand the rules of the world in regards to how certain mobs could be resurrected over and over; while others would permanently die after being killed once.

Carl knew he couldn't play around with the idea of resurrecting after death. He didn't dare take the world lightly just because it reminded him of a video game he once played.

After burning some more skins, and killing some Ogres, Carl arrived at the entrance to the ruined city. There was an enormous stone arch, and under it was a stone ramp leading up to the city.

Carl gazed at the pillars that must have been over 80 feet high. The massive outer wall that would have been the defensive barrier for the Highborne so long ago.

The stonework of the ruined city was still exquisite under the patina of dirt and moss. The broken walls and ruined railings didn't detract from the grandeur of the ancient ruins. Nor did it distract Carl long when he had groups of Ogres and their trained Hyena attacking him.

In the game, Carl would have been dismounted the moment he began attacking an enemy. But here, in this world, Carl stayed mounted as he cast Arcane Blasts into the faces of the attacking Ogres. With Blue Orchid in his right hand, Carl slashed heads off and cast Judgment spells, killing with Holy damaging spells.

Carl arrived in the center of the city and saw a gladiator style arena sunken into the ground. The dirt ground in the pit was stained with blood that seemed to have been soaked in for thousands of years. Situated around the arena were statues of Highborne Elves. Presumably they were past champions or heroes to the former inhabitants of the city. Carl was somewhat surprised that the Ogres hadn't already toppled the Elf statues in their boredom.

After spending some time exploring the city, Carl found there were three instance entrances. The north and west entrances were blocked by a locked door, so Carl entered the east entrance.

Upon entering the instance, Carl saw a plaza that seemed overgrown with plants. Enormous roots were growing everywhere, penetrating the stone walls. Along the walkways there were giant Ent like tree men standing 20 feet tall. Six feet tall treant men were trooping in a line back and forth. And smaller vine like flower creatures were milling around in groups here and there.

Carl was getting the impression that the plant life here had been corrupted and grew out of all control. Standing at the edge of the walkway, he saw he was on the upper level of the plaza. Down below was even more wild growth. A garden had apparently been injected with some kind of magical corruption and grew, allowing the vines, plants, and flowers to gain sentience and movement on their own.

And all the plant creatures were hostile. Anytime Carl got close to one of them, the tree or plant or flower all attacked immediately. Carl didn't have any tenderness for these plants, so he employed fire to burn them up.

Aside from the wild plant growth, Carl found a small imp named Pusillin that wasn't immediately hostile to him. Carl remembered that this imp demon was one of the bosses of the instance. He had to talk to the little creature a couple times before he could fight the demon.

Carl approached the imp and said hello to the little creature.

"If you want the key, you'll have to chase me!" Pusillin yelled before dashing off, dodging between the legs of the various plant creatures.

Carl shrugged at the strange imp. He did want the key so he could get in the other wings of Dire Maul. He followed the path, slaying the various plant like monsters. He could have easily stealthed past them all, but they were experience points to help him level.

He only needed one more level before he could enter the Dark Portal and go to the Outlands. Every drop of magic counted.

After traveling a third of the way around the upper walkway of the plaza, Carl found the imp milling about. He once more greeted the small creature that had yellowish green flames surrounding its body.

"Chase me if you dare! I run without a care!" Pusillin yelled before dashing off once more.

"Well, as far as getting me worked up to chase you, that was about a 1 out of a 10." Carl muttered. "Couldn't you say something more insulting to get me angry and want to chase you without end?"

Carl shrugged. Apparently the demons in this instance dungeon in the game like world had to keep it PG-13.

After following the path, he found the imp standing in front of a hallway that led away from the plaza. The imp ran once more, leaving behind some little rhyme while mocking him. Carl walked down the hallway.

Carl followed the hallway that the little imp had run down. The darkened hallway he entered was filled with Satyr demons. The lighting was dark, only lit by the multiple campfires the Satyrs congregated around.

Since Carl knew the boss fight wouldn't happen until he had chased Pusillin to the end, Carl patiently talked to the imp once more. He followed behind as the speedy little imp climbed a ramp to the right.

Talking to Pusillin once more finally triggered the boss fight.

"Say hello to my little friends!" Pusillin shouted as he grew into a seven foot tall imp. Half a dozen little imps appeared surrounding Carl.

Carl cast his Consecration spell, which dropped an area of attack that did Holy damage on the imps surrounding him. He then used his Arcane Explosion Mage spell to finish off the imps.

A Fire Blast finished off Pusillin, who collapsed on the ground dead, shrunk once more to his normal imp size. Carl found the Crescent Key on the imp's body, which would allow him to enter the north and west wings of the dungeon. He also picked up a recipe for Runn Tum Tuber Surprise.

The tubers for the recipe were also dropped by Pusillin. Carl learned the recipe, cooked the tubers on the spot after building a fire, and got a meal that would enhance his Intellect for an hour or so.

"Note to self, research more on the temporary increases to stats from food in the world of Azeroth." Carl muttered as he ate the tuber surprise. The surprise was that a recipe he got from a demon was quite tasty.

The hallway he was in led to an exit from the instance, so Carl back tracked and took a side hallway to find more Satyrs gathered around camp fires. Carl wasn't sure just what the Satyrs were eating, but there were large rib bones lying around the ground, carelessly tossed there after being stripped of meat. The skeletal rib bones were about six feet tall, so the beasts they ate must have been quite large.

After killing all the demons, Carl climbed a ramp to a platform that had the next boss. It was a female Elf by the name Lethtendris who was a Warlock of some kind. Carl quickly killed her summoned imp demon Pimgib, and then stopped her from casting a spell at him, before slashing her with his sword, killing her.

The loot he got from here was a leather armor piece. A Felhide Cap that could increase Agility, Stamina, fire resistance, and shadow resistance.

Carl put the armor piece away in his inventory. He would have to add researching resistances to his list. While he was immune to fire and shadow damage, thanks to the ATG world, his subordinates weren't. It would be good to give them the added protections.

He continued to explore this wing of the ruined city. The next boss he encountered was a water elemental that was playing in a pool of water. Hydrospawn looked like he was the ocean waves shaped into a rough approximation of the human form. His water attacks did nothing against Carl due to his immunity, and he soon died, dropping some leather caster boots that boosted Intellect, Spirit, and Spell Power.

Carl continued exploring, killing the stealthed Satyrs before they could attack him. They thought they were so sneaky, but they weren't.

On a platform overlooking the water pool that Hydrospawn was playing in was a Satyr boss by the name of Zevrim Thornhoof who was standing at some kind of sacrificial altar. Carl went into stealth and Ambushed the boss, killing him quickly with a Holy damage spell Exorcism. He dropped a bow that would increase Agility and Hit rating.

Carl had been equipping a wand in his ranged slot, and didn't particularly need those paltry stat increases, so he disenchanted the bow. He was always in need of enchanting materials to experiment with.

Exiting the hall, Carl came to the lower part of the plaza from where he first entered that wing of the city. It was the remnants of a garden, overgrown with wild plants. There were still some regular trees that had grown tall that overshadowed the garden.

In the middle of the garden stood a friendly tree man Ent that stood at least 50 feet tall. Carl didn't even come up to his knees. Carl approached and talked to the massive tree man.

"Thank you, mortal. There is but one service that I may offer to you before I return to the Dream. The door to Zevrim's master, Alzzin, blocks your path. I shall act as your instrument of destruction. The door will be opened, I merely await your command."

"Thanks there, Old Ironbark." Carl answered, having seen the tree man's name. "I'm ready for you to open the door."

With that the slow tree man turned around and began stumping towards the back of the garden where a door that Carl couldn't open stood. Old Ironbark bashed the door down before collapsing to the ground, dead.

Carl had no idea what the history of Old Ironbark was, or why he had remained there waiting for some adventurer to come and kill the demons. Despite having played the game back in his original world, Carl had ignored most of the lore and history of the world. It hadn't been important while playing the game.

But seeing the city in ruins and running into characters like Old Ironbark that had some unspoken history, Carl's interest was peaked, at least a little bit. He would have to keep an eye out for histories of the world to add to his database for study.

Carl entered the door that Ironbark had knocked down, and found himself in a massive circular room. There were ramps on the right and left that led down to a circular stage like center of the room. There stood the satyr Alzzin the Wildshaper.

Based on the demon's title, Carl assumed he was the demon who had corrupted the plant life and cause the wild growth of all the plant creatures that were so hostile in this wing of the city.

Carl wasn't polite and opened up the fight with an Ambush to the demon's back, knocking off over half his health. He followed up with a Judgment and an Exorcism, and finished the demon off with a Fire Blast.

The loot dropped from the demon was an Intellect enhancing ring and a strength enhancing pair of Plate gauntlets. The ring also had the effect of restoring 8 mana per five seconds, and the gauntlets had the effect of inflicting Arcane damage on the attacker when struck.

Carl packed away the two items for further study. Any interesting enchants or enhancements to equipment was of interest to Carl in order to increase his crafting abilities.

He then picked up a Felvine Shard on the ground around the Felvine plant that Rabine Saturna in Nighthaven, Moonglade had requested he retrieve.

With all the bosses killed in this wing of the city, Carl headed through a dirt tunnel behind where the Satyr boss had been standing. The tunnel led up to an exit from this instance.

Finding himself back in the central plaza of the ruined city, Carl made his way to the west side and used the key to open the locked door to the next instance dungeon.

Inside Carl saw he was in another garden with many hostile plant creatures roaming around. In the middle of the garden was an enormous crystal that had a beam of magical energy shooting out the top. Carl could see three beams of magic in the garden alone, meaning there were three of those Crystals.

There were four Arcane Aberretions surrounded the giant crystal, maintaining the Crystal's magic. The blue magical constructs just felt wrong to Carl's magical senses. They felt demonic in nature.

Carl attacked and killed the Arcane Aberrations, which caused the magic of the Crystal to die out. There were only two more in the garden, and Carl could see they were up on the balcony overlooking the garden he was standing in.

When Carl arrived at the balcony by climbing the ramp, he saw there were ghost like Apparitions, spectral Banshees, and ghostly Elves wandering around. Carl cleared out the undead mobs on his way to the Crystals.

After dispatching the Mana Aberrations that were guarding the Crystal, Carl spotted some neutral ghostly Elves standing around the balcony overlooking the garden. There was one Elf, the Shen'dralar Ancient, that gave Carl a quest.

"Madness had gripped our city. Prince Tortheldrin had imprisoned a demon of some power, and has been siphoning off his power to supplement his own."

"But a demon's power is corrupted, and it caused Prince Tortheldrin to descend into madness and paranoia, causing the end of our once great city."

"You must destroy the guardians surrounding the 5 Pylons that power the Prison of Immol'thar. Once the Pylons have powered down, the force field surrounding Immol'thar will have dissipated. Enter the Prison of Immol'thar and eradicate the foul demon that stands at its heart. With Immol'thar dead, Prince Tortheldrin's power will be greatly reduced. Confront and end him. Lay the spirits of this city to rest."

After accepting the quest, Carl continued on to the other side of the balcony and destroyed those mana guardians, powering down the Pylon.

Carl then made his way back down to the garden, and found the path onward blocked by a corrupted Ent like boss called Tendris Warpwood. Since he was a tree, Carl killed him with fire. He opened up with a Pyroblast, which was basically a large Fireball that took a bit longer to charge up than a normal Fireball.

He followed the Pyroblast with some regular Fireballs and Fireblasts. After a couple rounds, the large tree man was dead. His remains were still smoldering when Carl looted the body.

Behind Tendris was a door that led to an enormous circular chamber. In the center was the prison of Immol'thar. There were massive pillars circling the prison, and there was a blue mana shield that rotated around the outside of the pillar prison that kept the demon inside.

Between the pillars of the prison, Carl could see what manner of demon had been imprisoned, and it was an ugly one. Immol'thar stood on four legs like a giant hound. It had two heads, with a single eye in the middle of each head just over a large slavering mouth. Above its two heads were a mass of tentacles with an eye on the end of each tentacle.

The large dog like demon stared hungrily at Carl as he stood just outside of the prison. Carl shook his head at seeing the abomination that the Prince had for some reason decided to use as a battery. Carl had to wonder what was cracked in the Prince's head to want to put the corrupted energy from that disgusting demon into his body.

Carl then circled around the prison, having spotted the remaining Pylons that he needed to power down to open up the prison. Once he finished off the last mana construct guardian of the five pylons, the mana shield of the prison dissipated.

Carl strode inside the prison, and the dog like horror eagerly attacked him. Carl didn't hold back, and used all his Holy damaging spells to attack the demon while dodging its slobbery mouth as it tried to eat him.

A short time later, the enormous demonic hound dropped to the ground. Carl kicked the disgusting corpse, grabbing a trinket that increased someone's dodge chance and robe that increased spell power.

Carl was interested in the dodge ability of the trinket. He was thinking that the magic of the trinket would work against an attacker's magic to help the person dodge their intent based attacks. It would be interesting to experiment with.

Throwing the items in his inventory, Carl moved down the hallway that led to the Prince. He found the Prince standing in a library. He was staring blankly off into space with an absent minded look on his face. He was garbed in green and gold leather armor and in each hand carried a dual blade knife. Carl questioned the practicality of a knife that had a blade on each end of the handle.

But in this world with intent based magic that enhances a person's physical abilities, a lot of things must be possible that would just be silly to try without magic.

Carl decided not to mess about and opened the battle with an Ambush from stealth behind the Prince.

The Prince immediately spun around and began attacking Carl with his odd knives. Carl parried or dodged his attacks, while striking out with his own weapons. Since Carl didn't have many restrictions, he was also casting magic while attacking with his weapons, throwing Fireballs into the Prince's face.

Soon enough the corrupted Prince fell dead, having not said a word in the short battle.

Carl looted a leather wrist armor piece that increased Agility, Stamina, and Attack Power, as well as a crossbow that increased Critical Strike Rating. Carl threw them into his inventory for later.

He then backtracked to the balcony overlooking the garden where he turned in the quest he had gotten from the Shen'dralar Ancient. With that quest turned in, Carl finally reached level 58. He could enter the Dark Portal and join the rest of the adventurers in exploring the Outlands.

But since he was already here in Dire Maul, he figured he would finish the North wing of the dungeon. He also accepted the follow on quest the Shen'dralar Ancient gave him, to return to the library and find a treasure chest hidden under the stairs. It was a reward for having ended the corruption and madness of the Prince.

After grabbing the treasure in the chest, Carl explored the library and found a passageway that led directly to the North Wing of the instance dungeon. The passageway opened up to a plaza that was filled with Ogres and their trained attack Hyenas.

Carl rolled up his sleeves and began clearing out the Ogres. In the center of the plaza was Guard Mol'dar that gave Carl key, the Gordok Inner Door Key.

Carl continued on, clearing out the instance of the Ogres and various little beasties he ran across, like scorpions, spiders, and beetles. After killing Guard Fengus, Carl picked up another key from his chest in the next courtyard over. That key let him get through some doors to continue on.

The next boss Carl killed was Guard Slip'kik, who dropped a book called The Light and How to Swing It, which started a Paladin class quest for Carl.

Carl accepted the quest, and made his way to the Library where he turned in the quest and received a trinket that increased his fire resistance, armor, and increased the damage done by spells and effects. Carl was pleased to receive another unusual enchantment for later study and put the trinket away in his inventory.

Carl then returned to where he killed Guard Slip'kik and continued onwards. He felt that coming to clear out Dire Maul was proving very profitable.

As Carl followed the path, he found Captain Kromcrush, who kindly gave him another key, the Gordok Shackle Key. Just beyond the Captain Carl entered a large circular room with a raised stage dais in the middle.

Standing on the stage was King Gordok and Cho'Rush the Observer. King Gordok was a massive one headed Ogre that was wearing armor and wielding a massive claymore in his right hand. Cho'Rush was a two headed Ogre that was wielding a caster staff.

Seeing the two final bosses, Carl entered Stealth and snuck up on Cho'Rush. With an Ambush, Carl took off most of his health. He used the combo points he gained from the Ambush and Evicerated Cho'Rush, finishing him off.

Carl then turned his attention to the King, and began battling him. Carl found that the King had used Sunder Armor on Carl, which temporarily decreased his armor so he would take more damage.

Carl's intent based dodging and parrying though kept him from taking damage. Carl didn't hold back, and used his various abilities to slice up the King.

Once the King was dead, a smaller Ogre came out of the wings and declared that since Carl had killed the previous king, he was now king of the Ogres. With that declaration, Mizzle pulled out a treasure chest as tribute to their new king.

Carl chuckled when he saw that the remaining Ogres that he hadn't killed around the "throne room" were suddenly friendly with him. Carl knew this wasn't a permanent thing, so he didn't bother with them. After gathering the tribute, Carl teleported to Stormwind and visited the class trainers to learn any new skills available since he reached level 58.

After training and selling any junk, Carl made his way to the flight master and took a gryphon to the Blasted Lands, where the Dark Portal was located.

After arriving at the Alliance base, Carl mounted up and rode south. He soon arrived at the crater where the Dark Portal stood. Standing on the edge of the crater, Carl looked over the defensive perimeter that both the Alliance and Horde had erected.

It was a testament to how threatening the two rival factions found the Burning Legion of Demons that they actually worked together to keep the demons from invading Azeroth.

Spurring his horse, Carl charged down the slope. He slowed down a bit to thread through the barriers that were set up. He rode up the ramp leading to the portal and plunged in without hesitation.


	81. Azeroth 6

The Dark Portal loomed behind Carl, glowing eldritch green on the edges of the portal. In the center it looked like a deep space view with a slowly rotating star field. The longer someone looked into the portal, the more it felt like they would uncontrollably fall into the depths of space.

The massive stone platform the Dark Portal rested on was occupied by Alliance and Horde forces. The Alliance was positioned on the left side, while the Horde forces were on the right. Carl could see the uneasy glances going between the two forces as they kept vigilance against the other side even while they battled the demons. But their main attention was the battlefield directly ahead.

The chaotic battlefield had the corpses of many Fel Demons, 12 foot tall red skinned demons that had armor covering their bodies except for their torsos. They were led by 18 foot tall demons that had digitigrade legs, a tail, and a dark purplish skin.

The Alliance and Horde forces were working together to kill the constantly attacking demons. The healers kept the joint forces alive, while the demons didn't have any healers of their own.

Some distance away stood a 45 foot tall centaur like demon called a Pit Commander. He stood on four muscular legs, his blue scaly skin looked particularly thick and difficult to pierce. The blade the pit commander carried was at least 20 feet long. Fortunately he simply stood back, ordering his demonic forces to attack.

After looking over the battlefield for some time, Carl made his way to the left to use the flight master to fly to Honor Hold. While flying Carl looked over the landscape of Hellfire Penninsula. There was a good reason it was called that. The ground as far as he could see was red and lifeless. In many of the crevices in the ground flames sprouted up, burning off some fuel leaking out from underground.

There were demons and corrupted life forms everywhere Carl could see. There were occasionally placed disturbing dark iron constructs that had sickly green crystals floating over them. Inside was the swirling eldritch green energies of small portals. A consistent flow of demons was exiting these smaller portals.

Some of the demons that exited these portals made their way to the battle field around the Dark Portal. Some milled about aimless in the immediate vicinity of the portals. And some were spreading out to the rest of the peninsula.

Yes, with the corrupted and destroyed landscape, Carl could see how it earned the name Hellfire Penninsula.

Carl landed beside the inn in the walled fortress Honor Hold. Directly in front of him was a large building that had been destroyed. Only the foundation still stood, while some of the support timbers were still smoldering.

There was a tense atmosphere of readiness to do battle in the warriors that were going about their duties in the keep. These warriors and soldiers were grimly going about their duties in order to prevent the invasion of demonic forces that would destroy their homes and families.

Carl was once more struck by the strange dichotomy of this world. The inhabitants were real people, with real lives, hopes, and expectations. But at the same time, there were many game like magical features, as well as the influx of the adventurers who seemed to be connected to a video game in another world.

This strange dichotomy made it difficult for Carl to figure out just what he should feel about the world. While the goals of the Alliance and Horde factions to protect their lives and their families were admirable, and he could understand just where both sides came from, Carl found that he didn't really care much about them. At most he felt the factions were useful for him.

The only people that he really cared about in this world were the members of the Silver Dragon Flight. They would be joining him in each world as his faction, his people. As a result, Carl only really cared about making his Dragon Flight strong. The Alliance and Horde were useful for those goals, but otherwise he didn't care too much about them.

He wasn't sure if that made him heartless or not. He wasn't even sure if he cared that he didn't really care.

Carl's moment of introspection was soon over. It was time to quest.

He first made his way over to the inn and set his hearth stone there. Being able to teleport directly back to the inn would be more convenient for completing quests. He was still hiding his extra abilities for the time being and acting as a regular adventurer.

He then reported to the commander of Honor Hold, a human by the name and title Force Commander Danarth Trollbane who gave him two quests. There were important missions that needed to be carried out to eradicate demonic forces. Carl first made his way to the east to report to Sergeant Altumus.

As Carl approached the area where the Sergeant was, he saw two guard towers on either side of the road. The tower on the north was completely demolished, only the foundations still stood. The tower on the south had one of its walls smashed in.

A dozen large green meteors came streaking down from the sky, impacting the ground with great force. The meteors then stood up and became 15 foot tall demonic golems made of stone and wreathed in green fel fire that began attacking the Alliance forces that were gathered to protect the eastern approach to Honor Hold.

Carl saw that Sergeant Altumus was too busy fighting the demonic constructs to give him his quests, so he charged forward on his Paladin mount, and joined in the fight. Blue Orchid easily sliced through the demonically enhanced stone, lopping off limbs and severing heads. When enough damage was done to the constructs they collapsed into a pile of rubble.

The battle lasted only a few minutes until the demonic constructs were destroyed. Carl looked over the soldiers who had various wounds on their bodies. He took a moment to cast a few healing spells on the soldiers before talking to Sergeant Altumus. She gave him a quest to kill a certain number of demons to the east to ease the pressure on their forces.

As Carl traveled east, he saw his way was blocked by demonic hell boars. They were eight feet tall at the shoulders, their eyes were glowing red, and they just looked wrong with bony spikes coming out of their shoulders. Twisted by fel magics, they attacked anything that came near them.

Carl didn't avoid them and used Blue Orchid to kill the hell boars. He swiftly chopped off their heads and skinned them before moving on.

After riding for some time, Carl found a valley that was inhabited by a number of demons. There were smaller four foot tall imps that were playing with fire. There were the meteor constructs waiting their turn to attack the base. And there were 12 feet tall demons with bat wings spread behind them overseeing the operation.

Carl spotted a large group of the demons together in one place. It was the perfect set up. He summoned his magic and began channeling a Blizzard in the area the demons were in. The demons Carl targeted were immediately affected by the sub arctic temperatures and found it difficult to move quickly. The large hail stones Carl summoned rained down on the demons, damaging them more and more.

The demons trying to get to Carl couldn't get out of the area of the Blizzard before they turned into corpses. Carl smirked a bit at the effectiveness of his magic. He looted the bodies of the paltry amounts of silver they had on principle, and looked around for his next set of victims.

The next few groups died just as easily as the first, and Carl was soon traveling back to the Sergeant to report the success of the quest.

And the reward for success, besides a piece of gear, was more work! Carl followed the Sergeant's directions to an outpost that was monitoring demonic activity that needed help in their operations against the forces arrayed against them.

* * *

[Jayne: We just wiped out all the Defias thugs in Moonbrook in less than five minutes and have to wait for them to populate again before we can get our quest quota. It's so boring waiting here!]

[Fausic: Then go to the coast and do some fishing while you wait.]

[Jayne: But fishing is even more boring than waiting for a respawn!]

* * *

[Jeff: Run! Run! Run! We're killing them too fast in the Deadmines and have to run to keep up with the tank! Slow down tank dragon bro!]

[Stovos: No.]

* * *

[June: Our healer has a particular hate for Quilboars, so she's forcing us to do Razorfen Kraul over and over again. I don't know when she'll be satisfied with killing these guys.]

[Rubiana: Only when they are fully eradicated.]

[June: …but they respawn...]

* * *

[Hilda: I swear, these irradiated monsters in Gnomergan are disgusting. Thank goodness I picked the Hunter class so I don't have to touch them.]

[Fromie: Yeah, she's even forcing the rest of us to do her looting for her.]

[Hilda: And I love you all for it!]

* * *

[Goram: Horde tried to ambush us in Stranglethorn Vale again.]

[Jonah: Lord Carl was right to warn us of the area. It's a hotbed of fighting between Horde and Alliance forces.]

[Donner: It was pretty funny to see his surprised face when the rest of us popped out of nowhere and he was burned to death by over 10 fireballs.]

[June: Aww…you didn't invite the rest of us to the party.]

[Goram: The next time we get ambushed, I'll inform you right away. I can't guarantee they'll still be alive by the time you get there, though.]

[June: Thanks, it's the thought that counts!]

* * *

[Whent: If I ever have to do another run of Temple of Atal'Hakkar, it'll be too soon. The amount of backtracking we have to do, running up and down stairs, is just too much!]

[Buron: Hey, at least you get to practice your skinning, right?]

[Whent: Yeah, but it's a bit morbid to be skinning other dragons.]

[Buron: Nah, you can't think like that. They're too dumb to be dragons, they're just beasts. Besides, think of what our soft hearted ways led to in the past.]

[Whent: Yeah, you're right. Still…/shrug]

* * *

[Lyria: Hey, does anyone have any leftover thick spider silk? I need a few more pieces to level up my tailoring. Let me know if you want anything in exchange.]

[Chromalie: Yeah, I got some, I'll send it your way. I don't need anything at the moment, but if I do, I'll let you know.]

[Lyria: Thanks! I owe you one!]

* * *

Carl chuckled as he looked over the chat logs while he was waiting for a monster to respawn. He had distributed hand held pads that let his Dragon Flight communicate with each other, which included discussion boards and messaging. His people had taken to it quite well.

It was a constant source of amusement to Carl to look over his people's interactions with each other.

In the cases of some of the rescued dragons, they had some serious hate brewing inside for the creatures their captors had induced to attack and torture them. As long as that aggression was aimed at the enemy, rather than being bottled up inside, Carl didn't have a problem if some of them were a little zealous in attacking certain dungeons.

The various groups of Dragons and Dragonspawn had been working hard to level up. They wanted to catch up to Carl and attack the various high level dungeons and raids. The loot they could get from there would give them ideas on how to craft better gear, enchants, and other enhancements.

Contrary to his initial expectation, none of the rescued dragons wanted to curl up at home and focus on crafting. That was the habit and behavior that got them captured in the first place because they were too weak. So while they still had a passion for their craft, they had a hunger for strength. They refused to be victims a second time.

It wasn't something that Carl discouraged. For them to gain a sense of security, they needed that sense of control over their lives and destinies that personal strength gave them.

Putting away his own hand held pad, Carl pulled out Blue Orchid and snuck up on the giant bird that had just appeared. A few moments later Carl put the loot away in his bags and summoned his mount. He was pleased that he would have some chicken wings to barbecue tonight.

With dinner plans taken care of Carl travelled south to the Auchindoun ruins. He was about to enter the Sethekk Halls dungeon. He had a couple quests to complete there, which should level him up to 68.

The mausoleum ruins looked like it had been through a war, the structure was damaged and falling apart. Carl rode in through one of the ruined doorways and climbed the stairs to the outer ring. From there he had a view of the central circular area that had been excavated and was at least 100 feet deep.

There were at least four levels in the original structure where the Draenei had once laid their dead to rest. But that was all smashed now, leaving behind ruined destruction.

There were four dungeons in Auchindoun. To the North was the Mana Tombs. To the South was the Shadow Labyrinth. To the West was the Auchenai Crypts. And to the East was the Sethekk Halls.

The dungeon Carl was running today was the Sethekk Halls. It was full of the avian Arakkoa species. The humanoid birds stood between 6 and 8 feet tall. Looking at them, Carl wondered if they were similar to what some dinosaur species would have evolved to if they evolved to be a humanoid species. They had some mannerisms that were incredibly similar to many of the dinosaurs Carl had hunted the past.

The similarity between the Arakkoa and the dinosaurs actually made Carl want to hunt them even more than before. He made short work of the various patrolling groups of Arakkoa. Carl began each fight from stealth and then used a few Rogue and Paladin spells to finish off the rest. Occasionally he threw in a few Mage spells to keep his attacks varied.

It wasn't long before Carl was fighting the first boss, Darkweaver Syth. Carl didn't give him time to summon any of the elementals that he usually did. He died too quick to use his abilities.

Seeing how quickly he had finished off the boss, Carl was pleased with the combination of abilities that having multiple classes gave him. It was a lot of fun to play with as he fought the various enemies.

He could sneak up on them, stun lock them, blast them, stun them again, freeze them, disappear through the Rogue's Vanish, and do it all over again.

With the first boss dead, Carl continued on to the next room, clearing out the groups of birdmen before climbing the stairs to the second level.

After clearing out the second floor, Carl came to the final boss of the dungeon, Talon King Ikiss. Carl's Ambush ability wasn't enough to down the boss, and immediately after Carl took off nearly half his health, the boss brought up a bubble that made him immune to damage for a short time.

Carl saw that Ikiss was charging up a large explosion spell, and remembered this from the game. With a few quick steps, Carl positioned himself behind one of the nearby pillars. The arcane explosion spread through the room, but was blocked by the solid stone pillar Carl hid behind, so he took no damage.

Charging out from behind the pillar, Carl used his fire spells, boosted by the Golden Crows flames, to roast the Talon King. A few moments later, the boss dropped dead. Carl collected a spell caster cloak and trousers.

The pants were the Trousers of Oblivion, which were part of a five part set. Carl smiled at seeing that. The ability to create a set of armor that enhanced each other and gave more enchantment bonuses the more pieces of the set one wore would be worth studying and replicating.

There was a chest at the back of the boss room that contained a single key that was used to open the locked gates that led to the Shadow Labyrinth dungeon. With that key in hand, Carl made plans to run that dungeon next.

With the dungeon cleared, Carl ran outside to turn in the quest before teleporting back to Stormwind. He had reached level 68 and had some class trainers to visit to upgrade his spells.

With a flash of light, Carl appeared in the Mage tower in Stormwind. Looking around, he saw several adventurers present, talking to the Mage trainers or simply passing through due to being teleported.

"Greetings mage. Shall I provide you with further insight into the world of magic?" Maginor Dumas cheerfully greeted Carl when he approached. The balding Mage trainer was dressed in a blue robe with gold trimmings. The large blue jewel on a headband over his forehead always gathered Carl's attention and he couldn't help but stare at the head piece.

"Yeah, I've just hit a new level and need some upgrades." Carl answered, a little distracted by the large stone that was just so eye catching. Maginor Dumas soon pulled out a list of spells he could train.

Looking over the list, Carl was pleased. There was Invisibility that would have Carl fade into invisibility over 5 seconds. A good spell for escaping from people he didn't want to talk to at boring parties.

A new rank of his Blizzard area of effect spell. Conjuring a Mana Emerald that was basically condensed mana. Later on in combat, if he was running out of mana to cast spells with, he could pop the thing in his mouth and the stored mana would enter his reserves.

A Mana Shield that would absorb damaging attacks and spend his mana instead of losing his health.

After learning the spells from the Mage Trainer, Carl exited through the large circular arcane device that had a permanent portal leading out of the tower. He soon mounted his charger and made his way to the Cathedral Square where the paladin trainers were.

After entering the Cathedral of Light, Carl made his way to the left vestibule.

"May the light protect you." Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker greeted Carl when he approached.

"Greetings. May the light shine down on you." Carl kept his grin firmly off his face. He definitely wasn't thinking of the song Shine by Collective Soul when interacting with the trainer. Nope.

A moment later Lord Shadowbreaker had taught Carl new ranks of the Exorcism spell, Frost Resistance Aura, Seal of Wisdom, and Hammer of Wrath.

Exorcism was a holy damaging spell. Frost Resistance was useless for Carl, but useful in helping any party or raid members avoiding cold damage. Seal of Wisdom made it so each of his melee attacks would restore his mana. And Hammer of Wrath was a finishing move that would hurl a Holy Hammer at an enemy that was low of health to do holy damage.

Carl liked playing with the Hammer of Wrath as if he was Thor, God of Thunder.

'Maybe one of these days I'll get my own Mjolnir…' Carl thought hopefully.

After learning all he could from the Paladin trainer, Carl made his way through the canals of Stormwind to Old Town, where he soon tracked down the Rogue trainer.

"You look like the type I should watch my coin purse around. Something I can help you with?" Osborne the Night Man casually stated. The man was dressed in stereotypical swashbuckler gear with a knife on each hip. He had a dark mustache and a soul patch gracing his chin. In other words, he looked like a rogue.

"And if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black." Carl smirked at the man. "I'm here for some training."

"Of course you are."

Carl soon looked over the spell options and bought the new ranks. There was Anesthetic Poison, which coated his weapon and did Nature Damage to those afflicted with it.

A new rank of Backstab increased the amount of damage done with the attack.

Rupture was a bleeding damage over time finishing move that used up combo points as the fuel for the spell.

And finally there was an Instant Poison that also did Nature damage.

After Carl spent his gold learning the spells, he took his leave of the Rogue. While he had had some interesting conversations with the various inhabitants of Azeroth over the past several weeks, he really had nothing to say to the trainers beyond learning what they taught him.

As Carl was riding towards the Trade District, he noticed some furtive movement in the corner of his eye. Slightly turning his head, he saw two figures duck into an alley after vigilantly looking around.

The unusual activity piqued Carl's interest. So he immediately dismissed his mount and entered Stealth. Silently casting a sound and scent blocker on his body, he activated Sprint and dashed after the two figures that had caught his attention.

He caught up with the two just before they entered one of the houses tucked away in the maze of alleyways in Old Town. Carl immediately cast a listening charm on the two figures before the door closed. He then flew up to the roof of the house and sat down cross legged, waiting for further developments.

"Have you found anything yet?" A deep voice sounded in Carl's ear. He was hearing the voice in stereo from both the spell he cast as well as through the walls. Apparently they didn't have any sound proofing like Carl had expected, making his casting of the spy spell superfluous.

"No, nothing yet." A reluctant and whining voice then said. "But it's not my fault! They are lazy and don't work hard to gather the requested information! It's not fair that I should be punished for their failures!"

"You worked so hard to gain that position with the luxuries you now enjoy. It's up to you to motivate your subordinates to work hard. If you weren't so lax, would they be so lazy? So it is entirely right to punish you for the lack of results." The unsympathetic deep voiced person obviously wasn't accepting any excuses for the "failure".

Carl had a phrase pop into his head "shit rolls downhill". Apparently that was the management model of these people's organization.

"I hear and obey." The whiny voice managed to say through his gritted teeth. "But why the rush? Didn't we have a bunch of-"

"Silence!" The first voice roared. "How dare you question the leadership! It doesn't sound like you are working hard for the honor to be bestowed upon you at all." The deep voice threatened.

"Apologies!" The whiny voice groveled for a few moments. "I didn't mean to question them, I merely sought more information so I could perform my duties better. Please don't take away my hard earned merits!"

"Very well." The deep voiced conspirator finally said after letting the other one grovel for some time. "But be aware that the gift of Eternal Life isn't given lightly. If you continue to fail in your duties, your position will be given to one who can accomplish the assigned tasks. This is your last warning!"

"Yes, yes, thank you!" The whiny voiced human gratefully flattered the other one for a short time before he was cut off.

"Now go! Make sure you have some news to report the next time."

From on top of the roof Carl saw the whiny voiced human exit the house and scurry down the alley. He mentally contacted the VI of the Yamato and had it track the human to his location. He was interested in learning just who his subordinates were and what they were trying to discover.

Carl then felt the magical signature of someone casting a Mage Teleport spell. With only that short moment's notice, Carl managed to cast his own tracking spell that would identify and locate the spatial burrowing to its destination. He didn't want to lose track of the deep voiced one.

Even though they hadn't specifically said what they were looking for or what organization they were a part of, Carl had heard one clue that had tipped him off.

In this world, the humans don't have any real possibility of "Eternal Life" without some extraordinary means. They would have to have an enormous power source somehow attached to them. As such there were no powerful beings that would just give such a power source away to their lackeys as an honor.

The only remaining possibility was that these humans were members of the Cult of the Damned. They idolized the Undead, and thought that becoming undead was Eternal Life. As such, they were "blessed" with the gift only when they had gained some merits in their Cult.

The group of humans who were so enamored with eternal life that they would allow themselves to become monstrous undead abominations was the Cult of the Damned. Carl had an irreconcilable feud with those bastards for what they had done to his Flight.

Even if they hadn't perpetrated the affront against Carl with the Raid, he would never have had soft feelings for those undead worshiping fanatics. In order to attain their selfish desires they were willing to spread plagues and kill off innocent people wholesale. They destabilized the countries they inhabited until war, famine, and plague were widespread. Until only a land of the undead remained.

If anyone in the world of Azeroth deserved his hatred, it was definitely the Cult of the Damned.

That wasn't to say that Carl didn't have other factions that he despised. For example the Iron Horde willingly allowed themselves to be corrupted and enslaved by Demons for a taste of power. They opened the gate for the demonic forces of the Legion to invade their homes, thus destroying everything they were trying to protect.

Carl despised the leadership for their decisions. But the majority of the Orcs of the Iron Legion were hoodwinked by their leadership into agreeing to be slaves. So in Carl's mind, while he would never be soft with them, they were more worthy of pity than of hate.

The Cult of the Damned on the other hand were all unrepentant monsters in human skin. They willingly and knowingly conspired with the undead against the living, which made them the enemy of all life.

And now that Carl had found another tail to follow into the brush, he would take advantage of that to uncover more of the Cult's forces to be eradicated.

Carl silently flew back to the ground and moved away from the area. Once he was sure he was unobserved and alone, he ended Stealth and mounted up to run to his next destination, the Auction House.

Back when he was playing the game, he had never had a lot of gold to willfully buy anything he wanted from the Auction House. He played multiple characters in order to have one with each profession so he could be self sufficient.

But now things were entirely different for him. He was here in his own body, so he couldn't have multiple characters. He had a large stream of money constantly coming his way, so he never worried about funds anymore. With such a large amount of money, if he didn't take advantage of the Auction House to shorten the time he spent on leveling up his profession skills, he would really be wasting his time.

And most importantly, the rate of item drops in this world seemed to follow the game rules. In short, the more rare an item was, the rarer it was to drop off of mobs.

So Carl didn't have the time or inclination to spend so much time constantly and mindlessly grinding away on the off chance that various mobs would drop something nice for him.

There were massive numbers of adventurers running around, killing things, getting loot drops. And while many of them kept the items for themselves, even more brought those items to the Auction House to make a profit.

Carl was more than happy to exchange a resource he had so much of in order to get rare items to study and add to his repertoire of enchantments for armor and weapons. While Carl was making do with the drops he got from dungeons and quests for the time being, he had plans.

Plans that made use of the high level drops from the raids in the Outlands to combine enchants and make the best armor he could. He would use the Profound Armor he got from the Against the Gods world as the base. He would add various magical materials and enchants he learned from his various studies and worlds. The resulting Armor would be…amazing.

And while he would have to repeat the upgrade process whenever new raid loots became available, and again when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion opened up and Northrend opened up for exploration, Carl was actually looking forward to the process. Not only had he gained a trait that made him good at crafting, but he gained a taste for it. It was a fun pastime.

Carl had just walked into the busy and crowded Auction House in the Trade District when he suddenly had a thought and almost face palmed himself.

He knew the VI managers of his properties could leave the property and go a certain distance away from the properties in order to purchase items in the nearby market places. So he could assign them the extra duty of watching the Auction Houses in the various cities in order to buy the various things he needed for his research.

Carl mentally went over the list of VIs that were available in a city that had an auction house and started splitting up what items each of the VIs should look for. They didn't have to camp in the auction houses, but they could make three trips a day to take a look and grab anything on his lists.

While Carl had the urge to do an about face and set that system up, he was already in the auction house now, so he decided he would look first, then go set up the orders for his managing VIs.

Scrolling through the selection of gear, Carl found a few pieces that he was interested in. He grumbled a bit at how much the seller had put the buyout option for, feeling that they were being a little too greedy. But he really wanted the items to deconstruct and learn the enhancements, so he shelled out the gold. It wasn't like he was lacking money anyway.

* * *

The moment Carl arrived in the Hold, Jayne jumped out of nowhere and began bouncing around him.

"Whachu get?! Whachu get?!" Jayne excitedly exclaimed.

He saw the rest of her party hanging back a bit, looking embarrassed on her behalf, but also excited to learn the answer.

"I've got a helmet that increases stealth detection, a pair of boots that increase running speed, and a staff that heals random party members." Carl chuckled at the girl dragon's exuberance.

All of his Dragons were exceptionally interested in anything to do with crafting, having been influenced by one of their two key traits. But most of them were less willing to let go and show their excitement around their Dragon Lord, Carl.

"Ooh! That sounds like fun! I wonder if the run speed can be applied to our flying speed?" Jayne pondered out loud.

"Well, that's one of the tests I'll leave in your hands, Jayne." Carl offered, pulling out a pair of boots and dropping them in her arms. "Be sure to have the VIs record everything as you experiment, and copy the results to the entire group." Carl called out to her back, seeing as she was dashing to the lab with her new toys.

Carl shook his head in amusement at the girl. It was good to see that her upbeat personality hadn't been crushed by their life in hiding or seeing how the captive Dragons had been treated.

"My lord." Goram bowed to him before falling into step beside Carl.

"How are the parties doing with their training and leveling?" Carl asked.

Goram had proven a good choice in assigning to coordinate with the groups. His long years of working as basically the Hold's steward gave him a lot of practice in assigning tasks and coordinating work.

One or two of the older rescue Dragons had at first balked at having a Dragonspawn assigning them duties. But Carl didn't care about that caste nonsense. If someone was skilled, he would use them in the position they could handle. And Goram was skilled in what he did.

After Carl made his position eminently clear, with a bit of force, the naysayers had grumbled but backed down. He had been keeping an eye on them, to ensure the old Dragons didn't cause issues. But thankfully Carl had been seeing his perks in action. The longer Carl spent around those old tradition minded dragons, the more they seemed to put their loyalty in Carl and the less they questioned the direction he was taking the Flight.

Carl also liked to think the perk allowed them to open their eyes and see the logic of his actions. The Dragon Flight's numbers were small, having suffered greatly from the Raid all those years ago. They couldn't afford to waste anyone skilled enough to do a job because of caste prejudice.

And Goram had done an excellent job of being both skilled in coordinating everyone, and diplomatic in his wording. So everyone's ruffled scales were finally soothed, and they accepted Goram as the Coordinator.

"The nine groups have been in competition to see which group reaches level 60 first." Goram reported with a smile for the exuberance of the Flight. It wasn't only the Dragons who had their spirits revived due to the changes that Carl had brought. "Everyone is at least level 50 now. Three groups have been especially focused on killing the undead that are plaguing the Ruins of Andor'hal in the Western Plaguelands."

Carl nodded in acknowledgement. Not only could they kill the undead Scourge, they could gain reputation with the Argent Dawn faction that based itself in Eastern and Western Plaguelands. There were bound to be some items they could purchase from the quartermasters of the Argent Dawn that they could use to study the enchantments.

"Three groups have been spending their time in the Un'Goro Crater. Besides doing quests and leveling, they have been focused on gathering various crafting materials available there for their own profession leveling needs."

"Well, if they are staying safe and having fun, that's all that matters." Carl chuckled.

"Indeed. The final groups have been spending their time in the corrupted Felwood Forest." Goram reported.

"I've heard that the Furbolg's of Timbermaw hold have some nice recipes for Tailoring, Leatherworking, and Blacksmithing, so I can see why they would spend some time getting reputation to study those recipes."

"Exactly, Lord Carl. We have already gotten hold of those recipes and have deconstructed and improved on them." Goram let slip which group he was a part of in his excitement, to Carl's amusement.

"Keep up the good work. Be sure you don't forget the necessity of getting stronger in your eagerness to continue practicing your craft." Carl sternly ordered. "And be sure to pass on both my pleasure in your accomplishments, and my warning to the rest of the Flight."

"Yes, Lord Carl." Goram saluted and departed just as they arrived at Carl's quarters.

Carl saw that Mortic was waiting for him outside his quarters with his own reports to pass on. So he invited Mortic into his sitting room, where the rejuvenated Dragon passed on his reports on what the Flight had been learning from their various practices in Crafting.

While the once old Dragon was jumping into leveling and growing stronger, his particular skills still lent themselves more to crafting and learning than to fighting. So while Carl wouldn't excuse him from fighting, he had put the Dragon in charge of their crafting efforts.

Mortic passed on to Carl a report of everyone's professional skill levels, and what recipes they had mastered. After looking over the report, Carl was pleased with everyone's progress. Some of the older Dragons that they had rescued still had high skill levels, but the Dragonspawn and the younger Dragons were basically starting from scratch.

The second half of the report detailed the Flight's continual education efforts. Even with everyone's enhanced abilities and learning skills, 10 years in time compression was not long enough to master even half of what was available to learn, especially when they had to start their education from the beginning.

Since these Dragons and Dragonspawn would be following him between worlds from now on, Carl wanted them prepared for whatever they faced in the future. He couldn't guarantee they would only face a world of warcraft like they were used to here.

If they were put into a modern setting at this very moment, they would probably do just fine because of Carl's education efforts. But before he started working on them, they would have been completely lost and likely making a big mess of things.

"Thank you for the report Mortic. Everyone looks to be working hard, good job. Is there anything you need from me?" Once Carl finished scanning the report, he set it aside and looked at his educational / crafting coordinator.

"No, Lord Carl. Everything I need you have already supplied." The Dragon almost seemed to be bursting from holding in his feelings of gratitude at how good things were now in the Dragon Flight.

"Good to hear. I'll be out soon for the feast." Carl stated with a calm smile.

Mortic heard the dismissal in Carl's words and bowed before leaving his rooms. Carl had set it up so that once a week the entire Flight got together for a feast. It was basically a weekly family dinner to ensure that everyone got together and continued to get to know each other and have the chance to get close with each other.

It was important to Carl that his Flight be of one purpose and be close with each other. Their enemies were all around, and they needed to stick together so they could be strong.

After taking some notes and filing away the reports, Carl changed into his party clothes. While Carl and everyone else was more comfortable in their own Dragon skin, crowding in more than 50 Dragons and Dragonspawn in the same room made for a crowded party.


	82. Azeroth 7

The very land was corrupted, saturated, with demonic energy. The bare stone and earth that couldn't support any plant growth was testament to that. In the distance a volcano towered over the land. But instead of normal looking lava, unnatural green lava spilled from its summit. The fel power of demonic magic tainted even the lava that pooled at the base of the mountain.

The sky and even the clouds were affected by the demonic taint. The whole sky was lit up in an unholy green.

In the distance, outside of the Wildhammer Stronghold, Carl could see the falling meteors of the golem like Infernal Attackers constantly striking down to besiege the Alliance forces in Shadowmoon Valley.

While Carl stalked the elementals that he needed to kill for the quest, he pondered on the situation present in this world. The demonic legions were relentless in attacking the land. They hated anything that wasn't tainted by the demonic presence, and they also hated anything of the demonic as well that wasn't subservient to them.

Carl had seen plenty of scenes recently of the demons infighting and jockeying for position and power when there were no external enemies to fight.

All in all, the concept of peaceful existence was a completely foreign concept to the demons.

Carl ambushed an Enraged Earth Spirit after dropping a totem that was supposed to suck up the uncorrupted essence of the elemental. After killing the elemental, Carl watched as the physical embodiment crumbled to the ground, while a glowing ball of light was sucked into the totem.

That was the last of the fire and earth elementals that Carl was tasked with collecting, so he summoned his Paladin mount and began threading through and jumping over the green lava pools on his way to turn in the quest.

While he was riding, he momentarily thought about how grateful he was for the bubblehead charm. Using a variation that only covered his mouth and nose allowed him to avoid breathing in the ash filled air in Shadowmoon Valley, while still having his eyes clear to see just fine.

And while his physique was more than strong enough to handle the ash and pollution, it just wasn't comfortable to breathe that crud in.

Carl briefly considered just how much work he would need to do to clean up the demonic taint from the land here in the Outlands, and he got a headache from the very thought.

Sure, there were some places that were tainted more than others, like Shadowmoon Valley, Hellfire Penninsula, and the Netherstorm. But even the normal looking and vibrant lands of Nagrand, Zangarmarsh, and some of Terokkar Forest had the taint sunk in deep into the land.

In order to do a proper clean up job, he would need a whole lot more than 45 Dragons and Dragonspawn in his army to be able to do anything about the demons and the demonic taint. He would need tens or even hundreds of thousands of people in his army to push back the demons to their portals and keep them there while the effort to shut their portals down was underway and the clean up commenced.

Maybe if he was stuck in this world for the rest of his life, it would be worth putting in the effort. But since he was only here for 10 years, he would simply take what he could from the world before moving on. He would strengthen his Dragon Flight, make them an elite force that was feared in the world, and encourage them to increase their numbers.

They would learn everything they could from this world in the time limit they had, and they would move on to the next.

Carl had only been barely paying attention to the various wandering Chimaera and elementals to avoid them while he had been thinking about this tainted land. His charger's speed with his Crusader's Aura's 20% speed increase had easily outpaced any aggressive wildlife.

Pulling the reigns of his charger to bring it to a stop in front of Earthmender Torlok, Carl quickly turned in the quest. He was pleased to see the golden light burst into being around him that indicated he had finally leveled up to 70.

Strangely enough, Carl could immediately feel the world's restraint on him once he felt inside to note the differences. He knew that the world would not let him gain more levels for now. It looked like he would be stuck at level 70 for the next four plus years.

It wasn't something totally unexpected to Carl. Ever since he had noted the video game elements that infused the world, including the level system, he had expected something of the sort when he reached the maximum level for the Burning Crusade expansion.

In four years time, when it was time for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, he figured the world would allow him and the other adventurers to level to 80 while adventuring in Northrend.

Carl decided to pause his questing for now. He turned his mount and charged across the broken landscape back to the Wildhammer Stronghold. The various infernal attackers were occupied by the defenders, so he charged right past them and through the gates.

The grounds were occupied by a large number of Dwarves, and some Humans, Night Elves, Gnomes, and Draenei. He avoided trampling anyone as he rode over to talk to Ilsa Blusterbrew.

The female dwarf was the Riding Trainer in the area. Carl happily paid out the 4640 gold pieces to learn the fastest flying skill. He then forked over the 550 gold to Brunn Flamebeard, a nearby male Dwarf, to collect all the Gryphons available to use while flying.

No longer did Carl need to crawl slowly along the ground to keep up his disguise and keep his enemies from finding him! He could soar through the skies on his Gryphon at over 320% of the running speed!

Sure, it was slow compared to what Carl could do by himself, but it was much better than the 120% speed of a land mount.

Carl then pulled out his hearthstone and used it, sending him back to the neutral city of Shattrath. The city's magic kept the Alliance or Horde from attacking each other in a vain attempt to keep them focused on the threat of the demonic legion. It was a vain attempt, because the moment they were outside the city, the adventurers were once more at each other's throats.

On more than one occasion he had been ambushed by groups of Horde adventurers while questing. They died just as quickly as that first Rogue that attacked him outside of Gadgetzan did.

But the neutral city of Shattrath not only provided a meeting place for the Horde and Alliance. All races were allowed to seek refuge in the city. The Kurenai, natives of Nagrand. The Ethereals, energy beings of the Consortium. Even the humanoid bird refuges of the Arakkoa. All were welcome in Shattrath, presided over by the glowing, constantly shifting energy forms of the Naaru.

The only group not welcome was the demons of the Burning Legion, since they were bent on the destruction of everyone else. The damned party crashers ruin it for everyone.

Upon appearing at the inn in the Aldor Rise, Carl was face to face with Minalei, the inn keeper of the Aldor faction.

"The Naaru have not forgotten us." Minalei stated by rote while draping herself over her desk in a bored fashion.

"Hey there, Minalei. You say that to everyone that comes by?" Carl wondered aloud. Minalei startled at actually being addressed by him.

"Uh…yeah, pretty much. When I got hired I was told to be polite and welcoming to the customers. So, I use variations of generic greetings. 'Blessings be upon you', 'Greetings, friend', 'Open your heart to the light'. Those are just some of the phrases I was told to use." Minalei seemed a bit embarrassed to be asked that question, so Carl decided to let her be.

"Well, keep up the good work. And may the Light shine down on you." Carl chuckled as he made his way out of the inn.

"Thanks, you too!" Miralei called out as Carl departed.

Once outside the inn, Carl summoned up a Swift Red Gryphon. A second later, he was in the air, guiding the beast that was a cross between a lion and an eagle through the air. He flew east to the center of Shattrath City.

In the center of the city was a large building structure that was separated into four sections that rose up until in the center of the structure were four towers that came together into a peak. The four towers were each topped by a large claw like crystal. A beacon of light energy flowed out of the top, shooting up into the air, and coming down to encompass the entire city in its protective magic.

Carl directed his gryphon down and through one of the doorways into the building. In the center of the structure there was a model of Shattrath City on the ground, with the enormous Naaru, A'dal, floating above it.

The abstract glowing energy shapes of A'dal that constantly rotated, closed and opened, was difficult to focus on. A'dal seemed to be the one powering the city's protective magic, since the light energy streamed off him up into the ceiling and the pillars on top of the structure.

In one of the alcoves of the building there were three permanent portals to the capital cities of the Alliance, Stormwind, Darnassus, and Ironforge.

In the opposite alcove there were portals to the Horde cities: Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, and the Undercity.

In the alcove between them to the east was a portal for the newest additions to the Alliance and Horde. Exodar, the crashed city ship of the Draenei, and Silvermoon City, the home of the Blood Elves.

Opposite that alcove was an empty Alcove that was guarded by a Naaru by the name G'eras, as well as a troop of Draenei that were affiliated with the Sha'tar organization. Carl knew from his time in the game that in the future, there would be a portal in that alcove that led to the Isle of Quel'Danas, where the raid for the Sunwell Plateau would be located.

While Carl was looking over the inside of the building, there were many adventurers that were running or flying around the area. Some were completing quests, some were talking with each other. Others were selling drops they had gotten lucky to find, while others were gathering groups to clear dungeons of raids.

In short, it was a busy area that was full of people.

Carl guided his gryphon down to the portal to Stormwind. He entered the portal, and felt the wormhole effect take place as he was teleported to the Mage Tower in the human's capital city.

Once he arrived, Carl talked to Maginor Dumas to learn the level 70 spells he had available.

From the Arcane tree Carl learned Arcane Explosion, Arcane Intellect, Ritual of Refreshment, and Spellsteal.

Arcane Explosion was an area of effect AoE spell that burst out Arcane damage in a bubble around the caster.

Arcane Intellect was an intelligence buff that increased a person's magic damage as well as available mana pool.

The Ritual of Refreshment summoned a table that dished out Mana Biscuits. The Mana Biscuits would heal a person's Heath Pool, as well as restore their Mana Pool.

And Spellsteal is a piece of magic that could steal a beneficial magic spell from an opponent. In other words, Carl could steal other's buffs and use them himself for a few minutes.

From the Fire Tree Carl learned new ranks of Blast Wave, Dragon's Breath, Fire Blast, Pyroblast, and Scorch.

There wasn't anything new there, just upgrades to the spells he already had. Blast Wave was an AoE spell that burst out fire damage in a circle around him. Dragon's Breath was a weak imitation spell of a true Dragon's fire breath. Fire Blast was an instant cast fire damage spell. Pyroblast was a large Fireball that took longer to charge, unless some talents were procced that caused it to be an instant cast. And Scorch was a quick cast fire attack.

In the Frost Tree Carl learned a new rank of Frost Ward, which is a spell that absorbs Ice Damage and Ice Barrier which is a shield that absorbs a certain amount of damage. Any type of damage would be absorbed by the Ice Barrier, even physical attacks.

Once Carl finished learning the available Mage spells, he exited the tower through the portal. Summoning his Paladin mount, he galloped through the streets of Stormwind toward Old Town.

He met the Rogue trainer, Osborne the Night Man, and began learning the level 70 spells for Rogue.

From the Assassination Tree he learned a new rank for Garrote and Mutilate. Garrote was an attack from stealth that bleeds the target and prevents spells from being cast for a few seconds. Mutilate was an attack with both weapons that does increased damage and awards 2 combo points.

In the Combat Tree, that would later become the Outlaw Tree, Carl learned Shiv and a new rank of Sinister Strike. Shiv was an attack with the offhand weapon that applied the poison to the target. It awarded one combo point.

Carl learned a new rank of Deadly Poison, which when applied to a weapon poisons the enemy with a Nature damage poison that damages them over time.

And in the Subtlety Tree, Carl learned Hemorrhage, which was an attack that causes the target to bleed and suffer from increased physical damage. It also added one combo point.

With that training taken care of, Carl once more mounted his charger and made his way through the busy streets to the Cathedral Square, where he met the Paladin trainer, Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker.

In the Holy Tree, Carl learned a new rank of Consecration, the AoE holy damage spell. Holy Light, a healing spell that heals a large amount in return for a longer cast time due to charging up the mana needed. And Holy Shock, which was an instant cast spell that could heal a friendly, or do holy damage to an enemy.

In the Protection Tree Carl learned a new rank for Avenger's Shield, which was basically a spell to imitate Captain America when he threw his shield, hitting up to 3 targets with it. Blessing of Sacrifice was a short term spell that would transfer any damage done to a party member to the Paladin.

Blessing of Sanctuary was a buff that reduced damage taken, as well as damaging the enemy that attacks. There was also a version that lasted longer that required reagents to cast called Greater Blessing of Sanctuary.

A new rank of Devotion Aura increased the armor of Carl and any party members around him.

A new rank of Fire Resistance Aura would increase the resistance to Fire. Carl didn't personally need the fire resistance, but his Dragon Flight members might at some point in the future.

And Holy Shield increased the chance and ability to block with a shield while doing damage to any attacker while causing more threat to the target, ensuring they would focus on the Paladin.

In the Retribution Tree, Carl learned the spell Avenging Wrath, which filled the Paladin with Holy Power that increased the amount of damage he could do for a short time.

Blessing of Might was a buff spell that increased the recipient's attack power, increasing their damage. Greater Blessing of Might was the same buff that lasted longer at the cost of a reagent.

And Seal of Command would enhance all the Paladin's attacks with a certain amount of Holy damage. Using the Judgment spell caused a large amount of Holy damage, based on the Seal that was active.

Carl had made sure that he had all the specializations of each of the classes he chose, but there were some conflicts with the various spells of the different specializations. For example, some of the Rogue spells required him to dual wield weapons, use the off-hand weapon to execute the spell, or even use daggers to cast the spells. But in the Paladin class Protection specialization, a shield was required for the spell.

Since Carl didn't have more than two arms, he could only switch off dual wielding or being equipped with a sword and shield, based on what he was facing. So far as he was questing and running through regular dungeons, he hadn't really needed to equip a shield for added protection against attacks.

He had also played with the spells a bit to overcome some restrictions. Like the restriction that he could only use some of the Rogue spells with a dagger. Ambush in particular was an attack that Carl liked using to open up combat from stealth, but it required a dagger in the main hand, usually. After playing with the spells and the intent required of the spells, he was able to overcome those restrictions and use the Blue Orchid as a two handed sword to cast Ambush.

And now that he was level 70 he was going to be venturing into the heroic dungeons and raid instances. A party usually consisted of only 5 members, while a raid required between 10 and 25 members.

And while Carl was still confident in his powers and abilities he had gained through the Jump Chain, he was going to be a bit more cautious and prepare to act as a tank when he began facing enemies that required 10 or more adventurers to down.

With his training complete, Carl didn't bother hanging around in Stormwind city anymore. He cast a teleport spell from his Mage repertoire. While the teleport and portal spells were usually anchored in the capital cities, he had been able to finagle the spell so that he had a link to his Dragon Hold that he could teleport to whenever he wanted.

Carl naturally didn't want any mages other than those in his Dragon Flight to be able to simply pop into his stronghold, so aside from the normal wards, he had set up special protections so that only those attuned could create a teleport link to the Dragon Hold.

The wormhole effect lasted only a second before Carl arrived in the Portal room that he had set up. While he was moving through the Dragon Hold, Carl was internally frowning at how empty it seemed. So many of his Dragons and Dragonspawn had died in the Raid. He was still hung up on that nearly every time he walked these halls.

There were some eggs that would hatch soon, which was joyous news. That would replenish their numbers by a bit, but it would take some time before they grew up enough to be allowed out of the Hold. And when they hatched a rotation would have to be set up so that each team spent time with, protected, and taught the new generation.

Those who were not babysitting the new generation would continue rotating out to quest, level, and practice their martial skills. Carl didn't want to see the Dragon Flight grow soft once more and become easy pickings for their enemies.

Once he arrived at his rooms in the Hold, Carl spent some time reviewing the messaging system he had set up for the Dragon Flight. He smiled to see the spirited interactions between the members.

He was pleased to see that the first group finally reached level 60, winning the competition. It was the group that had Mortic, Joyce, Hilda (a rescued Dragon), and two Dragonspawn, Grund and Bronhilda.

One of the ways that Carl had paved the way for his Dragons and Dragonspawn was to ensure they were always equipped with the best equipment available. From the two one handed swords that dropped from Zul'Farrak that combined into the Purple Epic weapon Sul'thraze the Lasher, Carl had learned how to craft weapons and armor that could hold the amount of magical energy needed to make them Epic in quality.

As a result of that research, Carl made sure that his Flight members had epic quality gear as they leveled. Every few levels they got a new set that ensured they were always on the leading edge of power compared to their level. And that wasn't even counting their Ki and Profound Cultivation levels which made them that much stronger than their levels would indicate.

The practice of ensuring they were well geared had already saved them a couple times when some bored Horde adventurer had thought to take advantage of them due to their lower levels.

Little did that one Horde Hunter expect that the moment he attacked, one of the party members that was acting as a healer immediately began healing, keeping the party alive. The other three party members immediately attacked him in turn. And unknown to him, since he died so quickly, there were two more parties of five each that once they got the word made their way to the beleaguered party.

The ten Flight members that came to support the party under attack were left unfulfilled, since the first party had taken out the threat so quickly.

But just to be safe, they relocated to another area to continue questing. They didn't want to get distracted by hordes of Horde coming along to support the first idiot that attacked them. That would have wasted time that was better spent leveling up.

Not to mention that Carl didn't want to risk his Flight members not being subject to the resurrection ability that the Adventurers had. While this world had a mix of reality and game mechanics, Carl didn't know under which set of rules his Dragon Flight operated under. Their numbers were already low, so he didn't want to risk losing them to some immortal avatar game players who had nothing better to do than to resurrect over and over in order to take down his Flight members just once.

After looking through the recent messages and seeing that his people were doing good and were in high spirits, Carl began planning out what he would do next. Ever since he had gotten some memory perks and practiced Occlumency, his memories from his past life were much clearer and readily available.

Normally those memories were useless except as a slight guide for the plot of the world he was in, if he happened to have consumed the original work. And while that was still the case for the world he was currently in, there was quite a bit of information he had stored in his noggin about the various dungeons and what gear they dropped.

Even if he only glanced at the loot tables from the websites in his past life, that information was still stored in his head. So he already knew about the armor Dungeon Sets that dropped that was meant to prepare the adventurers to be able to go to the raids.

And Carl had spent some time gathering those Dungeon Sets that were associated with his classes. Some of the gear dropped from the dungeons in the Netherstorm, which presented a problem to Carl since he needed a flying mount to get there.

So Carl had cheated. He stealthed so no one would see him cheat and then flew himself up to the three dungeons, the Mechanar, the Botanica, and the Arcatraz, in order to complete the sets.

Obviously, Carl couldn't wear several different sets of Armor at the same time. But he never planned to do so. He had gathered the armor sets for reference for when he was going to enchant his own Profound Armor that he had gotten from the ATG world.

With the example of how the magic of Armor Sets worked, Carl had spent time deconstructing it. He had figured out how to enchant his Profound Armor to enhance all his stats: Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Spirit, and Stamina. Because he got the Profound Armor from the Jump Chain with CP, it was much more resilient and amenable to enchanting than the normal armor that existed in the World of Warcraft.

And Carl found that he could constantly upgrade the Profound Armor as he gathered higher level armor and learned the more powerful enchants that enhanced his abilities.

The best thing about practicing on the Profound Armor was that the Jump Chain guaranteed that anything that he purchased would be replaced if he lost or destroyed it. If he accidentally overcharged the armor or made a mistake and destroyed his Profound Armor, it would reappear in his Warehouse within 24 hours.

Ever since Carl discovered that little bonus, he had become more bold in experimenting with his armor and working to get the most out of it. Through experimentation and recording the experiments with his technology, Carl found the methods needed to, step by step, add more magic into a piece of armor. The way that he fortified the piece of armor with magic, while adding enchants step by step, was applicable not just to his Profound Armor, but also to the armor that he crafted with the materials from the various worlds he had visited.

And that was how he ensured that his Dragons and Dragonspawn had the best equipment available to them.

With his Profound Armor and the Blue Orchid maxed out on the enchantments that Carl could currently provide, he was ready to tackle the raid instances. At the moment, the only raids that were available were Karazhan, a 10 man raid, Magtheridon's Lair, a 25 man raid, and Gruul's Lair, also a 25 man raid.

He decided to start with the Karazhan raid. It was pretty much the entry level raid, and perfect for Carl to dip his toes in. Exiting through the front gates, Carl entered stealth and began flying south west.

Karazhan was located in the Deadwind Pass, between the Duskwood and the Swamp of Sorrows. The desolate pass was only sparsely populated by vultures flying around. Carl was surprised to see a small settlement of Ogres as he flew through the pass on his way to Karazhan. He hadn't actively remembered that there was anything beyond vultures present in the area, aside from the undead populating the abandoned settlement outside Karazhan.

Not wanting to be distracted by the small fries, Carl continued flying past them. He arrived outside the entrance to the raid, and as expected found that the portcullis gate was closed and locked.

There were three figures standing outside Karazhan. When he was playing the game, they would be considered NPCs, or Non Player Characters. But now that he was actually in the world, he had realized that they were just as alive as anyone else, even though the world's magic had gaming elements.

Archmage Alturus, Archmage Leryda, and Apprentice Darius were members of the Violet Eye faction, and they had a couple quests that would allow Carl to enter Karazhan.

"Greetings adventurer." Archmage Alturus greeted Carl.

"Hello, Archmage. I'm planning to enter Karazhan and clean up some of the enemies inside. Anything you can do to help me there?"

"Indeed, yes. But in order to make a key so you can enter, you need to do some things first. I'll need you to take some arcane readings of the nearby area. Take this Scrying Crystal to the nearby underground sources of water to take a reading on how much the arcane energies of Karazhan are spilling out. And while you're at it, kill some of the ghostly undead around the area. Bring me 10 ghostly essences to further study, if you would."

Carl smiled at the Archmage and nodded affirmative in response. After receiving the two quests, he made his way to the nearby ruins. There was an entrance in the cellars of one of the destroyed houses. The underground cavern was populated by ghosts and specters, which were easily dispatched and supplied the ghostly essences that Archmage Alturus was looking for.

In the underground cavern was a river. Standing in the knee deep water, Carl used the Scrying device to take the readings needed. Once he was done, Carl made his way out of that section of the cavern.

In the foundations of the ruined house just opposite that entrance was another ramp down into an underground cellar. Entering it and exploring, Carl soon found an underground well. He used the Scrying device on the well, and soon got the results that the Archmage wanted.

Before Carl left, he looked around the underground cellar that the well was located in, and saw that it looked like the remains of a wine cellar. There was a large wine rack with some bottles still placed there. There was also a couple enormous casks stacked against the wall.

Curious as to whether there was still wine in the casks, Carl knocked off the bung and looked in the hole. It looked like either the wine had dried up long since, or it had spilled out. There was only some dusty residue.

He then pulled down some of the bottles stacked in the wine racks and saw that there was still liquid inside. Pulling off the cork, Carl immediately recorked it. The smell had been atrocious!

From what he smelled, it seemed like some of the undead had been stuffing anything they found in the bottles in a mockery of their actions when they were still alive. The rotting gunky mess was completely disgusting.

"Yeah, shouldn't have expected anything to be edible or drinkable around so many undead, right?" Carl rhetorically chastised himself.

With nothing else to distract him, Carl soon turned in the quests that the Archmage gave him. The next part of the quest was to make a trip to the outskirts of the crater where Dalaran had once resided. He teleported to Ironforge and hired a Gryphon ride up to Southshore in the Hillsbrad Foothills.

It didn't take much effort for Carl to find Archmage Cedric in the ruins of the city that surrounded the crater where Dalaran once stood.

Carl was wondering about the Archmage title though. It seemed like quite a few people were able to obtain it, which made him wonder just how rare it was. Was it just a title like Professor? Or did it indicate how powerful they were in magic?

Since Carl had Archmage Cedric in front of him, he decided to ask him to assuage his curiosity.

"Of course the title Archmage is only given to the most prestigious and powerful mages!" Archmage Cedric sputtered in indignation. "Only the most knowledgeable and powerful mages, those who are acknowledged by their peers, are afforded the Archmage Title!"

"So that's how it is." Carl nodded in agreement, while secretly thinking the old man was full of it. He had already seen four Archmages in the past 20 minutes. And the one in front of him was only level 57, while the fourth was only level 40.

'It has to be politics.' Carl thought cynically to himself. If it was solely power, Carl should be easily able to get the Archmage title by revealing his skills. Not that he was going to do so, of course.

After passing off the report to Archmage Cedric, Carl was directed to report to Khadgar in Shattrath City. Summoning up his Magic, Carl soon teleported straight to the city.

Khadgar was standing in the middle of the city, near the model of Shattrath that A'dal was hovering over.

"Hey Khadgar. I've got a report from members of the Violet Eye faction for you." Carl got straight to the point. All the running around was beginning to irk him a bit.

"The Violet Eye, you say?" Khadgar murmured. Carl noticed that Khadgar didn't have the Archmage title equipped either. Khadgar finished reading the report and looked off into the distance with a troubled look in his face. "Gaining entry into Karazhan will be difficult. When it became apparent that I was stranded here in Outland, I split the key into three parts and placed them in safe places. Unfortunately, those places are no longer safe."

"Typical." Carl muttered.

"What was that?" Khadgar inquired.

"Oh, nothing." Carl lied. "So, where are these key fragments? I'll go fetch them."

"The first one is in the Shadow Labyrinth. Unfortunately the Dark Council now holds sway there, so it will be dangerous to venture there. Once you retrieve that piece and prove your capability, I'll inform you where the other two pieces are."

"Don't worry about it, I'll grab the fragment and be back soon." Carl easily accepted the test and quest.

Five minutes after Carl left, Khadgar was surprised to see Carl show up once more.

"Oh, did you need directions to the Shadow Labyrinth? I could tell you about the Dark Council and what kind of tactics they use so you can be prepared to assault their forces." Khadgar helpfully offered Carl.

"No need. I already got the key fragment." Carl nonchalantly stated.

"What?" Khadgar blankly stared at Carl. His joke wasn't funny. The Dark council was no laughing matter!

"Yeah, it's right here." Carl held the key fragment in his hand, showing Khadgar.

"What? How?" Khadgar's mind was blank for some time, confused about how Carl had finished so quickly.

"So, the next two pieces are where?" Carl asked the flabbergasted man, ignoring his question.

"Oh. Uh. The second piece is in the Steamvault. The third is in The Arcatraz." Khadgar faintly answered Carl, still a bit confused about how he had gotten the key so quickly.

"Thanks. Be right back!" Carl cheerfully said.

Five minutes later Carl came flying back in the building and landed in front of Khadgar. Khadgar was still looking blankly around, his world view having been shattered.

"Okay, I got the second and third pieces. What's next?" Carl showed off the other two key fragments.

"Oh." Khadgar gaped at the key pieces in Carl's hands. "Uh, to rejoin the keys, you need to travel to the Caverns of Time and enter the Black Morass. Meet Medivh there and he will use his power to meld the key back together."

Khadgar suddenly had an epiphany. Of course! The Keepers of Time could have done what Carl did! But then he slumped in realization that Carl wasn't a member of the Keepers of Time, and that straight laced, by-the-rules, organization wouldn't mess about with time just for a joke. There's no way they would let Carl play around with time using their abilities. So how had he retrieved the keys in only five minutes? Had he already grabbed the keys in a previous visit to the locations? But that was impossible! No one would be able to bypass the protective magics unless Khadgar himself cast the cantrip that would let them even see the container the key fragments were placed in. So how?

As Carl was leaving the building where Khadgar was standing in befuddlement, he chuckled in amusement to himself. The look on Khadgar's face totally made the use of a Time Turner worth it to speed run through the dungeon!

With but a thought, Carl had his ship teleport him to the Tanaris Desert through his spy satellite links. With his array of transport technology and spy satellites, he could be anywhere on Azeroth in an instant. He would occasionally go the old fashioned way that all the other player avatars had to go. But sometimes he was just too impatient to take the long round a bout way.

The Bronze Dragonflight's domain traits were Time and Thunder. They were the Keepers of Time. They protected the timeline, ensuring that no one can go and destroy the world by trying to change too much history.

The Black Morass dungeon instance was one example where the Infinite Dragonflight was trying to change a key moment in history. The last Guardian Medivh was possessed by the demon Sargeras and trying to open the Dark Portal to Draenor, which was the start of the invasion of Azeroth.

Waves of Dragons and Dragonspawn try to attack Medivh and interrupt the process and derail history. In order to help the Bronze Dragon Flight maintain the timeline, the party that enters the dungeon has to protect Medivh and defeat the waves of attackers.

There are 18 waves of attacks. In each wave a Rift Keeper will appear and maintain a portal that will allow attackers through. Kill the Rift Keeper, and the rift will close.

Every six waves there is a Boss that appears. The three bosses are Chrono Lord Deja, Temporus, and Aeonus.

Deja is a large two legged Dragonspawn, while Temporus and Aeonus are actual Dragons. Carl was tempted to turn back into his Dragon form to fight, but decided not to. Even though this was an instance dungeon in a semi-videogame world, he didn't want to give Medivh or Sargeras any ideas about his abilities and true nature.

He still had three enemies out there, and he didn't want to let leak his information before he was ready. He had plans that once his Dragons and Dragonspawn were max level and fully geared up, they would attack the members of the Cult of the Damned. He was keeping an eye on their bases and members, so he had up to date intel.

The other two enemies, Helya and the Iron Horde, weren't around just yet. He would continue to keep an eye out for them and their forces. But once they decimated the Cult of the Damned, they should have more breathing room to grow.

So in order to not chance leaking too much information about himself, Carl fought in his Night Elf shifted body. Medivh was busy channeling his magic to open the Dark Portal, and Carl fought the waves of attackers out of sight of Medivh, so he should be fine.

Once he had finished off Aeonus, Carl approached Medivh and turned in the quest, getting the master key back in return and a quest to return to Khadgar to show him the key.

This time Carl didn't use his Time Turner to mess with Khadgar, since he had been visiting the Keepers of Time. He wanted to keep Khadgar guessing how he did it.

Now that he finally had the key, it was time to enter and wreck Karazhan.


	83. Azeroth 8

Carl entered a raid instance for the first time. He wasn't nervous, so much as he was excited to finally be at max level for the expansion and able to finally start participating in the raid content he remembered from back in the day.

At the time when the Burning Crusade expansion had been released, he had been quite busy with work and school, so he hadn't gotten to raid and play to his heart's content.

And now that he was actually here in the world of Azeroth, he was determined to enjoy the situation as much as he could. Especially enjoyable to him was that with his various powers he gained from hopping from world to world, he had the ability to absolutely decimate the dungeons and raids solo.

Which meant that he didn't need to deal with all the negatives of playing an online game, namely dealing with random people that make getting a raid together difficult. If he ever needed an actual raid, he would simply call on his Dragon Flight once they had reached level 70.

Carl opened the door that was just inside the raid, and was met by the sight of the welcoming hall. As he moved forward, there were undead servants and horses that Carl cleaned up swiftly, gaining reputation with the Violet Eye faction. The Violet Eye faction was tasked with keeping an eye on the dead Medivh in his tower Karazhan.

So far the various mobs in the raid didn't trouble Carl any. The undead seemed to be quite vulnerable to the holy damage attacks from his Paladin class.

Ignoring for the moment the stairs that lead further into the tower, Carl followed the curved hallway through the stables to where the first boss of the raid waited.

Attumen the Huntsman wasn't present at first. His undead horse Midnight was standing alone. Carl didn't waste any time snuck up behind the horse in stealth and began with an Ambush. He did enough damage to the horse that Attumen the Huntsmen in his blood read cloak and bronze colored armor immediately showed up.

Carl dropped a Consecration and used a Holy Shock on the undead boss. For these fights Carl was fighting with a shield and sword combo, acting as a tank. He kept up his Holy Shield spell that magically increased his blocking ability.

Attumen and his horse were attacking madly, but Carl was blocking, parrying, or dodging the attacks. His much greater magic was focused on not taking damage from the raid boss, which was actually working quite well.

With his shield occupied blocking the horse, and his sword parrying Attumen's attacks, Carl relied on casting his mage spells to damage the two attackers. He dropped a Flamestrike on the area, which burned both Attumen and his horse. He then used the Dragon's Breath attack, burning the two even more.

It was enough to cause the next phase of the fight. Attumen mounted Midnight and they continued attacking Carl. Now that he was only fighting one figure in front of him, Carl actually had it easier by a small margin. He used his Paladin judgment spell with additional Holy damage. While attacking with Blue Orchid, he employed the Rogue's Sinister Strike to add combo points, and used up the combo points with an Eviscerate.

Attumen and Midnight died at that point, falling over right in front of Carl. He hadn't expected the fight to be over so quick, due to his memories of playing the game. In his memories of raiding Karazhan as a fresh level 70, the raid would take hours. The fights would always be close calls, and there would be plenty of fighting among the raid members about who would get loot. Sometimes the fighting and drama would be enough to cause raids, and even guilds, to disband due to incompatibility.

So being able to so easily take down the first raid boss, as if he was a simple dungeon boss, filled Carl with an unusual feeling, as well as a sense of pride in his powers.

Something that was so difficult in his past life in the game, was so easy for him here and now. It really made Carl pause for a moment to dispassionately examine how far he has come from the time he first started on this crazy journey.

In his original life, the idea of swinging a sword and fighting undead monsters was so far from his reality that it was at most a daydream. And now, here he was, almost casually ending a monster that could have easily killed thousands of him before. Not even tens of thousands of copies of him in his previous life could have ended that boss.

Carl shook his head and dispelled the strange mood he had found himself indulging in for a moment.

From Attumen Carl received two [Badge of Justice], a few gold, and two epic items. The [Badge of Justice] could be used as a currency to purchase various gear from some of the NPCs in Shattrath city. They didn't drop from regular dungeons, only the Heroic version. So Carl hadn't gathered too many of them yet, even though he had run through some of the heroic versions of the dungeons.

The first epic drop was the [Handwraps of Flowing Thought], a pair of cloth gloves that enhanced Stamina, Intellect, Hit rating, and Spell Power. It also had two sockets that gems could be put into.

'This is good.' Carl thought while looking at the gloves. 'I haven't really delved into making socket slots for gems to enhance armor or weapons. With this, I should be able to research how to add that to my crafting!'

The second piece of loot was [Stalker's War Bands], a mail armor wrist piece. It enhanced Agility, Stamina, Intellect, and Attack Power. Normally the wrist piece would go to either a Hunter or an Enhancement Shaman.

Carl chucked both armor pieces into his bags to be examined and deconstructed or disenchanted later.

He already had pieces of armor that had Strength, Agility, Intellect, Spirit, Stamina, Attack Power, Spell Power, and Critical Strike Rating on them. He wasn't going to replace his carefully crafted armor with random pieces that catered to only one class. His set was much better.

But that didn't mean the armor drops were useless to him, since they would be instrumental in increasing his understanding of how to magically enhance anything he crafted to be that much stronger. They could also be disenchanted into enchanting materials.

So while Carl wouldn't wear anything that dropped from the bosses, he was very interested in obtaining the boss loot.

With the boss down, Carl returned to the first hallway and climbed the stairs to the Banquet Hall on the way to the next boss.

Carl paused when he saw the wide open Banquet Hall with undead dancing, laughing, and joking as if they were still alive. An idea had suddenly occurred to him.

This was a closed raid instance. No one could exit and spread word outside of what happened in here.

"Hehehe." Carl began laughing in delight. He had been looking for an excuse to do something like this for a long time now!

Concentrating his magic, Carl released his hold on his shape shifted Night Elf form. A large Silver Dragon appeared in the place Carl had been standing.

Carl stretched his legs, his wings, his tail and neck. It felt so good to be in his normal Dragon form!

Looking down on the undead party goers, Carl took a deep breath and breathed out his true Dragon's Flame!

An entire group of a dozen undead were engulfed in the flames and burnt to death (second death). Their undead corpses fell to the ground and Carl swept up any loot they dropped.

He turned to the next group and began a massacre of the undead. Swiping his tail on one group, swiping another with his claws, Carl reveled in being free to fight in his Dragon form, finally.

He had felt so stifled from the need to keep a low profile until his Dragon Flight was strong enough to stand on its own. He hadn't even considered letting go while in a dungeon until now. Besides, his Flight members were all above level 60 and should soon join him as level 70s.

Once they too were max level and geared up, they would start to destroy the Cult of the Damned in retaliation for the Raid.

Carl finally finished off all the undead in the Banquet Hall. He had even climbed up to the second floor and killed all the undead up there too. Climbing back down to the first floor, Carl gazed in the room where the second boss was in dismay.

He couldn't fit through the doors!

With a sigh, Carl returned back to his Night Elf form to enter the side room where Moroes was waiting.

Once inside, Carl gleefully returned to his Dragon form and began laying waste to the undead at the banquet tables.

Taking another deep breath, he blew fire at Moroes and the small group of undead surrounding him. Moroes' dinner guests immediately succumbed to the fire and died. Moroes himself had Rogue-like skills and he vanished from sight.

Unfortunately for him, Carl's magical senses were quite acute. He lashed his tail out and smacked Moroes to the ground, dispelling his stealth. He then pierced through Moroes' body with a claw, digging in and shredding the undead boss.

The damage was too much for Moroes, who fell dead. Carl's Dragon face smirked down in triumph. It was fun playing with small human forms as a dragon. He could totally see why Dragons were normally arrogant, when everyone around them were puny toys.

Moroes dropped the [Emerald Ripper], a nice Agility, Stamina and Attack Power enhancing dagger, and [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch], a trinket that enhanced the ability to dodge. Carl put them away in his bags with the rest of the loot.

Carl stalked through the halls of Karazhan, he stayed in his Dragon form whenever he could, tearing through the enemies like they were tissue paper. Occasionally he had to revert to his Night Elf form to squeeze through doorways. Thankfully most of the place was large hallways that allowed him to stretch out and have fun.

He soon arrived in the alcove that held the next boss, the Maiden of Virtue, a titan like construct that stood nearly as tall as Carl's Dragon form. As soon as Carl engaged her in combat she dropped a Consecrate that did a little damage to Carl as he stood in it.

Carl ignored the small amount of damage she was doing and continued to rip into her with his claws. He found that he could actually still use his class skills, so he was using his Rogue skills in conjunction with his claw attacks. Mutilate and Sinister Strike added combo points before Carl finished her off with an Eviscerate.

She dropped [Shard of the Virtuous], a main hand mace that enhanced Stamina, Intellect, Spell Power, and Mana Restoration, and [Totem of Healing Rains], a relic totem for Shaman's that increased the amount of healing Chain Heal did.

The next boss was the Opera Event. The undead ghost Barnes was the Stage Manager. He was one of the few non hostile NPCs in the Raid. After talking to him, Carl made his way onto the stage where the "play" would occur. There were three plays that became a boss encounter on the stage: Wizard of Oz, Romeo and Juliet, and Red Riding Hood.

Carl ended up with the Red Riding Hood play. In the normal course of the play, the large humanoid wolf would temporarily transform one of the raid members into a little helpless girl with a red hood and chase them. If the wolf caught the party member, he would kill them easily, so they had to run around to avoid the Big Bad Wolf.

Unfortunately for the Big Bad Wolf, Carl was an even bigger Dragon. The wolf didn't even get a chance to try to transform Carl into a little girl.

The Wolf dropped [Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle] that enhanced Agility and Attack Power, and [Ribbon of Sacrifice] that was a trinket that enhanced Spell Power as well as having a use function of increasing Healing power for a short time.

Carl was pleased with the Epic trinket drop, since it would be a good enhancement to add to his Flight members that focused on healing.

The next boss Carl came upon was the giant golem construct The Curator. The moment Carl stepped into the hall The Curator was patrolling in, he immediately saw Carl and attacked. Carl smiled helplessly inside. In the game The Curator was known for having an enormous aggro radius, which proved true in real life as well.

Carl wasted no time changing back into his Dragon form and began going wild with his Mage spells, using AoE spells of fire and frost to kill all the other mana construct and wyrms that aggroed along with The Curator.

Once Carl finished off all the adds, he focused on The Curator. After a couple hits the Curator summoned up some sparks that were doing some lightning damage to Carl as they floated around. Carl simply whipped his tail around and smashed them to smithereens.

Shortly after that, The Curator dropped to the ground. Carl had finished him off even before he could do his evocation to gather more mana to himself.

Carl smiled at the loot drops. There were three glove tokens that dropped that could be redeemed in Shattrath for the Tier 4 Raid Set. [Staff of Infinite Mysteries] also dropped which was a staff that enhanced Stamina, Intellect, hit rating, and Spell Power.

[Gloves of the Fallen Defender] could be redeemed by Warriors, Priests, and Druids. Unfortunately it was useless for Carl's classes, but he would see if he could still redeem it for the Raid tier armor. They would be good for enhancing his Flight's armor.

[Gloves of the Fallen Champion] could be redeemed by Paladins, Rogues, and Shamans. Carl thought for a bit and decided he would collect the Rogue set first, since there were three different sets for the Paladin, since they could be tanks, healers, or damage dealers, he would gather those the next time he came to the raid.

[Gloves of the Fallen Hero] could be redeemed by Hunters, Mages, and Warlocks.

Carl continued clearing out the trash mobs and made his way up the tower. There was one particular room that was filled with bookshelves and books scattered around the ground. Carl spent some time checking to see if the books contained useful information, but was somewhat disappointed to find that they were mostly history books. While interesting, they didn't have anything useful to add to Carl's magical knowledge. He still added them to his database, since knowledge was knowledge.

Behind one particular bookshelf was a hidden passage that led to the next boss. A Satyr demon by the name Terestial Illhoof. Behind the Satyr was a portal that continually brought in little fire imps.

Carl was a little disappointed that the room wasn't large enough for his Dragon form. But the demon boss seemed to be quite susceptible to Holy and Frost damage. Carl even summoned his Water Elemental to help kill off the imps and do damage to Illhoof.

The demon dropped [Cord of Nature's Sustenance], a leather belt that enhanced Stamina, Intellect, Spirit, Spell Power, and Mana regeneration, as well as [Breastplate of the Lightbinder], a plate chest piece that enhanced Stamina, Intellect, Spell Power, and Mana regeneration. Carl also got the Enchanting formula [Enchant Weapon – Soulfrost], which permanently enchanted a weapon to increase Frost and Shadow spell damage.

Carl continued to go deeper and higher into the tower, coming to a room where the Shade of Aran was pacing back and forth in.

Seeing that the room was just big enough, Carl opened the door and got a running start. The moment he jumped in the room he transformed into his Dragon form and landed on the ghostly mage, tearing into him and breathing fire.

Carl was successful and killed the shade before he could cast Flame Wreath. When playing the game in his past life Carl had always hated fighting that boss because his raid members were stupid. The Flame Wreath spell surrounds each raid member with fire. All they had to do to survive was: Nothing. Just don't move, and they wouldn't take damage.

But if they moved the Flame Wreath would explode over the entire raid group.

Too often it was too difficult a task for the raid members, making the boss much harder than it should have been.

So for Carl, killing off the Shade of Aran so quickly and easily was very cathartic.

The shade dropped an Enchanting formula [Enchant Weapon – Sunfire] that enchanted a weapon to permanently increase Fire and Arcane spell power.

[Pendant of the Violet Eye] was a trinket that increased Intellect and when used increased a stacking bonus of Mana regeneration.

[Steelspine Faceguard] was a mail head piece that increased Agility, Stamina, Intellect, Attack Power, and Mana regeneration.

Following along the ramps and platforms, Carl went down into a large open room where a Nether Dragon was pacing back and forth. He grinned at being able to fight a Dragon as a Dragon.

He started the fight off with his Breath attack before jumping on the Nether Dragon's back. Carl missed biting Netherspite's neck and got a mouthful of wings. But he didn't let go as he continued to claw at the other Dragon.

He didn't forget to drop Consecration or Flamestrike either. A bit of added magical damage in addition to his physical attacks was too much for the Nether Dragon. When Netherspite collapsed, Carl raised his bloody muzzle and roared his triumph.

[Spiteblade] was a one handed sword that enhanced Agility, Stamina, and Attack Power.

[Skulker's Greaves] was a pair of leather legs that enhanced Agility, Stamina, hit rating, and Attack Power. It also had three gem sockets. Carl was quite pleased to have another item with sockets that he could study.

Backtracking a bit led Carl higher up the tower. He strode through the open door and looked down on the room in front of him. He stood on a balcony overlooking the room that was dominated by an enormous chess set. Larger than life figures stood in place of the chess pieces.

On the Human side all the pawns were replaced by Human footmen. The rooks were represented by Water Elementals. The knights were large Warhorses. The bishops were replaced by Human Clerics. The queen was a tall Mage with a funny wizard's hat. And the King was King Llane.

On the Orc side the pawns were replaced by Orc Grunts. The rooks were replaced by a summoned Daemon. The knights were large wolves. The bishops were replaced by Orc Necrolytes. The queen was an Orc Warlock. And the king was Warchief Blackhand.

On the other side of the room was a closed and locked door. In order to pass through the door to reach the last boss of Karazhan, he had to win the chess event.

In front of the chess set was the Shade of Medivh, pacing back and forth as he stared at the chess set.

For some reason Carl started remembering Professor McGonagall and her chess set that she set up as an obstacle to protect the Philosopher's Stone. It had been a while since he was in the Harry Potter world. He wondered what Fleur, Hermione, and Luna would think of this chess set.

Carl started getting lost in his recollections as he thought over all the girls he was in a relationship with. Some of them he hadn't seen for centuries.

Amy, Marcie, Harmony, Fred, and Cordelia. The girls he first connected with on this crazy journey. That first world had been a crazy time. He only had magic to protect himself with in that world. Everything felt so new and scary.

Everyone in the group knew how easily they could die, despite all their hard work and study. So they had really embraced living their lives to the fullest.

He thought about his first set of parents in the Pokemon world, and his girl there Serena, who was crazy about working with Pokemon and exploring the world. She would definitely be interested in seeing what was out here in the omniverse.

While he hadn't hooked up with anyone in the HSDK or SAO worlds, he had people there he cared about. And he might go back to the HSDK to see his sexy sensei Shigure and see whether or not there could be something between the two of them.

Then there was Caiyi in the ATG world. The imperious, proud empress while in public, but a naughty fun loving girl in private.

Alice and Tera, his smart girls from the Stargate world who he toured the galaxies with.

And Lyanna from ASOIAF, his sexy Northern girl.

Shaking his head, Carl chuckled at how the memories had flooded in. He almost felt like one of those Highlander immortals that would have vivid memory flashbacks. But he was back in the present once more.

Carl strode over to King Llane and started the event. He was controlling the King Llane chess piece. Carl exited out of the king's piece and watched for a few seconds as his pieces began moving while the Orc side also becan moving forward to attack.

Carl began controlling the Human Mage piece and moved it forward. He began attacking the Orc's king piece with frost bolts once he was in range. The important point to end the battle was to kill the enemy king.

"Perhaps a change is in order." Carl heard a voice echoing through the chamber.

[Echo of Medivh cheats]

A message popped up in Carl's vision. A moment later, fire appeared on the ground under his chess piece and King Llane. Carl narrowed his eyes in anger. He knew that a part of the chess encounter was that Medivh would cheat. But seeing it happen behind a screen and seeing it happen right in front of his eyes were two different things!

"Well, if you can cheat, why can't I?" Carl muttered.

He released control over the chess piece. Focusing on Warchief Blackhand, Carl summoned up some flames of the Golden Crow. Fanning the fire hotter and hotter, he gestured with his hand. The flames followed his will and pooled under the Warchief, burning him.

Carl smirked at seeing the health of the chess piece drop dramatically. A moment later, the Orc king piece died, letting him win the match.

Carl then stared at the Shade of Medivh to see if he would cause any problems for Carl. But Medivh's ghost seemed to be caught up in the past and never looked directly at him.

Since the ghost wasn't going to cause problems, Carl smirked and opened up the dust covered chest that held the loot for the chess event.

[Triptych Shield of the Ancients] enhanced Stamina, Intellect, Spell Power, and Mana regeneration.

[King's Defender] was a one handed sword that increased Stamina, defense rating, and hit rating.

With the Chess Event over, there was only one more boss to kill.

There were actually two more bosses, but Carl had to first get some reputation with the Violet Eye faction and complete a chain quest line before he could summon the undead dragon Nightbane. When the raid reset in a week, Carl would have the opportunity to finish the quest line and kill the undead Dragon.

Carl continued up the stairs and climbed to the top of the tower where he saw the final boss, Prince Malchezaar.

He didn't waste any time and transformed into his Dragon form, charging forward and slamming into the large demon boss. Malchezaar immediately summoned an infernal from above. The comet crashed down nearby and stood up, showing itself to be one of those fire golem infernals. The infernal started channeling an AoE fire around it, which in normal circumstances would quickly kill anyone who stood in it.

But Carl was immune to fire, so he didn't bother moving. He was too busy attacking the boss.

Prince Malchezaar pulled out two axes after only a moment of combat. Carl smirked at the boss while he was slashing with his claws and avoiding the slashes of the axes.

A second later Prince Malchezaar threw his axes at Carl. He knocked the axes out of the air with his tail, but was unsurprised to see the axes start floating and come back around to try to attack Carl once more.

He didn't let himself get distracted by the axes and continued to cast spells and attack the boss. A short time later, Prince Malchezaar couldn't handle the damage Carl did and fell to the ground dead.

Looking at the loot, Carl smiled at seeing 3 [Badge of Justice].

[Helm of the Fallen Defender]

[Helm of the Fallen Champion]

[Helm of the Fallen Hero]

[Adornment of Stolen Souls], an amulet that enhanced Intellect, Stamina, Critical Strike rating, and Spell Power.

Smiling at how easy the raid had gone and the loot that he had gotten, Carl soon ran back through the tower to exit into Deadwind pass. He then stealthily flew from the entrance of Karazhan to the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands. Entering the portal, he found himself once more in Hellfire Peninsula.

He then flew to the center of the zone where the Hellfire Citadel stood.

The raid in Karazhan had gone so smoothly, he was willing to give Magtheridon's Lair a try, even though it was considered a 25 man raid.

Carl was pretty sure he could manage to do enough damage to overcome the demon Magtheridon's defenses and health and kill him before he could threaten his life.

The entrance was at the very bottom of the Hellfire Citadel on the west side. Carl didn't hesitate to fly straight into the portal leading to the Raid instance.

Once inside, Carl was faced with groups of three patrolling Orcs. Carl didn't waste any time with playing with them. He turned into his Dragon form and killed the patrols.

He found that he was strangely becoming addicted to his Dragon form and the sheer physical presence and ability it had. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

Looking in the room at Magtheridon, Carl narrowed his eyes in determination. The demon Magtheridon stood head and shoulders taller than his own Dragon form. The bottom half of its body had four thick clawed legs. His upper torso was like many of the demons, with bat-like wings and an ugly toothy face. He carried an enormous Glaive in his right hand, which Carl eyed warily. He would have to expend quite a bit of effort to dodge that giant weapon.

Without wasting anymore time, Carl charged in the room to attack the Orc Channelers that were keeping Magtheridon frozen. The moment Carl entered the room, the metal gates closed behind him, making him smirk.

In the words of some notable characters in the past, "I'm not trapped in here with you. You're trapped in here with me!"

He made short work of the Orc Channelers, and was amused to see that he had finished them off before their magic had worn off Magtheridon. He didn't wait for the large demon to recover and began attacking immediately with fire and frost spells, before he closed the distance to melee and breathed his Dragon's Fire on the demon.

The 25 man raid boss was quite a bit tougher than a 10 man raid boss, and it was taking a while for Carl to work his way through his health. He also took some hits from the demon, but his defensive magic and natural armor, enhanced by the armor he wore in his humanoid form, kept him from taking too much damage.

It was one of the things Carl loved about switching between forms. The armor he wore in his Night Elf form and the enhancements he gained from it didn't go away when he was in his Dragon form. They still applied, which was just like magic.

After a few minutes of battle, Carl finally managed to finish off Magtheridon. The massive demon collapsed to the ground, and Carl gleefully checked the loot.

He received 3 [Badge of Justice].

[Magtheridon's Head] which was an item that started a quest to turn in at Honor Hold.

[Pit Lord's Satchel] which was a 20 slot bag for adventurers.

The three armor tokens for the Tier 4 Raid Armor.

[Chestguard of the Fallen Hero]

[Chestguard of the Fallen Champion]

[Chestguard of the Fallen Defender]

[Eredar Wand of Obliteration], a wand that enhanced Stamina, Intellect, Critical Strike Rating, and Spell Power.

[Girdle of the Endless Pit] a plate waist armor piece that enhanced Strength, Stamina, Critical Strike Rating, and had two gem slots.

Carl gathered up his loot and happily departed the raid. It had taken some effort, but soloing the 25 man raid boss was actually quite easy, compared to how it would be if he was a normal adventurer player at level 70.

Carl arrived at Honor Hold and turned in the head of Magtheridon and the quest to Force Commander Danath Trollbane.

"The feast of corruption is no more! Magtheridon has fallen to the battle prowess of Carl and his allies! Witness the might of the Alliance! A pit lord commander is destroyed!" The commander of Honor Hold surprised Carl by suddenly yelling loudly enough to be heard throughout Honor Hold, at the very least, if not throughout all of Hellfire Penninsula.

Carl snickered a bit though, since he had no allies with him when he killed Magtheridon, though Danath Trollbane didn't know that.

With that taken care of, Carl mounted his Gryphon and began flying across the continent to the Blades Edge Mountains. In the northern part of the zone, Carl found Gruul's Lair, the other 25 man raid that was available. He entered the raid instance, eager to finish off the available raids for the week.

Inside the mountain cave like setting, Carl found he had plenty of room to be a Dragon, so he moved forward on four legs. There were patrols of Ogres that Carl made short work of as he continued on.

At the first large chamber there stood five large Ogres. High King Maulgar, Kiggler the Crazed who was a Shaman, Blindeye the Seer who was a Priest, Olm the Summoner who was a Warlock, and Krosh Firehand who was a mage.

Normally in this encounter there would need to be a few people acting in the capacity of tanks to keep the various Ogres busy while the damage dealers took them out one at a time. But Carl was confident in his abilities.

For the first time he tried to enter stealth as a Dragon. He smirked as his Dragon figure faded away to be half visible to himself. It was the indication to the Rogue himself that he was in stealth mode. To everyone else, he was now invisible.

Carl smirked at how terrifying that was, a Rogue Dragon that could sneak up on anyone.

Carl snuck up on Blindeye first. It was important to take out the healer first. Opening up the fight with an Ambush, Carl was amused to see the health of the Priest fall by half.

Blindeye started casting a Heal, but Carl wasn't going to let that happen. He Kicked the Priest, interrupting his spell. The other Ogres were angry and were casting spells or charging Carl the moment he left stealth.

Carl finished off the Priest with a Judgment, Sinister Strike, Fire Blast, and Eviscerate.

Now that the rest of the Ogres were on Carl, he had his claws full fighting four on one. He started employing all his AoE spells, starting with Consecration, Flame Strike, and Dragon's Breath.

The next Ogre that Carl focused on was the Warlock. He didn't want Olm to summon any demons that would make the fight too complicated. With a few claw attacks enhanced with Sinister Strike and Mutilate, Carl had finished off the Summoner.

Carl then moved on to the Shaman, ignoring for a moment the Mage that was casting Greater Fireballs at him. The impact of the Fireballs kind of tickled.

A few spells later and Kiggler was down, leaving just the Mage and the High King, who was a Warrior class. Carl was tired of the attacks of Maulgar, and since the mage was doing no damage he ignored Krosh.

Carl had to admit that the High King was tough. Not nearly as tough as Magtheridon, but tougher than Prince Melchezzar. That didn't save him though as he finished the Ogre a short time later, leaving just the Mage.

A short and unsuspenseful fight later, Carl checked the High King for loots. The Shoulder Armor token for the Tier 4 Raid set dropped.

[Pauldrons of the Fallen Defender]

[Pauldrons of the Fallen Champion]

[Pauldrons of the Fallen Hero]

[Badge of Justice] x 2

[Brute Cloak of the Ogre-Magi] was a cloak that enhanced Intellect, Stamina, Spell Power, and Critical Strike Rating.

After tossing the loot in his bag, Carl continued down the cave passageway, killing more patrolling Ogres along the way.

Looking in at Gruul the Dragonkiller, Carl was impressed by the sheer brutal look of the boss. There was no way that Carl was letting that giant one eyed Gronn kill him though. Carl was too strong and too good looking to allow it.

Carl liked how he was able to get the jump on the Priest in the last boss fight, so he entered Stealth and snuck up on Gruul.

The drooling face of Gruul seemed excited to see a Dragon once Carl started the fight. Carl chuckled in amusement since he wasn't like any Dragon that Gruul had run across previously.

The various abilities of Gruul didn't bother Carl much. Even the rocks landing on his back from the Cave In didn't damage him too much. And what damage he took he could immediately heal with his various Paladin Spells.

Carl took satisfaction in seeing the Dragonkiller go down. Ever since finding out about the Raid that killed a lot of his Dragon Flight, he had been quite sensitive to any hint that anyone would kill his Dragons. They were _his_.

Gruul dropped the leg piece armor tokens to the Tier 4 Raid Armor set.

[Leggings of the Fallen Defender]

[Leggings of the Fallen Champion]

[Leggings of the Fallen Hero]

[Badge of Justice] x 3

[Axe of the Gronn Lords] was a two handed Axe that enhance Stamina and Attack Power.

[Shuriken of Negation] was a throwing dagger that enhanced Stamina and Attack Power.

With all the Raids completed for the time being, Carl teleported to Shattrath City and turned in the Armor Tokens he had gathered. He now had the complete Mage set of the Aldor Regalia, the Rogue Netherblade set, and he found that he could turn in the tokens to get the Warrior Warbringer Battlegear.

He couldn't wear the Warrior's Raid set, since he didn't have the class. But he found that he could easily exchange the tokens for the raid set at least, which made him happy since he had another Raid Armor set to study.

Carl smiled in satisfaction at what he had gained. With his loot in his bags, he teleported to the Dragon Hold. He had some studying to do and some gear to upgrade for his Flight. They would get to level 70 soon, and he wanted them outfitted in the best gear.

They were going to go hunting for cultists, after all. They needed to dress their best.


	84. Azeroth 9

"Thank you for all assembling so quickly." Carl stated to the room of 45 Dragons and Dragonspawn. They were all in their Night Elf forms, sitting in the tiered seats in the presentation hall. "Congratulations. Earlier today, the last of us finally reached level 70."

Carl paused for the cheers and clapping that exploded from his Dragon Flight members. Carl naturally joined in, clapping with a big smile on his face.

"Good work! Everyone has been serious about getting stronger, and you have greatly impressed me with your dedication!" Carl paused for another round of cheers.

"The work doesn't stop here, though. You all already know about the Heroic Dungeons and Raids that we can go to on a daily and weekly basis, respectively. The items and materials that drop from those dungeons and raids are a good source of materials for study and crafting. And going through those fights will help you immensely in keeping up your fighting prowess."

"I've gathered you together to present the plan for your future growth and training for the next month. In order to maximize our gains and training opportunity, you will be splitting into various groups for the daily dungeon runs and the weekly raids."

"While you are all much stronger than the normal adventurer, I want you to start off cautiously. So at first you will be running the heroic dungeons in groups of five. The next day, if there was no problem and you passed through easily with no issues, you may run the heroics in groups of four. Then three. If you continue to show that there are no issues and you are strong enough, you may eventually be soloing the Heroic dungeons."

"And to help with your dungeon runs, I've had the best armor and weapons available crafted." Carl gestured and armor sets and weapons were teleported in, landing in front of each member of the Dragon Flight, all according to their weapon and armor preferences.

The armor he had crafted had all the enhancements, enchants, and gem slots that Carl could fit into the pieces he had crafted. It boosted all of their stats according to the standards set by the world they were in. Each individual piece was a thing of beauty that seriously boosted their abilities to the point where they were basically bosses in their own right.

His Dragons and Dragonspawn already had an advantage from the Ki and Cultivation training that Carl had put them through. With the armor and weapons added on, they would be nigh unstoppable, but only if they knew how to use their powers properly and support each other in a fight.

"For the 10 man raids, you should start with nine raid members each." That would split them into five different raids for Karazhan. "For the 25 man raids, you will be split into two raids at first, 23 and 22 members in each. As you continue to prove your prowess, the next raid you go on will require less members."

"Now, I care for you all greatly. So before you go on the real dungeon or raid run, you will be first doing a practice run in the virtual world. After extensive scans, the VIs have programmed and recreated the various dungeons and raids for your practice before doing the real thing. While it may not be 100% accurate of what situations will develop in real life, it is at least 95% accurate to the power, abilities, and situations that you will encounter for real."

"Before we dive into the virtual world, are there any questions?" Carl finished his speech.

Seeing that no one had any questions since his plans were pretty straightforward and his rules for loot and party cooperation had been long set, Carl ended the meeting and ushered them all into their virtual reality helmets to start their virtual dungeon runs.

Carl had reviewed the intelligence on the Cult of the Damned, and he was shocked at their numbers.

They had thousands of members and were continually recruiting more members. The large majority of them were the mortals, mostly humans. But there were some members in every race. The high level powerful members of the Cult had been turned into undead. Meanwhile the mortal members were working hard to earn the "honor" of being turned.

The sheer numbers of the Cult had made Carl change his plans. Even though his Dragonflight was powerful and would be the best equipped, they still only numbered 45 members. Compared to the Cult's thousands of members, they would be overrun if they tried to take them all on at the same time.

So he would have to split the campaign up into smaller battles. They would have the advantage over the Cult in that Carl had intel on the enemy numbers and positions, whereas they wouldn't know where the Dragonflight was attacking from, or even that they were being besieged at first.

One of the defenses that Carl had put up with the wards was the Fidelius charm. So while some of the members of the Cult might vaguely remember what region of the world of Azeroth their Dragon Hold was located, they wouldn't be able to see it even if they stood right outside it.

And while that wouldn't prevent anyone from seeing the Dragonflight coming and going, the teleport system that he had installed would make sure that his flight members weren't wandering around just outside to prevent such a security breach.

After a month of training and running Dungeons and Raids, Carl planned to have them begin training for the planned attack on the Cult of the Damned. After a couple weeks of that training, the real assault would happen.

Carl was quite proud of his Flight. They had worked hard to get to where they were. And they were putting all their efforts into getting ready for their future.

He settled himself down in front of a terminal to evaluate his people's performance in their fights in the virtual world. He was looking forward to seeing how good they were.

* * *

Pruitt Nottley grinned through the ale fueled haze as he stumbled out of the tavern into the night. Tonight had been a smashing success, and he would get a bonus at the end of the month.

Walking relatively straight down the streets of Theramore, he paused at the end of the docks. Looking out at the ocean in the middle of the night, Pruitt realized that he really needed to take a piss.

Looking around, he didn't see any of the Theramore guards around to object, so he shrugged and unlaced his pants. Leaning against a post, he sighed at the feeling of relief that came from pissing into the surf.

Lacing up once more, he made his way away from the docks and headed for his home, fondly thinking about what a bunch of idiots he had to work with to get some recruits for the cause, and how he would have extra points added onto his account for managing to convince three dockworkers to sign up.

While there was a higher reward for convincing guards, knights, or magisters to join the cult, Pruitt liked his little niche in the scheme of things. It was perfect for getting benefits but avoiding the danger.

And dockworkers that were part of the Cult were always welcome. They could smuggle the most amazing things through customs inspections when they had the dockworkers on their side.

And if those idiots Ancil, Pascal, and Roel ever managed to gather enough points, they would only be able to turn into low level zombies. Pruitt himself would make a decent lich at some point, so he would always be higher up the totem pole than those idiots.

"Yup, life is pretty good for one Pruitt E. Nottley." He bragged to himself as he opened his door to step inside. "Got a great job, plenty of booze, and smashing retirement plan."

Pruitt had just closed the door when he heard a scuff sound behind him. In his drunken state he never managed to turn around to see what the sound was before a sword separated his head from his body.

Hot flames then ignited on his body, lighting up the entryway to his home, in which stood what looked like a Night Elf Warrior and Mage.

The Mage held a tablet that he was just checking a box.

"Looks like there was a recruitment effort this evening by one Pruitt Nottley." The Mage muttered to the Warrior. "Looks like the order is to leave them be for now. They weren't already on the docket, which would throw off our timetable, and we'll watch to see if they try to contact the Cult or not. If they are just a few idiots led astray by this scum for a few bottles, they can live out their lives as dockworkers. If they do anything for the Cult though…"

"Their ass is grass, as the saying goes." The Warrior chuckled as he cleaned off his sword while the Mage was burning up the body. "Who's next on the schedule?"

"There's a Sullivan Thorp down the street who works as a baker. Three guesses what he would be making with Plague Grain if the Cult ordered him to."

"No need for guesses. Trash like that needs taking out before they can do something nasty like that." The Warrior growled as he reached for his communicator to indicate he needed transport to the next destination.

"He is apparently in bed, so it's another easy one." The Mage continued as he finished reading the report while controlling the flames so they didn't go out of control. Now that Pruitt's body was burnt to ashes, he let his fire die down.

"No need to give the scum an even break when he would be baking up a Plague Loaf of Bread given half a chance." The Warrior pointed out.

"Got that right. Ready to teleport."

The two Dragonspawn under their Night Elf forms teleported out, leaving behind a mystery for the authorities of where Pruitt Nottley had disappeared to. When the authorities inspected the house some time later, they would find evidence that Pruitt Nottley was a member of the Cult of the Damned and would issue an arrest order for him. But he would never be found.

* * *

Carl looked over the report of the Cult members they had taken out. They were rushing to take out as many of the low level members as they could before they attacked the stronger ones. If they could clear up the cannon fodder early on, then when they hit the higher leveled ones they wouldn't have reinforcements to call on. And if they didn't have the cannon fodder to use to wear down Carl's forces, then killing the higher leveled ones would be much easier.

Already after 4 days of operations they were coming to the point where it was time to hit the high level members of the Cult of the Damned. Any longer and word would start spreading of the disappearance of the low level Cultists, which would put the higher level ones on the alert.

Once they killed off the high level ones, they could spend the rest of the time cleaning up the small fries. It wasn't like his satellites and spy bots wouldn't keep track of all the members.

One of the things that he had been forced to design was an injectable bug bot that would report its position to the satellites if it was taken through any kind of teleportation. There were Mage teleports and portals, hearthstones that returned one to a specific inn, dungeon summoning stones, Warlock summoning stones, Dark Portals, Time travel to the past, and various other ways that the cultists could evade surveillance. So having the bug bot in their person to track them and report where they end up was necessary.

One of the other difficulties facing their campaign to kill of the Cultists in retaliation was that many of the mid level cultists were actually located in the capital cities. Many of them were in Stormwind, but there were plenty of Orcs in Orgrimmar that needed to be snuffed out.

So the presence of the various guards made it necessary to be especially circumspect. They didn't want to get into a pitched battle with the guards of Stormwind or Orgrimmar.

With a few last notations Carl made plans for the next set of attacks and sent the orders out. He himself had a few targets of his own to take down.

Standing up, he moved out of his room and found Jeff waiting outside his room resting against the wall in his Night Elf form.

"Heya boss." The young Dragon cheerily said when he saw Carl exit his rooms. "I'm ready to go when you are."

"Sounds good." He chuckled at Jeff's enthusiasm.

No Dragons went alone on the raids, not even Carl. Especially not even Carl. He was the leader, and if something happened to him, then it would devastate the rest of the Dragonflight. Jeff ended up winning the tournament for the privilege of joining Carl.

"Since you're ready, let's go now." Carl pronounced. "Ready?"

"Born ready, boss."

With a thought to the teleport system they were whisked away to the home of the first Orc in Orgrimmar who was a mid level Cultist member. They had to get working early tonight, because they had 5 Cultists to kill tonight.

* * *

After the night filled with killing Cultists, Carl and his Dragonflight met up in the expanded dimensional space below their Hold. The portals to the dimensional space was located in the lowest levels of the dungeons, and were the most guarded part of the Hold because it held their future.

The dimensional space was where Dragon and Dragonspawn eggs were kept safe until they had hatched. Unfortunately the Raid had been so overwhelming that most of their eggs had been smashed or eaten that night. It really was a miracle that Mortic, Fausic, and Mauret had been able to grab the few dozen eggs that they had saved.

Six of the eggs had already hatched and were the six young Dragons that Carl had first met when he first arrived. There was another batch of eight Dragons that had hatched previously, who were being watched as they grew by the whole Flight.

The Dragonflight was meeting this morning in the dimensional space because the next batch of 19 Dragonspawn eggs were about to hatch, and it was a moment of great importance for the Dragonflight.

Carl had found out that the Dragon eggs took up to 20 years to mature, and the Dragonspawn eggs took up to 15 years to mature. Added on to low rate of actually laying eggs, which was every 100 years or more, and it explained why their race had so few in number and why the Raid had been so devastating.

This was the last batch of new additions to their numbers for the next 30 plus years, unless they take extra steps like going under time compression to speed up the process.

When faced with the issues, Carl had actually made a new discovery about the Heavenly Time Pearl. The default setting was for aging and lifespan to not be affected while under time compression, which meant eggs couldn't mature and Dragons couldn't grow up. But those rules could be changed if he so desired to allow them to lay eggs for the next generation.

He could also change the time compression ratio, which he hadn't ever done before. Changing up the rules of the inside of the Time Pearl would change the amount of energy it required to compress time.

For the time being Carl had no plans to force his Dragonflight to sit inside time compression and hatch egg after egg. He was considering putting them through one cycle just so they could increase their numbers before he left this world, but he hadn't decided just yet.

His newly trained Dragonflight was strong enough that he wasn't completely worried for their survival. He had the technology and defenses to keep them as safe as one was likely to be on Azeroth. And he still had the desire to get through the next few worlds and gather all his people together as soon as possible.

It would all just depend on circumstances. If he felt the need to bolster his people's numbers so they could better protect themselves, then that was what he would do.

Carl's attention was drawn to the group of eggs once he heard the sound of shells cracking. The heated sands of the hatching ground was currently surrounded by Dragons and Dragonspawn in their normal forms, all perched on what amounted to stadium seating.

He smirked a draconic grin as he saw the first cute little Dragonspawn come falling out of his shell. He was soon scooped up by one of the female Dragonspawn and fed his first meal.

It was good to see the Dragon Flight so excited. Even though it would be some years until the next group of eggs for the Dragons, they were just as excited for the hatching of the Dragonspawn as the Dragonspawn were.

Carl had made history by decreeing the Dragonspawn to be full members of the Dragon Flight. They were all related by blood, although they had different forms. And they were all working toward the good of the Dragon Flight. So it was important that they all worked together and respect each other.

And while the Dragons were more powerful, generally speaking, than the Dragonspawn, it didn't mean that the Dragonspawn were any less important to help accomplish everything they needed to do. So they got all the privileges that came with being a full member of the Flight.

Carl was pleased to see that by now, under his leadership perks, the whole flight had pulled together and the Dragons were just as excited for the Dragonspawn's hatching as if they had been Dragons. They were truly one now.

He decided they could take a day off for the momentous occasion. For the rest of the day the whole Flight relaxed in the dimensional space, enjoying their time together as they cooed over the new members of their Flight.

Looking around while they enjoyed time in their draconic forms and greeted their new members, Carl realized that there would come a time where the Dragon Hold wouldn't be able to contain their members. He needed to have some plans drawn up to use some massive expansion magic on their available space to accommodate future additions.

After sending a notice to the Yamato VI to send some Petes to do measurements, Carl returned to looking at the cute little Dragonspawn that was sleeping between his claws while chatting with his nearby Flight members.

* * *

Carl smirked at the intelligence report that he just received from the VI. The past few days the members of the Cult of the Damned had been scattering like roaches to their more bunkered and remote safeholds. They had finally stopped moving, allowing him to know just where their locations were.

He was amused because there was a whole host of information on locations and hidey holes that he hadn't known about before. Killing off most of the low and mid level members of the Cult had worked wonders for scaring the higher levels to act rashly and reveal more of their secrets.

Which meant that he now knew a lot more about the Cult. Sure, there were plenty more targets. But until he had hunted down every single known element, he wasn't going to stop. And even when he finished off all those enemy he knew about, he would continue to keep an eye out for any more hidden elements emerging.

It had already been over three months since his Dragon Flight had started getting their revenge against the Cult of the Damned for what the Raid. And his Flight was loving every minute of it.

Every stronghold they found and killed their way through was looted of everything of value. And while much of it was low level gear and materials compared to what they got from dungeons and raids from the Burning Crusades expansion, it was welcome in filling out their coffers, especially since it denied the resources to their enemy.

Every week his Flight was clearing up the three raids that were available and getting more drops. And they were getting plenty of materials and experience from the heroic versions of the dungeon instances.

Carl even occasionally talked to the adventurer players in town to see what kind of information he could gather. So far he had learned that the next set of raids, Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep, were due to be released in about four more months.

He was planning to have the rest of the Cult finished off in the next week. Aside from a few of the high level Cult members that he would lead the Flight to finish off personally, he planned to have bombs teleported in to finish off the rest.

With that thought fresh in mind, Carl ordered the Yamato VI to deploy the bombs to the designated targets. He then mentally pushed the big red button and watched over the feed as the bombs went off.

The bug bots all seemed to have been destroyed, indicating that the targets had been killed along with them, since they were inside the targets.

It was one of the downsides of being undead. They didn't really have much of a sense of touch anymore, and so small metal devices injected into them didn't irritate or get noticed as much.

Which was good for him, since it made it easy to track the targets.

Carl watched over the satellite feed as the surveillance devices swooped in and confirmed the kills. He watched the kill count rise higher as each of the targets were confirmed dead.

With all the targets done, Carl put away his tablet and began meditating. Over the past several months, he had been considering a particular problem that he had wanted to solve to continue to get stronger in his magic.

It was something that had come to light, especially as he had gained a new alternate body with both the T-Rex and now a Dragon.

Each time he gained a new body, his Ki, Profound Cultivation, and especially Magic were basically reset to zero. He had to train them up all over again.

When he had been a T-Rex with basically miniscule amounts of magic, it had taken years to mature and get his magic backup to even a first year Hogwarts student. It was only his long practice that allowed him to squeeze out spells early on.

But here in the World of Warcraft there was a system in place to level up his magic. Somewhat similar to the techniques he had to absorb energy and level up his Ki and Profound cultivation, it was a systematic way to level up his magic instead of waiting for it to simply mature, which was priceless.

And so ever since coming to this world he had been working towards compiling a technique that would focus on advancing his magical levels. While he had been leveling up he had been going over the data and his own personal experience.

Each time he leveled, he focused on the feeling of reaching another level, another plateau. He paid attention to how it felt to reach another level. He focused on what it felt like when he was able to learn new magical spells.

He was especially interested in the sensations that accompanied the absorption of magical energy whenever he killed monsters, or turned in a quest.

Even the obstacle that the magic of the world forced on him as it limited his level gave him clues on how to construct a proper Magical Cultivation technique that would allow him to simply absorb magical energy to continue to improve the amount of magical energy he could store in his body, the amount he could channel, and the amount he could release in spells.

He was confident that when the world blockage of levels was lifted when the time of the next expansion came about, he could simply use his technique and level up quickly. He could even construct new versions of all the spells that the trainers taught him to a higher level and more damage output without visiting the trainers.

One of the key elements for figuring all this out was one of the perks he had purchased from the ATG world, **Dragon God's Bloodline**.

**…This perk makes it so that strictly speaking you don't even need to cultivate now. Any powers you possess will continue getting stronger as you grow older, with no upper limits except your lifespan…**

Even with the block on his level, his magic was continuing to grow larger. His mana pool kept increasing, and his damage output continued rising, due to the perk. And exploring that sensation on his Magic created by the perk and comparing it to what it felt like to employ his Ki and Cultivation techniques had given him the last step he needed to figure out his own Magical Leveling Technique.

Beyond getting a badass Dragon form that benefitted from having drops of blood from a Dragon God, figuring out how to create his Magical Leveling Technique was priceless.

He now had techniques to systematically level up his Soul, Mind, and Body through Cultivation, Magic, and Ki.

All of these techniques were ultimately ways to increase the amount of energy one could store and use, and that storing of energy transformed the person. But each system focused on only one particular aspect of the person to strengthen. Any one system could create amazingly strong individuals, since it was impossible to strengthen any part of the whole without a bleed off effect that strengthened the other two aspects.

But by being able to employ techniques to strengthen all three aspects meant that the rate of improvement was much greater, as well as making him stronger on the whole at the same level compared to others than if he only improved in one or two of the areas.

Carl was well satisfied with his progress in this world. Back in the Stargate Universe, with the assistance of the high technology there, he was easily able to add the needed additions to make Magic available to his people. But unlike Profound Cultivation where he could induce Profound Veins, or Ki where he could build their bodies and Ki through training, with Magic he could only wait over a decade for them mature enough in their magic to even begin training them.

Which is why he made the decision to only train his people in Ki and Profound Energy in those worlds, leaving the Magic behind, for the most part.

But now, with this Magical Leveling Technique he could train his people in all three aspects of Body, Mind, and Soul strengthening.

A beeping alarm interrupted Carl's meditation.

Opening his eyes, he looked over at his tablet. He had just spent a few hours meditating and it was time to go on one more attack of a high level undead of the Cult.

Grinning ferally, he got up and armed himself before making his way to the meeting point. It was time to burn some asshole shambling corpses who thought forcefully converting the living into the undead was the cool thing to do.

Upon arriving, he saw that all the adults of the Dragon Flight were present and ready to fight. Everyone had the same feral, nearly manic, grin on their faces.

The location they arrived at was in the far western part of Tirisfal Glades. The same zone that the Undead faction of the Horde had their capital, Undercity. Apparently the Cult of the Damned thought it was clever of them to hide among the undead who oppose the rule of the Lich King and who weren't enemies of all that was alive.

Carl didn't bother to give any kind of speech at this moment. He didn't need to pump up his people's motivation anymore. He simply called out for a ready check.

"Everyone accounted for and prepared, Lord Carl." Goram reported.

"Good. Teleport us to the site." Carl ordered out loud.

A moment later all 46 of them disappeared from the meeting room and appeared in a forest glade.

"Everyone knows their assigned spots. Keep in contact and none of them will escape. Execute!" Carl called out.

The various groups split up, speeding through the woods in silence due to the spells they cast. Carl rushed along as well, not wanting to be left out of the fun.

A few moments later, he arrived outside a large keep that appeared abandoned. His people signaled they were in position a moment later. Carl cast the fire spells on the keep, melting through the gates in moments.

He then cast some ice spells to cool off the entrance and his people began streaming inside, tearing apart the undead guards. Carl followed along behind, occasionally casting an arcane missile to destroy some undead guards that his fellow Flight members couldn't immediately get to.

In the final room they found the high level cult member, a Lich that was roaring and throwing around shadow spells at the Night Elf looking attackers. He was once a very tall Tauren. But now he looked absolutely disgusting, with flesh sloughing off his cheeks and his horns looking particularly sickly and vile.

"Hahaha! Even if you destroy my body, I will not die this day!" The undead Tauren Lich yelled out mockingly in a lull in the fighting.

"Oh, why is that?" Carl replied, unable to resist. "Is it because you think you've hidden your phylactery very well and we couldn't possibly find it? You couldn't possibly be referring to this phylactery, could you?"

Carl pulled out from a pouch the repository of the Lich's soul to show it to him.

"Give me that!" The Tauren Lich yelled out in desperation.

Unfortunately for him, Carl simply ignited the foul thing, burning it to ashes.

"Noooo!" The abomination cried out in despair as he fell to his knees.

"Kill it." Carl ordered. All kinds of spells and attacks flew from the Flight members, obliterating the undead Lich.

Carl didn't know who started it, but every Flight member began with a cheer and moved on to roaring. Not to be outdone, Carl joined in, exulting in their triumph over their enemies.

After a final sweep of the area, they went back home, cleaned up, and threw one hell of a party in celebration of wiping out the Cult of the Damned.

* * *

The empty room had rough stone walls and a dirt floor. Faintly through the walls loud and boisterous voices could be heard talking and laughing, sounding like they were excited for the upcoming event. The faint smell of spilled blood wafted in the air.

Five figures suddenly appeared, landing on their feet in the room that was only big enough for them all to have room to spread their arms out while still touching.

All five figures appeared to be Night Elves.

Carl immediately began casting buffs on his team, while the rest were doing the same, preparing for the upcoming battle.

After destroying the last of the undead members of the Cult of the Damned, Carl had made the decision that they would start participating in the Arena and Battleground Player vs Player (PvP) events.

As long as his Flight members went as a group into Battlegrounds or Arenas and stuck together through the battlegrounds, they would be more than capable of keeping themselves alive. Their additional Ki and Profound Cultivation training gave them strength that made them comparable to at least 10 man raid bosses.

For the 5v5 Arena battles, the math was pretty easy to work out. Five 10 man raid bosses versus 5 normal players, it wasn't hard to figure out who would win.

Even in the biggest 40v40 battleground of Alterac Valley, as long as they stuck in groups they couldn't be overwhelmed by the normal forces they faced.

And doing the PvP events allowed Carl and his Dragon Flight access to the special attributes on the Armor and Weapons that could only be purchased through the PvP system. PvP Resilience was an attribute that lessened the amount of damage that was taken from other players or their minions.

Carl couldn't always trust that his people wouldn't be ganged up on by massive numbers of players, or that they wouldn't be separated from their groups. Accidents happen.

So it was better to prepare for worst case scenarios and arm his Flight with anything that will keep them alive.

Which resulted in Carl leading Mortic, June, Hilda, and Goram into this 5v5 arena battle.

Carl was a cheat in this world with three classes. Mortic had taken up the role of a Priest, June was their Shaman, Hilda was a Warrior, and Goram had chosen to be a Hunter.

And naturally he was going to continue cheating as far as he could, so once all their buffs were up, the group cast the standard stealth spells from the Harry Potter world. Disillusionment may not be quite as good as a Rogue's stealth, but it made it incredibly difficult to find them visually.

After the preparation time, a countdown soon echoed out over the arena to let the combatants know that the battle was about to start.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

The doors in front of Carl's group opened up, letting them see the sand floor of the arena. The roughly circular shape of the arena battle ground was lit here and there with torches. Cheering crowds watched them from the stands.

In the middle of the arena floor, going from one side to the other, was a wooden bridge that offered an elevated position. There were two stone ramps on either side of the bridge that offered a way up to the bridge.

As Carl's team exited the starting room, the stone ramp up to the bridge was in front of them, so they made their way over to it to get some height and view of the rest of the arena floor.

[I've got 4 humanoids on my tracking map.] Goram broadcast over the mental connection Carl held open. [The fifth one is either a Rogue or a Druid in stealth.]

[Maybe a Mage with invisibility.] June pointed out.

[Maybe.] Goram admitted. [But it wouldn't get them much of an advantage if it was a Mage. It would only be a cheap trick to have us become more wary. We're in a battle of life and death; of course we're already going to be on our toes.]

The group of four enemies climbed onto the bridge opposite of Carl's team. He could see they were freaking out at not seeing any enemies, thinking their enemy was a team full of stealthers.

[They've got a Warrior, Warlock, Hunter, and Priest visible.] Carl pointed out. [Goram, when we open combat drop an Ice Trap so if their fifth member is a Rogue or Druid he can't sneak up on us. We're going to take out BubbleMan, their Priest, first so they can't get any heals or shields. June, after your opening shot be sure to drop a Tremor Totem so that SirDotsaLot, their Warlock, can't Fear any of us before we take him out next.]

[Yes, Lord.] Goram nodded, preparing his shot.

[Sure thing, Lord Carl.] June sung out in their minds.

[Hilda, I want you to charge and stun GrumpsMcCharge, their Warrior.] Carl ordered.

[Gladly, Lord Carl.] Hilda grimly said. From Carl's memories of her before the Raid she had been a cheerful and carefree Dragon. But her time as prisoner and torture victim of the Cult before her rescue had fundamentally changed her attitude. Now she had a no nonsense attitude and loved to beat on things personally, hence her decision to become a Warrior class.

[Mortic, after you cast a Smite on the Priest then start casting Power Word: Shield on us to make sure we are fine.]

[Yes, Lord Carl.] Mortic had come a long way from the timid Elder who barely survived the Raid. His desire to protect the rest of the Flight had led to his decision to be a Priest class. His power and abilities had given him a lot of confidence in his abilities.

[I'll cast Sheep on BangBang, their Hunter, after our opening volley. So once the Priest is dead, target the Warlock, then the Warrior, and then the Hunter. Then we'll hunt down their stealthed team member.]

After getting acknowledgement from his team, Carl started charging a Pyroblast. His Stealth wouldn't end until he had actually attacked, which was nice because he could charge his strongest Mage spell and throw it before he was actually seen. A huge fireball to the face was a nice greeting, in Carl's opinion.

The moment that Carl's Pyroblast streaked across the bridge, everyone followed their orders. Hilda Charged, keeping GrumpsMcCharge stunned for a moment, June cast her own Lightning Bolt at BubbleMan before dropping her totems, Goram cast an Aimed Shot at the Priest before dropping his trap, Mortic got off a Smite and started to Shield their group.

BubbleMan died without being able to respond at all. Their combined assault had blasted through his Shield and dropped him with no drama.

After casting his Pyroblast, Carl had immediately Sheeped BangBang. BangBang's pet, BamBam had immediately charged toward their group, but Goram's own pet wolf Fenrir intercepted BamBam and kept it occupied.

A Shield immediately popped up on Hilda as she continued to focus on smacking down GrumpsMcCharge while Carl, June, and Goram switched targets to SirDotsaLot. The moment that it took to charge up their spells and cast was enough for Hilda to do enough damage that the Warrior died at the same time as the Warlock the moment their spells landed.

All five members of Carl's team focused their attention on the small innocent looking sheep that was wandering in circles that was the Hunter. Without needing to say a word, the group started attacking and the sheep poofed into being a humanoid once more on the first attack. Less than a second later the Hunter dropped dead, interrupting Carl and the other caster's spell.

Hilda didn't think twice and started smacking the Hunter's corpse.

[Silly Hunter, thinking that Feign Death would work.] Carl laughed as he cast a Fire Blast.

BangBang died for real this time, with no fuss.

[Alright let's track down that -] Carl was interrupted by the end of the match.

Looking at the victory screen that popped up in front of him, Carl saw that the last member of the enemy team was StabInTheDark, a Rogue. He had obviously not wanted to be part of being hunted down by a group that could take his team down so quickly and viciously, and since he hadn't had the chance to enter combat was able to immediately give up, granting them a flawless victory.

"Good job everyone." Carl congratulated his team after they had all exited the Arena. They were standing around the Lower City of Shattrath City where they had queued up for the fight.

"That was easy!" June enthusiastically laughed.

"Thank you, Lord." Mortic smiled calmly.

"Another, Lord Carl?" Goram asked with a smile for June's enthusiasm.

Hilda grunted agreement with a gleeful smirk on her face.

"Yup, gotta get our weekly quota in so we can rank up, get Arena Points, and grab all the gear we need to study." Carl was pleased with how well his team and the other Arena teams were doing.

Due to running several Arena teams at the same time, it was inevitable for some of the Dragon Flight to face each other in the Arena. When that happened they simply did a Rock, Paper, Scissors game to determine who won and who gave up. No one wanted to fight each other to the death, even if they would probably come back to life due to the magic of the World and the Arena. Maybe.

Better safe than sorry.

As a result of those awkward meetings in the Arena, there was now a schedule for when the different teams would queue up for the battles. So far none of his teams had lost without a game of Paper, Rock, Scissors. And due to their ambush ability with stealth spells and their powers far above the normal players, an even match with players was anything but fair. Which pleased Carl to no end.

With his team ready and eager for more victories and their allotted slot not yet expired, Carl signed them up for another match.

This time they arrived in the Ruins of Lordaeron Arena, which was a graveyard with a large altar in the middle that could break up a caster's line of sight for casting spells.

"Second verse, same as the first." Carl joked as he began casting buffs.

"Compared to us, everyone is the worst." June laughed along as she cast the stealth spell package on herself.

"Five show up, five go down." Mortic joined in on throwing out a line.

"In front of us, they are only a clown." Hilda surprised everyone by joining in the jollity, showing a hint of her former cheerful disposition.

Carl smiled inside, thinking of how much having a strong and caring Flight had done for the rescued Dragons who had suffered so much. He was really enjoying this time in this world.


	85. Azeroth 10

[AN: I've already gotten to the point that I want to with Carl and his Dragon Flight in this world. I find I've reached a point where I don't have much else to say about their progress for the time being.

I've established him and his Dragon Flight. He's got his new buddies that will actually travel with him! He's got them trained up, their gear constantly getting updated, etc.

He's learned his new magical cultivation technique, which is an important part of his development. *hint* *hint*

And all that's left is grinding for gear in the new raids coming out, and more levels when Wrath of the Lich King happens and he travels to Northrend.

So while I could spend the next 10-20 chapters faithfully reporting all the details of every one of the raids, I think that would be boring even for me, and I like WoW content for the most part.

(Pretty sure there would be a revolt from everyone if I deviated from my relatively fast paced world jumping. Can you imagine if I faithfully wrote every bit of his 10 years of Farmville? Uggh. Diggy diggy hole, planty planty seed, hunty hunty bird…)

So, anyway, the reason for this AN is just to say that this is the last chapter of WoW. I'm really picking up the pace and going to be telling a whole lot here instead of showing. If that offends you…/shrug. Sorry?

And thank you for all the reviews, follows, and favorites. I'm glad so many seem to like my story.]

* * *

Once Carl and his Dragon Flight had decimated the Cult of the Damned for the atrocities they committed and for attacking them, things settled down into a routine. Every day they split into separate groups to do Heroic Dungeon runs.

Unlike Carl's first impulse to get to the point where his Flight could solo the Heroic Dungeons for materials, he found that it was better to let them continue running the instances as a group. It was basically socialization and fun time for them. Since they were able to easily gather plenty of crafting materials for everyone to use, there was no real need to work themselves to the bone to gather as much as they could.

Every week they continued to go through the raid instances of Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon's Lair to get the materials, armor, and weapons they could use for their own crafting projects.

They continued to completely dominate the PvP scene. It soon got to the point that if any of their members were recognized before combat started then the enemy team would immediately leave the arena. They didn't see the point of letting themselves get slaughtered when they were already going to lose. It was better to just give up and hope for a better match up that they could actually fight.

The Reputation Panel in his character interface allowed Carl to track his reputation with the various factions. They usually started out as Neutral, and moved from there to Friendly, Honored, Revered, and finally to Exalted.

So the final thing Carl and his Flight did was to complete the daily quests that were available from the various factions around the Outlands in order to gain reputation, gold, and other items available from getting higher reputation.

The Violet Eye faction, for example, that was in charge of watching over Karazhan gave them some nice crafting designs in both Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Jewelcrafting. A nice Alchemy Flask of Chromatic Wonder recipe that when imbibed could increase magical resistance and all stats for a short time. And also an Enchanting formula that could enhance a melee weapon to increase Agility.

The Cenarion Expedition faction that was in mostly in charge of the Zangarmarsh and the Coilfang Reservoir set of instance dungeons had plenty of plans for them to study and add to their own knowledge and crafting experience. But beyond that when Carl reached Exalted with them, he was able to purchase a fine looking Cenarion War Hippogryph as a flying mount.

Once he got the new flying mount from the Cenarion Expedition, Carl realized that he really wanted to gather all the mounts and pets available from the world before he left. If only because it was something to do to amuse himself.

The various pets he could gather in this world wouldn't be familiars like Rover, who became Feng Ra, would be. So he wasn't worried they would suddenly gain their independence and be left behind. So Carl was quite happy to spend time gathering them up.

After Carl had been in the world for about a year and a half, he noticed that things among the factions in Shattrath City were heating up. The Sha'tar faction members were talking about ramping up for the next step in taking back the Outlands from the demonic forces. The Tempest Keep raid instance was about to be opened up.

In preparation for that, Carl and his Flight members all talked to Khadgar the Mage who gave them the start of a quest chain that would eventually end up with them obtaining the key needed to open up the door into the Tempest Keep raid instance.

It really wasn't hard for them to accomplish. They simply had to obtain items from the bosses of various Heroic Dungeons. The three bosses of Heroic Shattered Halls, a dungeon instance in Hellfire Peninsula allowed them to retrieve the [Unused Axe of the Executioner].

A trip through The Steamvault in Zangarmarsh and they retrieved [Kalithresh's Trident] from the Naga boss inside. Then a quick jaunt through the Shadow Labyrinth in Terokkar Forest to kill Murmur, the giant elemental there and retrieve [Murmur's Essence].

After that they made their way through the Arcatraz, which was a floating prison dungeon instance. At the end of the prison, they rescued a Gnome by the name Millhouse Manastorm.

And the last request was to travel to Magtheridon's Lair to once more Slay Magtheridon.

After that they received the [Tempest Key] and a nice ring that enhanced stamina and fire resistance.

The Cenarion Expedition was also gearing up for their assault on the Serpentshrine Cavern that was a raid instance located in the Coilfang reservoir. The raid instance was filled with Naga and their various servants.

With how prevalent the Naga were everywhere, Carl realized he had really dodged a bullet by not making the Naga one of the enemies that hunted him. It was bad enough that the Cult of the Damned had staged their Raid early on. If a race and faction as prevalent as the Naga had gotten in on the action, he didn't know if there would actually be any Dragon Flight left for him to take control of.

It made him wonder if there really was no Jump-chan watching over his Jump Chain like he was told, or if they were just sitting back and messing with him somehow.

He really didn't expect any of his enemies to be active against him until his consciousness entered the world. But here in this world, their attack had actually been part of the memories that were given to him once he entered.

Thankfully for the moment his other enemies were unavailable. Heyla's group of undead valkyries were locked up in Northrend for the moment. And the Iron Horde were mired in an alternate timeline and wouldn't be making it here until after he had left the world.

Once Carl had been in the world for 20 months the two raid instances, Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest keep were opened up. Both raids were 25 man raids. The first week his flight entered the raid instances, they split into two groups. In order to spend time with his people and assure them he wasn't going to be getting himself killed, he joined one of the raids. So it was split into two groups of 23 each.

Every single Flight member was equivalent to a boss themselves, so the raids were over incredibly quick.

In the middle of Zangarmarsh, they swam underwater and entered the cavern where the dungeon instances were. The entrance for the Serpentshrine Cavern was straight ahead. Upon entering, the raid members were faced with the first, most deadly boss for the player adventurers.

An enormous elevator with an ugly face imprinted on the floor. There were no rails or safety measures. When the elevator was down, there was only a large circular hole in the floor. It moved very fast, and if anyone wasn't firmly standing on the elevator, they would soon find themselves falling to their deaths.

Carl chuckled to himself remembering how many idiots back in the day tried to play around, only to find themselves dying and having to run back as a spirit into the raid instance.

His Flight members didn't have any problems surmounting the issues of the elevator boss.

After following the path at the bottom, there was a new elevator that raised up to the where the cavern opened up.

There were two bosses in the main part of the cavern, a water elemental and a leviathan fish monster.

Three bosses were in a side tunnel. A blind folded Blood Elf, a Naga, and a Sea Giant.

And the final boss was the very tall Naga, Lady Vashj, who was in the final cavern off to the east side of the main cavern.

Once more the delightful aspect of the raid instances was that Carl and his people got a chance to fight in their draconic forms. Some of the melee classes had to stay in their Night Elf forms in order to fit in close for the fights, but the rest of the ranged classes could stay in their draconic forms and blast away.

Carl suspected that one of the reasons that Goram chose the Hunter class was that as a Dragonspawn he had arms in either form and he really enjoyed using guns. So Carl had designed the most badass rifle for him. He loved it.

The Tempest Keep was a floating prison that was turned into a fortress by the inmates and corrupted prison guards. The boss in the first chamber was a Phoenix, a fire elemental.

There were two paths, one to the left and one to the right that led to two more wings, before the pathways met up for the final chamber. In one of the wings was a mechanical Fel Reaver, in the other was a female Blood Elf Mage.

And in the final chamber was the Blood Elf Kael'thas Sunstrider and his four advisors. After killing the advisors, some legendary weapons were summoned that they had to battle and destroy. Then the advisors were resurrected by Kael'thas only to die a short time later. Finally, they could focus on Kael'thas and killed him a short time later.

In the first week enough tokens were dropped so they could get at least one set each of the class's Tier 5 Armor sets. Bringing those armor sets back to the Dragon Hold, they were able to analyze them and learn how to improve their own armor.

That is the kind of cheat that would make the adventurer players everywhere gnash their teeth in envy. Not only did all his armor sets enhance all main and secondary attributes, have the maximum gem slots and Enchantments. But they were also able to go through a single raid in order to outfit the entire Flight.

There were plenty of times where a Guild was broken up over arguments over fairness in distributing loot drops. To have the ability to overcome that source of jealousy and strife was something that made their Dragon Flight stronger together. There was literally no reason to get upset over inferior loot drops, because nearly any one of them could make better equipment.

After that first week, at least for the new 25 man raids, they split their raids up into four groups of ten and one group of five that Carl would join. The older raids they simply went in their five man dungeon groups. They were that powerful and it was a fun social time.

Due to the nature of the game world, and the fact that there were probably plenty of undead members of the Cult of the Damned over in Northrend, occasionally a new undead member would show up in either the Eastern Kingdoms continent or the Kalimdor Continent.

Carl was seriously annoyed that he couldn't get to Northrend yet, but apparently the undead there could leave as they pleased.

Whenever one of them showed up on the figurative radar, his Dragon Flight descended on them like a Dragon shaped ton of bricks that could fly and breathe fire.

Bricks were very deadly.

Two months after the new Raids were released, there were new sets of PvP armor and weapons that were available for purchase. It was the Season Two sets.

It didn't take very long for his Flight members to obtain and deconstruct the new gear, which further solidified his Flight's position as unbeatable in the Arena or on the Battlegrounds.

By this time Carl had somewhat relaxed his rules of how and when his Flight members could leave the Hold. But he still held to strict rules that they had to stay at least in groups of four when leaving. A partner to watch their back, and another duo to further act as backup wherever they went.

This was after all a world of warcraft. And it was chock full of asshole adventurer players who would love nothing more than bragging rights if they managed to kill any of their members who had made a name for themselves in the Arena.

Carl didn't want to find out whether or not his Flight could resurrect themselves at a Graveyard like the adventurer players could.

Because he thought it likely that his Flight members operated under the same death rules he himself did: One chance only.

Life at the Dragon Hold once more settled down into routine. They practiced their craft. They educated and entertained their newly hatched Flight members. They did their dungeon and raid instance runs.

* * *

After 36 months had passed in world, there was a new season of PvP gear, Season Three.

Carl's Flight of crafting maniacs was naturally all over it.

After 38 months in world had passed, there was another excitement in Shattrath. New factions were formed to prepare for assaulting new raid instances.

The Shattered Sun Offensive was working to build a foothold on the Isle of Quel'Danas in preparation to combat Kael'thas Sunstrider's mad bid to use the Sunwell as a portal to summon his demon master Kil'jaeden.

Carl rolled his eyes. He didn't know how many times his people alone had killed Kael'thas in the Tempest Keep. Apparently it really didn't stick, since he was at it again, this time in the Magister's Terrace dungeon instance and the Sunwell Plateau raid instance.

Meanwhile the Ashtongue Deathsworn was ramping up to assault the Black Temple raid instance that lay in the far east of the Shadowmoon Valley.

The Ashtongue Deathsworn was a subgroup of the Ashtongue Tribe, which were part of the subrace known as the Broken. And the Broken was some kind of devolved Draenei, who were mutated after being overly exposed to the fel demonic energies wielded by the Orc Warlocks who sold their souls to the Demons of the Burning Legion.

And the third and final group that was recruiting for a big battle was the Scales of the Sands, which was a secretive subgroup of the Bronze Dragon Flight. They were recruiting help from the adventurer players to fight in the Battle of Mount Hyjal, or the Hyjal Summit raid instance.

The Bronze Dragon Flight was located in the deserts of Tanaris and their domain was Time. Any fiddling with time that Carl attempted in this world would have made him and his much reduced Silver Dragon Flight enemies of the Bronze Dragon Flight, who would have done anything to stop him from changing history.

In established history the Battle of Mount Hyjal was the final bloody battle at the end of the Third War. Also known as the Chaos War, the Third Great War was a huge battle between the mortal races of Azeroth and the Demons of the Burning Legion, as the Burning Legion sought to invade and subjugate all of Azeroth.

The original Battle of Mount Hyjal was the final and conclusive battle of the Third War, where the Demon commander Archimonde attempted to destroy the World Tree Nordrassil.

The Horde, The Alliance, and the Night Elves fought a delaying battle meant to weaken Archimonde's forces to allow the Night Elf Malfurion Stormrage time to prepare a proper defense against the Burning Legion.

After a drawn out war that was fought desperately for every bloody inch, the demon legions finally reached Nordrassil. That was when Malfurion called forth an army of spirit wisps that ignited Nordrassil's defenses in a massive explosion. The explosion burned the demonic legion to ashes, thus ending the Third War.

And now, the Demonic Legion was fighting on multiple fronts to try to invade once more. One of their ploys was to send reinforcements back in time to the Battle of Mount Hyjal, to change history and claim victory.

So the Scales of the Sands faction was recruiting the adventurer players to reinforce the mortal forces arrayed against the Burning Legion and ensure that the battle concludes as it should, according to established history.

At the 40th month mark inside the world, the new raid instances opened up and Carl and his Dragon Flight attacked the 25 man instances. They cleared the raids and created their new armors and weapons.

At the 48th month mark, the new tier of PvP gear was released. Season 4 didn't change any from the previous seasons: his forces swept the board.

* * *

At the 59th month mark the events that would kick off the Wrath of the Lich King expansion began.

Within his Dragon Flight, once loyalty and trust had been established, Carl had shared with his people the nature of his Jump Chain and of their world. It hadn't been too hard to believe, what with him sharing all the unknown technology and abilities. As a result, they had long since known of the coming expansion into Northrend, and they were excited.

For a bunch of crafting obsessed Dragons and Dragonspawn, the infusion of new materials and recipes was looked at as a great gift. It kept them from being bored.

And since Carl had his memory of the game in the past, he knew what to look out for concerning the events leading up to the campaign in Northrend.

Corrupted grain crates began appearing in Booty Bay that quickly spread a deadly plague that corrupted the Horde and Alliance adventurer players into undead. Once they died, they would resurrect in their normal forms, no longer undead.

Apparently the adventurer players who were simply playing a game using the avatars thought it was a fun event to run around as zombies attacking everyone and infecting them. They spread the word around and more and more players showed up in Booty Bay to check it out and get infected, spreading the plague around.

Since he didn't want to risk his people catching the plague and dying permanently, the Dragon Flight had been holing up in their Hold and waiting out the plague until there was a cure. And staying away from the insanity that could infect them into undead was a good idea. They had already suffered under the hands of the Cult of the Damned, there was no way they wanted to play around with this shit.

Carl naturally sent small robot probes to grab samples of the plague grain so they could manufacture a cure for themselves, so that his Flight wouldn't be relying on the Argent Healers to figure out a cure. Since they would be fighting all manner of undead in Northrend in the near future, having an immunity to their plagues was vital.

A short time after the plague grains appeared, roaches got into the crates and turned into plague roaches. Apparently the roaches lost their damn minds and went crazy running around the docks. Carl watched over the satellite feed as the player characters seemed to be having a grand old time smashing the plague roaches, which just spread the plague further.

While the plague and the need to gain a cure was distracting many of the two Faction's forces, the Scourge started invading various zones around the two continents of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, trying to gain footholds and further destroy the two faction's ability to make war.

Necrotic Shards would appear around the continents. The Shards were floating corrupted crystals imbued with necrotic magical energies. Their purpose was to summon in groups of undead armies. If no one destroyed them for a long enough time, they were able to summon in Elite troops that would be even harder to displace after they gained a foothold.

In this time the Argent Crusade had quests available to urge and reward the adventurer players to fight against the Scourge invasion. There were various rewards items offered to entice them to work hard. New sets of armor for level 70s were introduced. Wearing multiple pieces of the new sets gave set bonuses to damage against undead, making the hunting of the Scourge an easier prospect.

A few days later giant floating citadels appeared over Stormwind and Orgrimmar. The massive floating pyramids had thick chains running from each corner down to attach to some kind of corrupted crystal that spewed out the plague gas.

Carl shook his head and sent a sample of the cure to be delivered to the overworked Argent Healers in the capital cities shortly after it was finished, with instructions on how to make it. He knew they would eventually discover a cure on their own, but he didn't want to continue watching the damned undead spread their diseases and shit.

Anything to derail those damned cultist's plans was great in his mind.

Two weeks later the Scourge sent in their next attack at the two faction's capitals. Carl smirked a bit in satisfaction, since they had obviously hoped to soften up their targets a lot more with the plague. It didn't work out the way the Scourge wanted because he had sent the cure along to the two factions almost as soon as he had it.

As a result of the two faction's forces not being too depleted, they were able to repel the invasion of Frost Wyrms and Patchwork Horrors that invaded.

The Frost Wyrms were skeletal undead dragons that shot out beams of ice, freezing the targets and damaging them greatly. The Patchwork Horrors were enormously rotund undead Frankensteen monsters. They had two legs and at least two arms, and were large messes of undead flesh sewed together that could soak up damage, used to assault the guard's position and tank damage while other undead ran around the city guards to attack from the sides and rear.

Carl took his Flight and helped the defense of the Stormwind Harbors. It was immensely satisfying for all of his people to kill the undead. Seeing the twisted abominations of Dragons was a particular insult to his people, which they took satisfaction in destroying.

After the Scourge assault was repelled, the Alliance and Horde factions organized their expeditions to Northrend, to take the fight to the Lich King. If they didn't do so, they would be continually assaulted by wave after wave of undead.

Finally at the end of the first five years, the World's concealment and blockage of Northrend was lifted. Carl's satellites could now go to the new continent and start gathering data.

At the same time, the World's restrictions on their level disappeared. They could once more level up.

Carl immediately had his Flight enter time compression and begin practicing his newly made Magical Leveling Technique. The results were amazing. Within the first day inside time compression, they were already level 71. It was definitely faster than the traditional way of killing monsters and completing quests.

And it was a huge advantage over everyone else.

After exiting the time compression that they used to level up quickly to level 80, Carl noticed an unusual discrepancy. Many of the higher level people of The Alliance were already level 80 or had the Skull indicating they were considered to be a boss level.

While he thought it was a bit unfair that the World played favorites so much, it was just one of those things that seemed to be a result of the game like nature of the World of Warcraft. The adventurer players and Carl and his Dragon Flight had to struggle for their levels and power, while the people that the world loved got instant level ups to maximum.

Well, it didn't really affect him too much ever since he worked out his magical leveling technique.

He and his people paid the trainers to learn all the new spells available and spent some time practicing them while they waited for the boats to be ready to take them to Northrend.

It only took a few days for the fleet to be assembled. Carl and his Dragon Flight in Night Elf form was on the first ships to sail from Stormwind Harbor to Borean Tundra. The peninsula on the south west part of Northrend was where the Alliance set up. Valiance Keep was on the south east shores.

Arriving at the base, Carl could feel the chill in the air. It felt pretty good to him, due to the Water Seed he had from the ATG world that let him control water and ice.

Normally Carl would have joined the rush of adventurer players as they hurried to complete quests and kill mobs, struggling to level up. But since he and his Flight had already leveled to 80 in a cheat like manner, they were able to bypass the crowd.

Due to the frozen air of Northrend, anyone who wanted to fly had to purchase a specific skill called Cold Weather Flying that would allow their mounts to soar the frozen skies of the north.

So his Flight simply purchased the skill, mounted their Flying Mounts, and flew away from Valliance Keep, leaving all the adventurer players looking on in envy.

Carl knew where Dalaran was, so they soon arrived at the floating city. The city looked quite empty to him, without mobs of players running around the place. Carl smiled in satisfaction.

His people spread out and began interacting with the inhabitants of Dalaran. They trained at the Profession Trainers, learning the new recipes they had available. They grabbed various quests and generally made themselves at home.

Carl himself grabbed the new portal location and did the same thing his Flight members were, learning all he could.

They soon began spreading around the continent of Northrend, completing quests with the various factions to earn reputation and gain access to their new crafting recipes and goods. They ran the new dungeon instances, gathering gear to deconstruct, and generally owning the land.

Even when the adventurer players finally caught up in level and showed up in Dalaran, it didn't disrupt his Flight's activities.

After a couple weeks, the word came down from the Faction's leadership that Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum, and the Vault of Archavon raid instances had opened.

There was only one boss in the Vault, Archavon the Stone Watcher. And the Obsidian Sanctum only had a Black Dragon named Sartharion as a boss. His Flight loved the Obsidian Sanctum because they could turn into their Silver Dragon and Dragonspawn forms and kick some Black Dragon Flight butt. It felt damned good.

On the other hand, his Dragon Flight had a love-hate relationship with Naxxramas.

They loved tearing through Naxxramas destroying and killing everything because it was home of Kel'Thuzzad, the leader of the Cult of the Damned. It was immensely satisfying to destroy the undead bastard regularly.

But they hated that the nature of the raid instance made it so they couldn't permanently kill him. It felt so unfair that the World was keeping him alive when so many of their Dragon Flight had died in the past.

Carl didn't know what to say at first. He still somewhat had the mindset that it was just a game. But seeing his people's reactions and feelings on the matter changed his mind.

He solemnly promised them that if he ever got powerful enough through the Jump Chain, they would all come back to this world and he would tear up the mandate of the World's Magic so that they could permanently end Kel'Thuzzad so he could never rear his ugly head again.

With that promise Carl made, it seemed to ease their minds quite a bit.

* * *

[AN: Because of Carl's perk to kill things dead and they remain dead that he got from the Dinosaur Gauntlet, the World's Magic counteracted him by time travel teleporting the bosses from different times in to replace the killed ones. Say the world had one second to play with, but could split that second up into 1000 parts. For every second that the boss was alive, the world could replace the boss Carl killed 1000 times. So, he does permanently kill that Kel'Thuzzad. Never coming back. But there are so many of them chilling in the fractions of time in the past that the world will never run out of them to make use of…

I know, it's a cheap cop-out. Blame Blizzard, not me.]

* * *

After some time of following the routine of running daily Heroic Dungeons, doing daily quests, running weekly raid instances, and fighting in the Arena and Battlegrounds, Carl had an idea.

He knew there was some magic that identified him as a member of The Alliance, since that was the faction he first joined. He wasn't quite satisfied with just one half of the WoW experience.

He had already gone through all the quests and activities on the Alliance side in Azeroth (what was known as Vanilla WoW), The Outlands, and Northrend, to include all the Seasonal events. So why shouldn't he isolate that little bit of magic that identified him as a part of the Alliance and jigger with it so he could do all the quests and fun bits available to the Horde in this world?

Once he had the idea, he couldn't help himself and began working on it. In order to make sure he had enough time in the remaining four or so years in world, he entered time compression to figure it out. It didn't even take a month to figure out the identifying magic, which seemed to be tied to the Faction's Reputation function.

A little bit of jiggery pokery, a usage of his Metamorphmagus ability, and he was now a proud Blood Elf, a member of The Horde.

From then on in their spare time Carl and his Flight members would go through all the quest and events on the Horde side. It satisfied his inner completionist and made his people happy, since certain recipes and items were only available to one Faction or the other.

About 15 months after Northrend opened up, the new raid instances of The Eye of Eternity and Ulduar was available, and a new boss appeared in the Vault of Archavon raid instance, Emalon the Storm Watcher.

When the Ulduar raid instance first showed up Carl was a little concerned because he had chosen Helya as one of his enemies that was hunting him. She was originally a Titan-forged Watcher and Sorceress, but was forcefully turned into the first of the undead spectral Val'kyrs.

So he kept expecting her to show up in some capacity in Ulduar or around Northrend, since there were plenty of Val'kyr running around. But it seems she was in hiding somewhere, biding her time.

Either that or she was imprisoned somewhere, biding her time.

Or she didn't even know where Carl was because he never showed his Silver Dragon face outside of instances.

Whatever the case may be, she never showed up. Carl somewhat figured that his policy for his Dragon Flight to conceal their true nature as the Silver Dragon Flight was what kept his enemies from truly knowing they were around.

And his magical defenses made it incredibly hard to once more find their Dragon Hold.

Once they had left this world behind Carl would ease up on the restrictions and allow them to be a bit more open once more. He wasn't just being paranoid; his Drawback enemies really were out to get him. So they continued to practice extreme caution.

While the Ulduar raid instance had many different bosses, the Eye of Eternity only had a single boss. Malygos was of the Blue Dragon Flight. As might be expected by now, his Dragon Flight all turned into their draconic forms and tore him apart.

Carl's Flight had a nice barbecue afterwards, since there was no taboo about eating the flesh of a member of a different Flight. It turned into a weekly party for them all. Very team building.

By the time the new raid instances of Onyxia's Lair and the Trial of the Crusader came out when it had been 30 months since Northrend opened up, Carl had caught up with all the Horde specific quests and activities. He felt much better about having finished all those quests and gotten various titles and achievements, and pets and mounts.

So he was fully prepared to enjoy the Argent Tournament that was located in the northern part of the Icecrown zone. The Trial of the Champion was the five man dungeon instance where they fought against three sets of bosses in a tournament arena.

The Trial of the Crusader was the 10 and 25 man raid instance that was basically the same arena bouts, only with a few more bosses. And the last boss was actually a giant undead bug deep underground under the arena.

There was one more boss added to the Vault raid instance, Koralon the Flame Watcher. The bosses of the Vault were all quite nice to be an easy and quick way to gain some enchanting mats each week. The members of the Flight were all suitably thankful to them.

Onyxia was a Black Dragon Flight member that was located in the Dustwallow Marsh of Kalimdor. She really didn't have much of anything to do with Northrend or the Lich King, which is why she was so far from the normal location of the raid instances.

In the original game they had revamped her raid to give more content to the players and celebrate some anniversary or other. And since this world mirrored the original content, she grew up from level 60 to 80 and gained some upgraded loot for the taking.

And finally when Carl had 18 weeks left to go in the World of Warcraft, Toravon the loot vendor, er…Ice Watcher was added to the Vault, and the final two raid instances opened up.

The first raid instance was The Ruby Sanctum. It was located under the Wrymrest Temple in the Dragonblight zone, next to the Obsidian Sanctum. The single boss was a Twilight Dragon Flight member by the name of Halion. He was delicious.

And the final raid instance was what the whole expansion had been named for and building up to. The raid where the Lich King could be found and killed. Icecrown Citadel was located in the southern most part of the Icecrown zone.

By now one could assume that with how overpowered the Silver Dragon Flight were, what with their ridiculous crafting skills, that the Lich King wasn't that hard to kill.

And they would be right to assume that. 20+ raid bosses versus 1 raid boss wasn't much of a challenge.

* * *

Over the past month Carl and his Dragon Flight had been busy preparing for their exit from the world. They knew the date it would happen, but they didn't know how it would happen.

The rumblings deep within the earth that signified Deathwing's escape from the elemental plane prison he had been kept in had already started.

The elementals all around Azeroth had begun to go crazy, attacking anything around them.

The final month passed in a state of ramping up chaos leading up to the Cataclysm.

Carl was sitting among his Flight members in their banquet hall, having a final feast together before it was time to leave the world. A sea of blue was shown on the large screen on one of the walls. The satellite feed was overlooking the area that would become The Maelstrom once Deathwing made his escape.

Everyone paused in their feasting and talking as they saw the waters on the screen starting to bubble and churn crazily. Something deep underwater was causing a huge disturbance.

A huge spout of water burst upwards hundreds of feet in the air as an enormous Black Dragon burst up out of the water. Even through the screen and without sound they could feel his anger, madness, and malevolence as he flew out of sight of the satellite feed.

"Well, it looks like Deathwing is not happy." Carl quipped before his vision grew dark and he left the World…of Warcraft.


	86. The Warehouse 9

Carl yawned as he got up from his bed in his house in the Warehouse between worlds. He was a little disappointed he didn't get to see anymore of the Cataclysm that Deathwing had caused.

While on the one hand getting entertainment from an event that would likely cause widespread death and destruction wasn't exactly…good. On the other hand, he wasn't really celebrating the deaths. He just wanted to enjoy the spectacle of destruction.

He himself was capable of similar destruction, if not worse. But he hadn't ever let loose like Deathwing did. Maybe he would find himself a nice asteroid field one of these days and see what he could do?

Carl moseyed over to the terminal Spere 037 had left behind for his cheats. Looking through the options and the new tab for his Dragon alt-form, he made sure to add the perks he got from the last world into his base body and his two alt-forms.

He now had three different bodies, his Human, T-Rex, and Silver Dragon bodies. As usual when he finalized his selections, he passed out.

After waking up, Carl did his usual shower and breakfast routine. This morning he felt like having a different breakfast from usual and prepared a traditional Japanese breakfast. Rice, miso soup, grilled salmon, a small salad, tsukemono (pickles), and natto (fermented soybeans).

It wasn't as heavy on the stomach as say a traditional English breakfast. But he enjoyed the meal, and promptly ruined the mood of the whole meal by having a frosty mug of Root Bear instead of a cup of green tea or anything more appropriate.

With a mug in hand and in his Night Elf form, he then began wandering around his warehouse. It didn't take too long before he found a new door in the side of his Warehouse wall, near the ones that led to his Dinosaur lands, that opened up on the Dragon Hold of his Silver Dragon Flight.

Carl wandered into the Dragon Hold and noticed that there was no one wandering about. Confused at the sight, he made his way over to where they had been holding the banquet party just before he left the world of Azeroth.

Opening the door, Carl saw all the members of his Silver Dragon Flight inside where they had previously been. But they were frozen in place, unmoving.

Giving a great sigh in both relief and disappointment, Carl closed the door behind him.

"Apparently they are 'followers' not 'companions', so they don't get to remain unfrozen in time between worlds." Carl guessed as he made his way back to the Warehouse. He had been hoping that he could interact with them between worlds, but it looked like it was not to be just yet.

The thing that made it a bit difficult for Carl was that he knew he could get some companionship at any moment he wanted. All he had to do was spend some of the Warehouse CP to buy a couple of those stasis pods and put Fiona and Rhona in them, and he would immediately have some companionship.

The thing that always stopped him was that he looked at how much CP he would need to visit each of the past worlds to gather his girls.

Each stasis pod cost 20 cp. Each return trip to a world cost 20 cp. And he only got 10 cp every world. Right now he had 120 cp. After the fifteenth world, he would have 140 cp. Which meant he would have enough to visit 7 worlds.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Pokemon, History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, Harry Potter, Against the Gods, Stargate SG1, and Game of Thrones.

Seven worlds that he had to go back to in order to pick up his girls, friends, and family. He couldn't afford to spend cp on a stasis pod now if he wanted to make it back to each of those worlds immediately after the 15th jump.

Since he couldn't pass the time chilling with the members of his Flight, he decided to go play some games. Entering his house, he flopped down on the couch and began looking through his stockpile of games for something to play to waste some time.

Looking at some of the games reminded him of the Harry Potter world where he had first learned how to merge technology and magic. He, Fleur, Hermione, and Luna had spent so many hours together working on runic schemes to allow electronics to work in magic rich environments.

Thinking back on those days, he smiled in reminiscence. Those girls were all brilliant, and they would have loved exploring the Stargate's world's tech along with him. At least in the future he could watch as they learned the science, technology, and magic.

Carl chuckled aloud as he remembered one particular summer morning shortly after they graduated.

* * *

Carl peeked his head into the den of the house he and his girls lived in. Hermione was sitting at her desk, head bent over a book as she scribbled notes.

He smiled to see her so focused on her work. The way she occasionally blew her hair out of her face was especially amusing and endearing to him, since it was such an intrinsic part of her personality.

"Hey, Hermione." He called out to her from the door.

"Hmm?"

"Fleur, Luna, and I are going to the beach. You coming?"

"Hmm, that's nice. Have fun." She absentmindedly said.

"You coming, then?" Carl asked again.

"Sure. Sounds good." Hermione didn't even look up from the book. Carl was getting the impression that she was in her study zone.

"You know we're being invaded by life size M&Ms. They demand tribute. We thought we'd bake a cake to give to them. Any thoughts?" Carl was struggling to keep himself from laughing. The snickers behind him by the two blondes wasn't helping him.

"Sounds about right, go with that." Hermione absentmindedly answered as she continued writing.

"Your parents called. They said they had decided to sell you to me as a Harem girl. You're only allowed to dress in sheer silks and slippers from now on." Carl added on.

"I'm sure they mean well."

"Hermione, if you don't put down the book in 10 seconds, you're going to spend the day with blonde hair to match Fleur and Luna, and we'll dress you in the skimpiest bikini we can conjure up when we go to the beach."

"Hmm, okay, Carl."

The full out laughter of Luna and Fleur could not be contained as Carl began his countdown. When he reached three Luna and Fleur brushed past him into the den. They were already in their bikinis, sarongs, and flip flops, ready for the beach. They were carrying what looked like dental floss in their hands with evil smirks.

A moment later, Hermione was forcefully pulled away from her precious books and changed in moments into the skimpiest bikini Carl had ever seen. Apparently the two blondes had taken Carl's joke to heart and were going to enforce it for the day.

"Guys, come on! This isn't funny!" Hermione complained while covering certain parts with her hands and blushing all the way down her neck. "There's no way I'm going out in public like this!"

"Oh, but you are! You agreed to it." Luna disagreed while hugging one of Hermione's arms.

"Yes, you did." Fleur added, holding the other. "But don't worry, there's a spell on your bikini that makes anyone who is not us ignore what you are barely wearing. They won't see how little your scrumptious outfit covers. But we…we get to enjoy the delicious sight to our heart's content."

Hermione blushed even more if that were possible.

"Carl!" Hermione tried to appeal to him to save her from the embarrassment.

"Sorry, Hermione. My hands are tied, you did agree to it, after all." His gaze raked down her 'outfit'. "Can't say that I'm too disappointed though. I agree with Fleur, the sight is positively mouthwatering."

Luna then began whispering in Hermione's ears something that caused her to begin to flush in excitement instead of embarrassment. They all knew of his amazing hearing, so the whispering was done behind a silencing charm so Carl couldn't hear. But the speculative and plotting gaze of the three girls somehow got his blood pumping in anticipation of an enjoyable morning.

And boy was he right. The use of certain spells made sure they could flirt and tease each other in the most scandalous ways in public and no one but the four of them could see what was going on.

It was a most memorable, exciting, day.

And silencing charms were amazing.

* * *

Carl smiled in reminiscence. That had been a good day. He played some random games for a few hours, watched a movie or two, and finally decided that there was no reason for him to wait in between worlds anymore.

In the beginning of the Jump Chain, before he had access to Occlumency, he had to spend the time readjusting his mindset and coming to terms with the worlds and people he had left behind.

But now that he was regularly organizing his mind, it was a lot easier to adjust his emotions and mindset between worlds and jump into a new one. So he didn't feel the need to spend so much downtime between worlds adjusting his mind in preparation for the next world.

He turned off the entertainment center in his living room and moseyed on out to the terminal to initiate an entry into the next world.

**Generic Naruto Fanfiction**

**Welcome to the Elemental Nations! This is a world of Ninja, a world of fighting and war, of intense combat and hidden darkness. A world of…giant harems? Gods and Demons, and ninjas acting less like folklore heroes and more like pop-culture ninjas?**

**It's a strange world, this one. It is the world of Naruto fanfics. Yes, all of them! Well, not really, but it can be! Exiles and Hokages, Sharingan bearers and Akatsuki members, all versions of Naruto exist somewhere out there in the giant multiverse that is Naruto Fanfiction, and you're going to one of them!**

**You may pickwill go to a random Naruto fanfiction in which you are inserted upon taking this jump, within a couple of limits. Firstly, the story must be set in the Naruto world. Fusions are fine, characters tossed into other worlds are not, unless it's other universe characters coming to Naruto.**

**Secondly, the fanfiction mustwill not have a jump of its own.**

**Everything else goes!**

**Alternatively, if you lose the lottery, you will go to a more "Generic" world, one where a random boring assortment of common tropes from Naruto fanfiction plays out.**

**Either way, you'll probably need these 1000 cp.**

"Well, that's a crock of shit." Carl snorted at seeing he wouldn't get to pick the specifics of the world. He looked around suspiciously for a moment. "Jump-chan, are you there?" There had to be someone there messing with him. But if they didn't come out, what could he do?

He could do nothing, that's what.

After nothing happened and no powerful being came out to talk, he returned his gaze once more to look over the intro in disgust. There were hundreds of thousands of Naruto fanfiction out there. That meant this world could be anything.

In the infinite worlds of Naruto fanfictions, anything could happen. Naruto himself could be anything from a genius not seen since the Age of Legends to the dumbest block of wood that can barely do shadow clones. Hell, even the ability to do shadow clones isn't guaranteed. Naruto might not even be a ninja, or he might not even be a dude, he might be a she. Hell, it might not even be Naruto, it could be someone from another world inhabiting Naruto's body. Or Sakura had her body taken over, or who knows what else.

Carl sighed in disappointment at the lack of solid intel about this world. He wasn't even guaranteed that the Naruto he got would have the cheerful can-do attitude of the original that made the story so fun. He might be as broody as an Uchiha, or more murderous than Gaara was before he met Naruto.

"There's just no telling what is going to happen in this world." Carl was still frowning before a thought occurred to him. He perked up a bit. "Yeah, there's no telling! That means I don't have to care one bit! If I find I don't like the people in whichever Naruto world I end up in, I can just screw off for the next 10 years and not care about their angst and problems! I won't have to feel obligated to do anything to help them just because I like the original characters in the Naruto comics!"

Carl paused for a moment, head cocked in thought.

"Well, except for Sasuke "Hn" Uchiha. I hate that guy." Carl paraphrased a Mel Brooks movie while picturing Sasuke in medieval clothing. "No way am I helping him!"

**Time and Place**

**By default you're inserted at the start of whatever fanfic you choose to enter with this jump. However, if that's not what you want, you may freely choose the location and time period of your insertion.**

"Hmm. Kinda hard to pick a perfect point when you don't know what fanfiction story you'll get." Carl scratched his chin in thought. "On the off chance that I get a cast of characters that I like and want to interact with, I should make it early enough to get to know them. When not in wartime the kids generally enter the ninja academy when they are eight and finish up when they are twelve. So that would give me four years to get to know them. And I would then be leaving the world when I'm 18. Not bad."

"And if I find I like them, I can help them train so they aren't such green noobs that they'll die on their first C rank mission." Carl nodded in affirmation at his choice, and entered the information to go into the world when Naruto's batch of people were eight.

**Age and Gender**

**Your age is set to 1d8+10, and your gender remains the same as it was before this jump. Or you may freely pick either, if you so wish. Whatever, man.**

Carl burst out laughing. It sounded like the Jump-chan was smoking something when they made this part, so laid back that they didn't care. It was all good, dude. He selected age eight and to remain male.

**Origins**

**Drop-in: You arrive as you are. No new memories, nothing. If you want you can have a village ID card and/or hitai-ate (headband with a metal plate and your village's symbol on it) for your starting village and an unremarkable existence on paper, but that's it.**

**Prodigy: You're a prodigy! A genius, like Hatake Kakashi or Uchiha Itachi. You could graduate from the academy early, or even might have graduated already!**

**Exile: Ooh, something went wrong. Konoha (could be another village, but let's be serious here, it's probably Konoha) has exiled you from the village, and declared you _persona non grata_. How much sense this makes is entirely relative and dependant on the fanfiction in question, but y'know. That's how it is.**

**Demon: Maybe the world of Naruto isn't as simple as one would like it to be. Maybe there are older, greater things than humanity running around. You're associated with the more mythological aspects of Naruto fanfictions, gods and demons, spirits and prayers, and the rest.**

"I'll most likely pick either Drop-in or Prodigy, just because that would let me stay in the academy like I was planning. Maybe Exile, if I got exiled from somewhere else and ended up in Konoha? Demon is right out, unless the discounted perks that origin gives are fantasmagorical enough to make me change my plans. Well, I'll pick my perks first and then decide based on discounts."

**Chakra Coils (Free): The basic ability to use chakra, as represented by "chakra coils" that are a nebulous part of your body and/or soul now. You have top-quality chakra coils which would place you in the top 5% in this world in terms of both capacity and control.**

**After this jump your chakra system and body continue to function just as they do in this world, retaining any improvements or additions made along the way. You may also, if you choose to, induce the development of chakra coils in other people simply by pushing some of your chakra into them.**

Carl smiled in excitement at the prospect of getting Chakra Coils. From the explanation of Chakra in the original show, Chakra was the result of combining Mental Energy and Physical Energy.

He's not an expert in Chakra yet, but it sounds like those Chakra Coils will be some kind of organ or mental pathways or something that will combine his Magic (mental energy) with his Ki (physical energy). The research possibilities about merging two different energies excited him and he couldn't wait to get some good readings on his body and other ninja's bodies.

He'll even be able give all his girls Chakra Coils when he picks them up. He added the perk to his shopping cart.

**Academy Training (Free): You already have all the basic training necessary to start on your career as a ninja. Your physical stats and resilience are what civilians would call 'peak human' and you can mold chakra, use kunai and shuriken, do the academy three jutsu (henge, kawarimi, and bunshin), and have learned a basic taijutsu style. You've even studied ahead a little and learned tree climbing, chakra-boosted jumping, and several D-rank techniques.**

Carl added the perk to his list. While he was planning on going through all four boring years of the academy, already having the basics down would allow him to swiftly move to other, more interesting subjects, immediately.

He knew some basic ideas about the three academy jutsu that he would gain knowledge of. The henge was a technique that allowed the ninja to look like someone or something else, thus fooling enemies. In some of the Naruto fanfictions the henge was described as an illusion technique, while Naruto (for whatever reason given) used an actual physical transformation. In other fictions the henge was described as an actual transformation, and everyone used it like that.

Whichever version was the case for the particular Naruto world he'll go to, he'll find out soon enough.

The kawarimi switches out the user for a nearby object of some kind, which gets them to safety from enemy attack. The ninja of Konoha almost always use the kawarimi with a log, which has led to some fanfictions having an almost cult like religion among the Konoha ninja as they worship The Log that saves their bacon. In some of the fics the logs aren't even present until they use the technique, which summons Incarnations of The Log to protect those ninja who are loyal to the everlasting protection of The Log. Amen.

Carl chuckled at the absurdity of it all. But who knows, he might end up in one of those worlds.

And the bunshin was a technique which creates an insubstantial clone of the user that can be used to confuse the enemy as to just where they are, allowing them to get the jump on them in combat.

Thinking about the bunshin and comparing it to the shadow clone technique, Carl was more inclined to think that the henge was an illusion technique.

The shadow clone technique, which was Naruto's signature jutsu, creates a solid copy of the user which distributes the chakra of the original evenly between the clones and the user. At least that's how it was usually explained; it may vary between different fictions. When dispelled in one or two hits, the chakra given to the clone returns to the original along with the memories that the clone experienced.

It was also a technique that can kill someone who didn't have enough chakra to perform the technique, since it separates out their chakra to different clone bodies. If they are left with too little chakra in their body when the cost of the technique comes due, they die.

Carl was inclined to think that if it takes so much chakra to create a solid copy of the ninja that it might kill them, then there was a great likelihood that actual physical changes to the body cost too much chakra to be an E-rank technique like the henge.

Another good argument was the example of the Akimichi clan in the Naruto world. The Akimichi were known for their large physiques, their large appetites, and more importantly their body expansion jutsu, which causes them to actually physically grow parts or all of their body to gargantuan size. The cost of those techniques was high in energy requirements, which is why they were always eating.

And remember, the Akimichi were noted for their large appetites among ninja, who as a group are very physically active people who would definitely require plenty of food to remain strong and active. If their techniques cause them to be noted for their huge appetites, and their body transformation techniques are high enough rank to warrant an actual clan to form around it and be noted for their use in battle, then it is highly likely that a little E-rank technique like the henge isn't an actual transformation, but a simple illusion, simply based on the chakra and energy costs of such techniques.

Carl shook his head to clear it from miscellaneous thoughts and refocus on the jump document. Whatever he thought about the ninja techniques here and now, it could all be swept away by the peculiarities of the world he was going to. He needed to keep an open mind so he didn't get blindsided!

**Elemental Affinity (Free/100 cp): Not much to see here. You have an extremely strong elemental affinity in one of the five primary elements of this world, those being Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, and Lightning. The first purchase of this perk is free, second and onwards cost 100 cp, though you must purchase a different primary element each time.**

"Perfect! A free purchase of Earth and now I've got them all. My wind affinity may not be as high as my Fire, Water, and Lightning, but it's there!" Carl clenched a fist in victory.

He didn't know how the darkness/shadow affinity he had would play out in this world. Does the Nara clan have a shadow affinity that allows them to control their shadows and create ninja techniques from it? Carl shrugged and moved on. There was no real point in speculating too much right now except to entertain himself.

**Perfect Control (300 cp): Okay, whoa. This is quite nifty! Your chakra control is now utterly, absolutely perfect, which means that no matter how much of it you use and how many different manipulations you do at a time, you never waste so much as an iota of it, retaining absolute pinpoint control at all times.**

**And chakra isn't the only thing you can control so finely, either. Welcome to the world of perfect muscle control and coordination. You have utterly inhuman mastery over each and everything in you, your energies and your body, so strong that it never frays, let alone breaks, no matter what. You can manipulate chakra with your mind alone, and thus perform any Jutsu you know without the need of hand seals at all.**

**In future jumps your control over your bodies expands to cover any other bodies you may acquire, and you can control any and all powers and abilities you acquire just as finely as your chakra.**

Carl added it to the list. While he was beyond excellent in the many martial arts and magics he had trained in, gaining perfect control would bring him up to the next level, no doubt making him that much more deadly.

**Unlimiter (400 cp): Your potential knows no bounds. Even with everything that chakra can do, other ninjas eventually reach a limit on how strong or fast or agile they can be, how much chakra they can store or channel, etc.**

**But not you. Never you.**

**You have the capacity for limitless growth inside of you, breaking all of the natural limits on the human body, mind, or soul. With enough training you could eventually grow to equal the gods, and then to surpass them. Furthermore, your potential stands unlimited in another way as well.**

**Normally, gaining a skill or ability changes people. Muscles develop along a certain way, the nature of their chakra changes, and a thousand and one other things. The point is that this tends to reduce the extent to which they can learn other things. With you…that just doesn't happen.**

**No matter what you learn and what you train in, your ability to master other skills remains completely unaffected. It doesn't even matter if it's somehow a requirement for you to toss aside other arts to progress in one, you can ignore that and go right ahead all the same. This applies to any skills you have already acquired as well. Time, atrophy, curses, nothing short of jump-fiat can make you lose an iota of your ability, come hell or high water.**

**Even deliberate attempts to cripple your capacity will always fail short of actual destruction of the relevant body parts. In case the last does happen, you can be assured that while this does nothing to speed it up, you _will_ heal from such damage. Finally, you yourself are also protected from the effects of your arts, such that even the most dangerous techniques or abilities you ever use can only do temporary damage at worst, even if said damage is an intrinsic part of their function.**

Carl couldn't add **Unlimiter** to his basket fast enough. While he had gotten similar benefits from the **Dragon God's Bloodline** in the ATG jump, that bloodline had only made it so that any powers he possesses will continue getting stronger as he grows older, with no upper limits except his lifespan. The **Dragon God's Bloodline** said nothing about his physical, soul, or mental growth potential like the **Unlimiter** did.

And while he was doubtful that the perks he got from the Jump Chain would help him grow stronger than the creator of the Jump Chain, maybe he could one day get just as strong and gain control over his jump?

Carl shrugged. That was too far in the future and too iffy. But for now, he had tasty perks to purchase. Looking down at the next perk, he paused in thought for only a short time before adding it to the basket.

**Kekkei-Genkai (400 cp): Ah, some of the best stuff in Naruto. You have a Kekkei-Genkai, a Bloodline Limit of your own, which lets you do things few others can ever match!**

**You receive 1000 bp (bloodline points) to spend in the Kekkei-Genkai section. In addition, this purchase gives you control over your bloodlines, specifically the part about it passing on to others. You can pick and choose if you want your children to inherit your bloodline(s), to exact and intricate details.**

**Finally, should you so wish, your bloodline, not to mention any and all other powers and abilities you may have that can pass on thus, will always, _always_** **breed true, no matter how many generations pass or how much the blood is diluted. You can also choose to pass on a weaker copy of this perk to your children, and they to theirs.**

**This perk may only be bought once.**

Carl nodded to himself that it was the right choice to purchase this perk. Not only was he getting 1000 bp for spending 400 cp to get a genetic power, but now his future children didn't have to worry about marrying their siblings to keep their bloodline strong, like what had happened to the Demon Royal Family in the ATG world. If Caiyi's family had this one perk a lot of her family's issues could have been avoided, he was sure.

At the very least they wouldn't have been relegated to only having two kids that married each other over and over again. Or had their lineage broken because one of them was assassinated by ambitious traitors.

Not that he was advocating for his kids to marry each other. The idea was very icky to him. But…he was in a weird fantasy like jump chain, traveling through multiple realities. Who knew what kind of situation he would inevitably find himself mired in. Right, moving on.

**True Name (500 cp): Whoa. Ookay, this is some deep stuff, man. Something happened. Maybe it was a great quest, some memories from another life, maybe you glimpsed at something mankind was not supposed to see. However it happened, you have discovered your True Name.**

**This is the truth of who you are, all of it, the summation of every "you" that ever was, could have been, will be, or might be. And knowing it grants you quite a bit of power over yourself.**

**Firstly, this means that it's no longer possible to drive you mad or corrupt you, even by things which would normally find doing so a trivial effort. You _know_ yourself. No matter what actions you might perform, what you might witness or be exposed to, your True Name remains the core and truth of you and all else just slides off, leaving you unmarred. The same effect also shields your soul from any and all attacks whether it be mundane or magical, whether the perpetrator is some petty torturer or a celestial spirit. Your soul, sense of self, and willpower are absolute, boundless and inviolable, come what may. Neither can your True Name be used against you, or knowledge of it pass on to others save by your own will and desire.**

**Beyond this, truly knowing yourself places your heart at ease and lets you draw out more of it from within you. Simply by meditating upon your True Name you find that your soul grows ever-so-stronger, growing richer for the experience, and immensely benefitting your comprehension of all things related to your mind, soul, or spirit.**

**Finally, your enlightenment will avoid the traps of stasis or hubris; from now on your soul will develop only for the better and never for the worse as you walk the road towards the better you, the you that you really wish to be. No more self-deception, no more blind alleys.**

Carl sat down to meditate a bit when he read the entry on **True Name**. Then he read it again. It was so…deep. He added it to the cart. He felt like the purchase was more than worth the cost.

If he had come to this world first and all he could afford was the **Unlimiter **and **True Name** perks alone, he would have snatched those two up. Even more than bloodlines and fancy jutsu that everyone went crazy over, the unlimited potential and ability to know and protect his very self was priceless. A mere 900 cp for those kinds of benefits? Definitely!

He had purchased quite a few perks just from the general section, and he didn't regret it at all. He had actually laughed out loud when he saw one perk in particular, but he wasn't going to pick it. The **Clan Restoration Act **for 200 cp would give him the legal right to having multiple spouses and make the whole thing work. But he already picked up one of those perks from the ATG world, so he didn't need this one.

Not to mention the fact that the **Clan Restoration Act** heavily implied that he would be having kids to restore his clan. And he wasn't going to be going there just yet.

Looking at the last of the Generic Perks, he shook his head. He certainly wasn't going to pick to be a **Jinchuriki** and have a demon in a seal in his stomach.

Moving on to the next section, Carl decided that he would go ahead and pick the first perk in the **Drop-in** section.

**Shinobi (100 cp): What with all the screaming jutsu names and giant fireballs and kaiju summoning, its like these people have entirely forgotten that ninja are supposed to be stealthy. Well, good thing you're here to remind them.**

**You are a true Ninja, a true 'Old School' shinobi. You have ungodly dexterity, patience, and sheer skill at sneaking. You could sneak through a village full of ninja at high alert while wearing bright orange, and your skills at lockpicking, picking pockets, stealing, sneak attacks, and the like, trades which demand stealth like this, are just as ridiculous.**

**In addition, you no longer need to cry out any of your jutsu's names, being able to just execute any and all of your techniques without even uttering a word. You're also a dab hand at using more 'traditional' ninja methods of dealing with people, such as poison use and various practical assassination techniques that don't require engulfing your hand in lighting and running in a straight line at someone.**

**Finally, while you do not gain any supernatural abilities related to stealth, you can maintain any abilities you do have in just about any condition, be it drunk, injured, or unconscious.**

Carl was already pretty confident in his stealth skills, especially after spending the last decade plus as a rogue in the World of Warcraft. But a 100 cp perk that would _ensure_ he wasn't screaming his jutsu out like a retard in this world? Yes please! It was one of the things of the original cartoon that annoyed him greatly, having the characters yell out their moves.

Carl passed over the other perks in the **Drop-in** section. The **Ninja Therapist **perk didn't interest him greatly since he had the Decency Inducing perk from the ATG world. He also didn't think he needed the **Innovator** perk by this point to be able to be innovative with his abilities.

And having the broken luck from the **Plot no Jutsu** perk sounded like fun, but wasn't a high priority for him. Something as variable as luck didn't interest him, because like the perk said if he got too used to relying on the luck, the universe would smack him down.

After looking over the perks available from the **Prodigy **origin, Carl made up his mind that it would be his origins. He wanted the discounts on the 400 cp and 600 cp perks. And he would go ahead and pick up the 100 cp one, since it was free. It was a nice bonus, even though he already had a good role play perk from the SAO world.

**Masked (0 cp): A proper ninja does not reveal themselves until it's too late for the enemy to do anything about it. Not their true power, and certainly not whatever they're feeling.**

**You are now a master role-player and infiltrator, capable of putting on a flawless act that could fool anyone short of the most discerning and perceptive people alive, and often even them. You'll never even hint at possessing any ability or knowledge you couldn't reasonably be expected to have. Neither will you ever express a visible emotion that you don't want to. And unlike many long-term infiltrators you will never 'lose yourself' in a role or emotionally confuse a cover identity for the real you.**

**You could easily spend your entire life since infancy pretending to be the village idiot while actually having the power and knowledge to beat up a Kage, and leave everybody none the wiser. In addition, you have exceptional talent at both henge and mundane disguises.**

**Brilliant Mind (200 cp): You are a genius, in the true sense of the word. Your IQ is in excess of 200 and your mental processes are optimized to where you have a truly perfect memory; unlimited storage, perfect indexing, instant recall, fully retroactive, all the perks.**

**Furthermore, your intelligence is so boosted that you can easily detect any attempts at genjutsu or other methods of tampering with your thoughts, memories, or perceptions, and can block them with trivial effort. Simply put, you're immune to any attacks that target your mind in any way, shape, or form. It doesn't matter if they're magical attacks, mind control, or some semi-mythical doujustsu technique, they bounce off your mind without leaving any mark at all.**

He already had an upgraded brain and perfect memory. With Occlumency he had amazing indexing and storage and swift recall. But now with this perk, his mind indexing and memory recall will be reinforced and made automatic.

But the thing he wanted this perk for more than anything was for the amazing mind defense. Especially against the Sharingan's bullshit powers. The **True Name** perk protected his soul from manipulation and attack, and now **Brilliant Mind** will protect his mind from being messed with.

Carl already disliked how in the original work the eyes of the Sharingan stole other's hard work and jutsu so easily. Okay, it's mostly cause he didn't like any of the Uchihas on screen, they were a bunch of dicks. Like, major dicks.

And he couldn't really get mad at the Sharingan's hax stealing powers without being a hypocrite, since he had that kind of skill through perks. He just didn't want his own skills stolen from him. So he was a hypocrite like that, not wanting to be stolen from when he did the same thing. Oh well. He didn't care, he still disliked the Uchiha that made appearances in the Naruto comic anyway.

Sasuke turned traitor for power to kill his brother, threw an epic pouting fit when he found out his brother had a "good" reason to do what he did, but still wanted to destroy the home he abandoned and was just a giant…dickhead.

Even Itachi, who was supposed to be some tragic hero in the show pissed Carl off. Itachi helped kill off his entire clan, even personally killed his own father and mother. Then he psychologically tortured his own brother to make sure Sasuke followed in his path of dickery. And why? Cause he's trying to make sure there's peace, or something like that?

"Sure, Itachi. Kill everyone to ensure peace, that makes sense." Carl sarcastically rolled his eyes. "Sure, sure, he was in between a rock and a hard place, the Uchiha wanted to stage a coup on Konoha, but he was a loyal Konoha Ninja that wanted to prevent war, he was in a tough place, whatever."

"He should have grabbed his brother and high tailed it out of town while the confrontation between the Uchiha and Konoha went on, if loyalty really was his defining trait. Because in that situation he had conflicting loyalties that would have been hard to decide which of his loyalties were more important."

"So he was loyal to Konoha, but not to his family? And Itachi was dumb enough to fall for that bogus story from Danzo that his entire clan needed to die? So he ended up killing his entire clan because Danzo wanted to collect Uchiha eyes to increase his personal power. So not worth it."

"What was my point again?" Carl paused. "Oh, yeah. I hate the 'misunderstood' Uchiha that these fanfics like to nerdgasm about, and how their eyes are the pinnacle of power. Seriously, they can only unlock their second highest eyes when they kill their best friend or lover, causing huge emotional issues."

"So they as a clan care more about gaining power than they do about relationships with their loved ones. Then in order to get the perfect eyes that won't go blind they have to replace their own eyes with the eyes of a relative that has murdered _their_ best friend or lover. Why are these eyes so highly thought of when you have to be a big ball of angst-i-ness to do anything special with them?" Carl was surprised his eyeballs were still in his head, he rolled them so hard.

"Well, at least with this **Brilliant Mind **perk I'll be immune from the Uchiha's Three-Days-of-Torture-in-Seconds bullshit soul gaze genjutsu from their hax eyes." Carl smiled in satisfaction at his perk.

"Hmm…Am I being a bit too unfair to the Uchiha?"

Carl thought for a bit longer on the topic.

"Nahhh…The dicks deserve to be castigated."

**True Genius (300 cp): Oh, wow. There's geniuses, there's legends…then there's _you_. Not only do you have vast potential in just about every Ninja Art out there, but your ability to master new skills, arts, techniques, or anything else is utterly absurd. You pick up the basics of new things almost immediately and improve from there at dazzling speed; a month of hard training would give you the sort of gains that an average ninja would spend a lifetime trying to achieve.**

**This works for everything learnable or trainable, in this world or any other. Physical development, chakra capacity, you name it. And you never need to waste time laboriously practicing or reconditioning what you have already learned; your skills and abilities will remain razor-sharp no matter how long they are left unused.**

**Better still, what real genius ever needs to rely on others? You could teach yourself how to become a seal master just from reading the textbook, learn advanced jutsu from half-legible scrolls fished out of the garbage, and master new taijutsu styles by secretly watching other ninjas perform their daily kata.**

**Nor do you suffer any bottlenecks or 'down' periods in your training. Every step on the path to power is as simple and obvious as the very first one, when it comes to you.**

**The only limitation on your ability to learn new skills, techniques, or abilities is that you cannot create new information from nothing or train in powers or special abilities that you don't have the capacity to use.**

**Lastly, the very first lesson you learned was that genius is wasted without the proper application. Your work ethic is excellent and you not only have the dedication to keep grinding away for prolonged periods of time but actually enjoy doing so.**

While Carl wasn't quite sure just how much of a boost this perk would give to his already ridiculous learning skills, he figured it couldn't hurt to add on some extra learning and genius abilities. At the very least it would seriously lessen the amount of time it would take to train up a new body if he got another one in the future, so he thought the 300 cp was worth it to fill in the gaps, so to speak.

After looking through the other origin perks, he decided to stick with what he had for now. He had already spent quite a bit of cp, and the other perks he saw weren't that interesting to him.

**Items****: You receive an additional 400 cp to spend in this section alone. 100 cp items are free for their respective origin, all others are discounted. Wherever relevant, you may import an existing item for no additional cost.**

"Hmm, now that I think about it, the chakra metal of the Naruto world is special metal that can channel chakra. I definitely need to learn the secrets of this incredible metal that channels the combination of mental and physical energy. It could be another key to learning how to combine all three of my power centers into one. Ki, Magic, and Profound energy. 'With our powers combined…'"

**Ninja Weapons (Free): You have a pouch full of all kinds of general use ninja weapons, like shuriken, kunai, senbon, each of multiple kinds and sizes, up to and including things like fuuma shurikens and the rest. It also has many spools of ninja wire, along with the other slightly niche materials, and everything is of the very highest quality, prime Higurashi product.**

**No matter how many of these you take out, there are always more, and you always pull out exactly what you were meaning to. Strangely no one ever seems to question this, maybe they just think you have a _lot_ of storage scrolls in there? The items you take out eventually disappear after use.**

"Hehehe, I'll never have to buy ninja tools! So cheaty! I love it!"

After rejecting the rest of the General section items, Carl grabbed the first one from the Drop-in section.

**Shadow Clones (100 cp): Ah, shadow clone no jutsu. _The_ signature jutsu of the Naruto franchise. And now you can join in on the fun.**

**You have a copy of a technique scroll for the shadow clone jutsu, of such quality that an idiot could teach himself from this thing in virtually no time at all. It even has safeguards built-in that eliminate any possibility of killing yourself by putting too much chakra into it, or getting a headache from too many clones dispelling at once or anything like that. The worst that can possibly happen is that it fails to work.**

**You still can only make as many shadow clones as your chakra can support but outside of that you can feel free to abuse this handy jutsu for training, decoys, diversions, paperwork, chores, or whatever else you can imagine. In the event that this technique is supposed to have some additional features in the particular fanfiction you go to, or even a better version, this scroll will contain both versions.**

"And I was bagging on the Uchiha earlier for hax. **Shadow clones **plus **Brilliant Mind** with its automatic memory sorting, perfect and speedy recall, and unlimited memory is ridiculously cheaty." Carl shook in laughter.

"But, hey. Even if it is cheating, it's still not stealing someone else's hard work by just peeping with their special eyes."

**Anbu Mask (0 cp): And a tattoo! You have been inducted into the ANBU forces! The Ansatsu Senjutsu Tokushu Butai are the most elite forces of any village, the _crème de la crème_, per se. And the unit you have been inducted into is elite among even them. You have access to the finest training, supplies, and help your village can offer, and a security clearance to match. You may, if you wish, be assigned high-level missions. Or you can put yourself on 'detached duty' and just go back to being an ordinary ninja. It's up to you.**

**In future jumps you will have the status, access, and clearance of a high-level operative in whatever intelligence or military special-operations unit exists in your home nation, and they will curiously forget to actually assign you any missions or give you any orders unless you want them to…just as they forget to revoke your clearance.**

"Huh. Being an ANBU before I even start at the academy isn't exactly what I was planning. But then again, it could be perfect. I can just have myself assigned the job of evaluating the academy for the higher ups since I'm at that age. And in a lot of these worlds the academy teachers deliberately sabotage Naruto's education, which would impact on the education of a bunch of clan heirs. And that would be a good way to get all the clans behind reforming the academy, if it impacts them and their clan heirs personally."

Carl firmly nodded. Besides, the **ANBU Mask **was free.

**Uchiha Jutsu Archive (200 cp): The Uchiha really were quite shameless in their day, always going around copying everybody else's lifetimes of hard work just by using their special eyes. Well, at least you get to benefit from that.**

**Somehow you've obtained a copy of the complete Uchiha Jutsu Archive, everything that several generations of dedicated intellectual property thieves could copy from every other ninja village, clan, and small ninja child in the Elemental Nations. Pretty much any and every technique, seal, chemical formula, pill/cookie recipe, or random dance routine that that one Uchiha liked can be found in here. Any knowledge that wasn't limited to literally just one person, family, or bloodline, or was based purely on sealless chakra manipulation (such as the Rasengan) and thus uncopyable by the Sharingan is in the archive, all of them laid out in such a clear and concise format that any half-competent ninja could teach himself just by reading the scroll.**

**This archive will update with a complete set of spells, fighting styles, etc, etc. from any setting that you have visited and will visit in the future. Provided it could be generously called public, or even semi-private, knowledge it will be in here. Only the most super-secret, utterly private techniques are missing; after all, even the best copyright pirates can't get _everything_. This place is comprehensively warded against thievery, somewhat ironically, and it would take a team of top-tier infiltration specialists to even _attempt_ to breach it. Of course its best defense is that, at least at jump start, no one knows you have it. Post jump you can have this become a warehouse attachment.**

Carl couldn't help himself and barely propped himself up on the terminal before falling to the ground, he was laughing so hard. It was just too right! Steal from the stealers! Serves them right!

Wiping a tear from his eye, he straightened up once more and continued on.

**Clan Jumper (300 cp): Because of course a prodigy like you is the clan head! Or at the very least, the clan heir.**

**You now have your very own ninja clan, with all that entails. You start with, at minimum, an assured place among the clans of your own village and all the legal privileges this entitles you to. This includes a village council seat along with your clan's entire legacy; a vast clan compound ranging anywhere from dozens to hundreds of acres. A fortune that could buy small countries, at least one secret, ridiculously powerful Style of Ninja Arts, armories holding thousands of weapons, many of which are priceless masterworks, and a considerable business empire.**

**You also have a symbol specific to your clan, which, if you so will, can be placed on things you own to indisputably mark them as yours, or tokens or medallions to indicate that someone represents you, or has your favor, things like that, and never be challenged. Forging this symbol is basically impossible, as people instinctively know when it's real and when it's fake.**

**Furthermore, you either already have or can easily recruit an entire extended family of dozens and dozens of ninjas and their spouses, children, etc. under your clan banner. These will range from experienced jonin elders all the way down to cute little genin, all of them entirely loyal to you. In addition, anything you purchased from the Kekkei Genkai section can, at your discretion, be a clan bloodline that all your fellow clan members share.**

**Your loyal clan members follow you into future worlds, with the council position and wealth/estates adapting to fit the new world you import them into, and all members developing equaling aptitudes in the local methods. The least this can be is a somewhat important noble clan or influential family, and at the highest you could be one of the movers and shakers of the whole nation, with access to the very highest echelons of power. The one limit is that this clan will never be the sovereign ruling power of the nation…though it could be a distant branch.**

Carl smiled in anticipation. He already had his Silver Dragon Flight. Now he was going to be getting a Ninja Clan following him around. He was really liking this Naruto jump world already.

Carl paused and looked around in horror. He didn't say anything out loud! There's no way he just jinxed himself!

Eventually shrugging off the bad feeling he had, he moved on.

**Kekkei-Genkai: All those who bought the Kekkei-Genkai above receive 1000 bp (bloodline points) to spend in this section alone! If that's not enough, or if you didn't buy the Kekkei-Genkai, you may convert cp to bp at a 1:2 ratio. This works both ways, if you have bp left over. You may not use this to get back more cp than you originally spent.**

**All abilities here act like a muscle. That is, they can be trained with time and effort to be far stronger than they currently are. They also cost chakra, but little enough that unless your reserves are exceptionally low keeping two or three active isn't all that much of a drain. If you have multiple eye-based bloodlines you may selectively choose how they manifest and how they look.**

Carl looked over the available bloodlines, thinking of what would make his ninja the best. He already had incredible senses from his body mod, so he wasn't particularly attracted to a simple boost of the senses. And while a super sense would improve his ninja clan, he felt like it was an advantage that could be trained to overcome or counter through techniques.

The idea of a bloodline that allowed his member to manipulate a combination element release was very interesting to him. The Ice bloodline was a combination of Water and Wind. Wood release was a combination of Earth and Water. Lava was Earth and Fire. Storm was Water and Lightning. Boil was Water and Fire. And there were several others.

The one among those combination element releases that interested him the most was Wood Release, which would cost 500 bp. And the reason that one interested him was that the first Hokage, Hashirama Senju, was known for that wood element release. It was supposedly how he built the forest surrounding Konoha in such a short time.

And if Carl chose that bloodline, he could probably be in charge of the Senju clan. Tsunade Senju, the greatest medical kunoichi and possible future fifth hokage, would be his relative. And he would gain an instant reputation among Konoha. His words would carry a lot of weight with the people of Konoha.

The other bloodline that interested him a lot, to be honest, was the Byakugan.

**Byakugan (600 bp): The infamous White Eyes of the Hyuuga clan. These are some special eyes, Jumper. You can, at all times, have a perfect 359 degree vision on all places around you, with a tiny blind spot at a miniscule spot on your left shoulder blade.**

**Beyond the breadth of the vision, you have X-ray vision, which you can control perfectly to choose what you see through, and what you don't. You also have immensely powerful telescopic and microscopic vision, letting you see for miles ahead through whatever may be in between, as well as each individual cell in your palm. You can also see Chakra directly, as well as pierce illusions like nobody's business.**

**Finally, you have some significant ability at looking through even things that transcend physicality altogether, being able to read documents stored inside sealing scrolls and similar things. But this last is an ability that needs to be developed, and it requires some intense effort to achieve it, to say the least.**

**Having the Byakugan also grants you a body suited to their special Taijutsu style, the Juuken. Your balance and poise are impeccable at all times, your intelligence is significantly higher than average, and your fingers are like steel daggers in their strength and striking power.**

To be honest, the biggest downside of getting the Byakugan was being a part of the Hyuga clan, those sticks in the mud. The whole family practices stoicism to an unhealthy degree. As to whether that was a result of their in-family problems, or they feel they need to uphold their dignity as one of the biggest, most important clans in Konoha was anyone's guess.

Especially nasty was how they put the Caged Bird seal on all of their branch family members. The Caged Bird seal was supposedly meant to protect the Hyuga's eyes from being stolen, since it would destroy their eyes on their death. But in reality it was a way for the main house members to keep control of the branch house members. Using the special method to channel chakra, the main house members can cause intense pain and even death to the branch house members if they don't obey the main branch.

If he did choose the Hyuga, in addition to the **Clan Jumper** item that he had purchased he would likely end up being the heir to the clan. Which, based on what happened to him in the Game of Thrones world, would mean he would be Hinata's twin brother.

Once he woke up in the world he could work hard to study the Sealing Arts and figure out a replacement for the nasty Caged Bird seal. So a bit of work to change his clan for the better was in order.

And the advantage would be that he would have a large clan that would be loyal to him, and very well suited to being spies. Well, maybe not that well suited. Their completely white eyes made them very good at spying, but it also made them conspicuous and completely memorable. Well, that's what the henge was for.

The Senju Clan, on the other hand, only had Tsunade Senju left of it. So he would have to restore it. Which likely meant that he would be expected to take many wives and start pumping out kids as soon as possible. There might even be plenty of people objecting to him being an active duty ninja, since they wouldn't want to lose the precious Senju seed now that they found it again.

"Yeah, I just convinced myself. Hyuga it is." Carl chuckled at the idea of anyone forcing him to be a baby making stud horse while he was still under his promise to his women to not have kids yet. "Those Hyuga eyes are amazing in what they can do. Besides, with my **Heart of Snow Glazed Glass** from the ATG jump I should be able to work out how to do all these 'bloodline only' elemental combination releases. So after a bit of training I'll be able to manipulate wood anyway without the Senju bloodline."

"Now, what about that Tenseigan." Carl looked over the upgrade for the Byakugan.

**For an additional 400 bp, your eyes grow past the ordinary Byakugan into the Tenseigan, which grants you several additional abilities. First of all, you gain the power of manipulating gravity, with enough finesse that you could manipulate things on a hand-to-hand level and enough power that if you put absolutely _everything_ you have into it, you might just literally move the Moon. You can also use this power to fly, and animate statues to do your bidding. This last bit is not necessarily due to the gravity control, mind.**

**In addition to all that, you gain the power to wield the Truth Seeking balls of Hagoromo Otsutsuki, one for each non-fusion element, including Yin and Yang. Further charging these balls with your own power lets you perform special tricks, even the least of which tend to be more powerful than most things ordinary ninja could ever hope to pull ever in their lives.**

From what little he understood of the Truth Seeking balls was that each ball represented one of the elemental releases. So the five basic non-fusion elemental balls would be Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Lightning. And the fist sized black balls would float around behind the user, waiting to be used to control each of the elements.

They could also be shaped into weapons of great strength, or shaped into whatever the user could imagine.

And while a member of the Otsutsuki clan could steal and implant the eyes of a member of the Hyuga clan to evolve their eyes into the Tenseigan, Carl wasn't sure if he could do it in reverse and steal some eyes from the Otsutsuki clan members to evolve his eyes into the Tenseigan.

In the last Naruto movie some asshole Otsutsuki member stole Hanabi's eyes to evolve his to the Tenseigan. So, since he was going into the Hyuga clan and Hanabi would be his little sister, he would be hunting down some of those arrogant berks anyway. Well, as long as they existed in the Naruto world he was going to.

"Decisions, decisions. Either sell back 400 bp for 200 cp and hope that I can get the eyes from a member of Otsutsuki, or get the power to manipulate gravity guaranteed." Carl was tapping his finger to his lips in the classic thinking pose. "Yup, gravity manipulation it is!"

With his bloodline selected, he scrolled further down the document.

**Scenarios****: Each scenario gives you an additional 500 cp to spend before the rewards mentioned. Failing a scenario doesn't forfeit your chain, but it does forfeit both the scenario rewards and this jump. That is, you're still leaving but not with anything more than memories.**

"Hmm, more cp and I get a reward out of the scenario for completion. I'm very interested. Let's see what's available."

The first scenario was already crossed out in Carl's mind. **Of the Clan** would have made him the last of his clan and responsible for building the clan back up from scratch. And since it was incompatible with **Clan Jumper**, he wasn't able to select it.

After reading through the information, Carl realized that the scenario was basically to build up the clan until the point that it rivaled what he would get from **Clan Jumper**, and the reward was to have the clan he built up follow him through the Jump Chain. As long as he didn't mind the massive amount of extra work, he would get paid cp instead of spending it.

Carl decided to check the other scenarios first, to see what was available, before he made the final decision. But he was leaning towards not taking the scenario. If he did, but kept the Byakugan, then something like the Uchiha massacre would probably happen to the Hyuga. And he didn't want to risk the possibility of his future sisters Hinata and Hanabi being killed just so he could build back up the Hyuga because of the scenario.

**Summoner of the Divine (requires Summoning Contract): Summons are mighty beasts that ninjas can call upon to aid them in their fights, often against other summons. You are one such summoner, only now you're set on the path to greatness few can even imagine.**

**You see, there exist now in this world a number of Beasts that count as nothing less than Divine beasts, mightier even than the Mythical Beasts you get for the 400 cp contract. This has nothing to do with what these words mean in other worlds, rather it means that the clans being referred to are mighty ones with extraordinary powers other summons clans can scarcely comprehend. They're far away, arrogant, and powerful beyond words. If any such clan was to take a summoner it would only be one of the leading Ninja of the generation, someone capable of getting their contemporaries to hold them in the same regard as the lesser summons hold these godlike beasts.**

**And now you must find them, interact with them, and convince them to take you on as a Summoner. Your journey to this goal will not be easy, rest assured, nor will it be quick. But at the end lies untold power and glory, and that makes it all worth it, doesn't it?**

**An example for how this can be done would be if you take one of the Four Chinese Symbols as your target. You would have to secure the allegiance of at least three of their 'vassal' races, such as birds for the Vermillion Bird, water-based or Amphibian species for the Turtle, reptiles for the Dragon, and so on. You must get at least three separate summon clans like this to take you as their summoner, and _then_ you must make them accept you as a Sage for each of them.**

**It is only after this, once you have proven yourself the greatest of summoners for each of these lesser clans, none of which may be weaker than those wielded by the Sanin, by the way, that the way to the top opens to you. All this ensures that the clans give you excellent recommendations with the Divine clan you're chasing, but that alone won't do it. It remains up to you to convince the actual clan, and you must do it well enough that they make you _their_ sage.**

**At this point, however, the Scenario stands fulfilled and your title as the greatest Summoner and Sage alive uncontested.**

**Success means something special here. Not only do all the clans you have won over follow you with total CP-backing, your exploits have impressed the whole Summons World so much that you may even have _other_ races join you! Specifically, a Divine species as powerful as the one you picked, or three 'ordinary' summons as powerful or weaker than the ones you won over as part of this scenario. Take them along, help them see the world, and be the greatest summoner ever!**

To sum up the scenario in just a few words, he had to become the summoner for a Divine Beast Clan and master their Senjutsu arts, which would make him their Sage.

As far as Carl understood it, in the hierarchy of beast clans, there were three tiers of summoning beasts, based on the strength of the ninja beast clan. Normal, Mythical, and Divine beasts. The Divine beasts were the farthest away from the areas near the normal world, and they are the most proud and arrogant. The Divine Beast Clans have a number of vassal races that are Mythical or Normal beast clans.

In order to become the summer of the Divine Beast Clan, he would first need to gain the summoning contract for three of the vassal races and master their Senjutsu arts and become their Sage. Only then could he work on convincing the Divine Beast Clan to give him their summoning contract and work on mastering their Sage arts.

If he succeeds in accomplishing the task, all the summoning clans that he convinced and proved himself to will follow him in the Jump Chain, as well as one other Divine Clan or three other clans of the same strength as the first three clans he became a sage of.

Carl thought about the scenario seriously. With his alternate Dragon body, not to mention that he had 10% Dragon God Bloodline in his body, he was sure he could become the Divine Dragon's summoner and sage. And it would give him even more followers in his Jump Chain journeys.

Taking the scenario would give him 500 cp, and he would have to spend 200 or 400 cp to purchase a summoning contract. And there was a chance of failure that would wipe away everything he purchased in this world. So there was some small amount of risk.

If he was afraid of this small risk with all his advantages, he shouldn't even bother taking this scenario because the Divine Dragon Clan was bound to be arrogant. If he couldn't stand up to that small amount of doubt, then the Divine Dragon Clan's attitude was bound to intimidate him.

Looking inside his mind, Carl searched for an answer. Was he nervous? Was he afraid? Or did he feel eager? Was he simply aware of the consequences?

The more he questioned himself, the more sure Carl was. He _knew_ he would accomplish this scenario. Since the scenario required him to have a Summoning Contract at least on the level of the Sanin, he was planning on picking up the Snake Summoning Contract if he could.

He had purchased the **Parselmouth** perk way back in the Harry Potter world. It was time to put the language to use again in gaining the snake's allegiance so he could become their sage. And once he had mastered the Sage arts for the Snakes, he would question them about finding another vassal Clan of the Divine Dragons to approach next.

Not to mention the idea of him taking control of the Snake Summoning Contract to counter Orochimaru kind of amused him a great deal.

**Summoning Contract (200 cp/400 cp): You have backup! Well, in a way. You have signed a Summoning Contract with a clan of ninja beasts, and they are ready and eager to come to your aid whenever you can muster the chakra to cast the Jutsu!**

**For 200 cp it's a 'normal' clan like the Toads or the Snakes, while 400 cp gives you a 'Mythical' or 'Divine' clan, like Dragons, or Phoenixes, or White Tigers…you know how it goes. Jinchuriki receive one 400 cp purchase, reflecting the clan their beast is _obviously_ the boss of, for free.**

**With time your summons may impart certain techniques that would make you a 'Sage' representing their Clan, as well as any other benefits they provide.**

Carl got his hopes up at seeing that he could go ahead and purchase a Divine Clan contract for only 400 cp, but when he went to add the Divine Dragons, he was disappointed to see that it wasn't in the options. So much for cheating his way to victory.

In the end he selected the Snake Summoning contract for 200 cp.

The next scenario was interesting and intriguing to him.

**Sealmaster (incompatible with Ancient Tongue): Seals…they're a unique proposition, when it comes to the world of Naruto, even more so in Naruto _fanfics_. Do they just store things, or do they do anything anyone can ordinarily do, just in written form?**

**Few know, but for the purposes of this scenario it's definitely the former. That is, at the beginning. You see, regardless of how it might have been in the world you pick, it's definitely _possible_ for seals to do everything ninjas can do. From Ninjutsu to Genjutsu to even melee fights through the right sealing of Kinetic energy, it can all be done if one is clever enough.**

**And now you must be. Seal Lore in this world has not expanded beyond 'store things and make things explode', if elaborate enough in those fields to range from 'firewood' to 'Bijuu'. But now _you_ are here. You must conduct the needed research, find the needed secrets and do all the work required to expand and elaborate the field of Fuuinjutsu.**

**You must design hundreds, if not thousands of seals, enough that can cover _everything_ Ninjas typically do. From releasing fireballs to having a scroll perform every step of the Impure world summoning on its own, only once you have utterly perfected the art may you truly be called Sealmaster, and this is when the scenario stands fulfilled.**

**As a reward, the knowledge of the field of Sealing becomes a sort of constant for you. No matter where you go, any and all magic techniques that depend on written symbols of any kind are automatically found in your knowledge, ready and waiting to be used at your pleasure. In simpler terms, you gain an Intellectus for Runes, Seals, and Sigils of all kinds.**

"Well, I'm already going to need to figure out the Sealing arts to replace the Hyuga's Caged Bird seal, since I'm not going to stand for the majority of my new ninja clan being slaves. But wait, if I pick this scenario then it means that the sealing arts will be limited at first to 'store things and 'make things explode'. Which means the Caged Bird seal is just a version of an explosive seal with specific conditions to set it off."

Carl frowned in thought at all the implications.

"From what I remember of the Hyuga, only one of the siblings of the main branch gets to stay in the main branch. The rest of them get branded with the Caged Bird seal. No way is anyone putting an explosive tag on my sister's heads!"

He paced back and forth, thinking about the situation. Based on things that had happened in his past when he picked certain perks and drawbacks, he knew there were plenty of unintended consequences that happen. He couldn't control everything. So there was a decent chance that Hinata may be branded with the Caged Bird seal before they were eight.

"But the only real possible way to prevent her getting that nasty seal that I can see is to choose a clan other than the Hyuga. But even then her life will be miserable among the Hyuga." Carl scowled in thought over all the bad choices. He already wanted to be a big brother to Hinata and Hanabi, cause he liked their characters from the show. Even with all the bad that came with the Hyuga, their eyes were bad ass and he wanted them.

"And having the advantage of the Intellectus will be huge in future worlds. I'm pretty sure I can have the Yamato's VI help me out on figuring out the basic and advanced principles of the Sealing Arts. Well, not like I really need the help with the memory and learning perks. But the Yamato VI will at least help me record the data for other people to peruse."

"So I can put most of my attention on attaining the Summoning scenario and stick a bunch of clones working to learn seals. And if I'm getting close to the 10 year mark and still haven't finished the Sealmaster scenario, I'll just pop into time compression to finish it. Not that it's very likely to get to that."

"Okay, I'm going to go ahead and get this scenario. But if any of those Hyuga elder douchebags dare to get within 50 feet of Hinata or Hanabi with a Caged Bird seal, I'm going to castrate them with explosive seals, at the very least. See how they like it."

Looking at the other scenarios, Carl immediately decided that two of them were no goes.

"**Once More, The Jubi **would have me snatch up all nine Bijuu and shove them into my own gut. Which would most likely kill the Jinchuuriki they were inside before, unless I healed them up afterwards."

**But it won't be that easy. Every Jinchuuriki in the world now essentially has the Jinchuuriki perk themselves, complete with capstone boosts where they would apply. On top of that their villages are entirely supportive of them, and will provide them all the support that there is to provide.**

"If I was going to run rampant through this world and not care for the consequences or mess I left behind, then I suppose picking this scenario wouldn't be a bad thing. But the idea of doing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth." Carl shook his head and decided he didn't need to have the Ten Tail Tail Juubi living in his gut. Going to war with the entire world just to grab a bit more power just felt wrong to him.

"Let's see, **Willed with Fire** would have me fight over the title of Hokage with four other candidates that have a complete Origin with all perks and items. So I'd likely be fighting against one each of a **Drop-in, Prodigy, Exile, **and** Demon, **or any combination of those, for the title of Hokage. Yeah, I'll have enough on my plate as it is to bother with that. And I have no desire for the title of Hokage."

"While having the whole village follow me through the jumps as a reward would be awesome, I'm gonna pass. I'll leave the hat and the paperwork for Naruto, assuming he's a decent person in this world."

**God of Shinobi (cannot be taken with Perfect Control)****: Anyone can do things if they follow the proper procedure. Well, not anyone, but you know what one means when they say that hand seals and exact instructions mean that even the dumbest of idiots can _eventually _figure out just about any jutsu.**

**Which is why you get to be the one to break this world. See, all these things, hand seals, explosive tags, Jutsu as a whole, are all just crutches. Written down, established ways to manipulate chakra that achieve predictable results. They're an aid to most people, but you must prove them to be prisons.**

**You need to master every scrap of martial technique possessed by your village, by hook or by crook. And 'master' does not mean being able to repeat the hand signs. It does not even mean being able to _perform_** **the jutsu.**

**No, it means being able to achieve the effects of the jutsu without making any signs at all. You must master the way of manipulating your chakra by your will alone, achieving the near-miraculous effects Shinobi perform with naked will.**

**Once you can let loose devastating Ninjutsu as well as terrible, ensnaring genjutsu with solely your will made manifest, when you can send objects into a pocket dimension with a thought and bring it back with another, and when you can cause chakra to explode without using brushes, ink or paper, only then will you be counted as a true God of Shinobi.**

**And once you do, you find that all efforts become just as easy for you. No more need for any somatic, verbal, or even material components when you are the one in charge. It becomes possible for your will and your chakra to make up all shortfalls, and so long as you have enough of both, you can impose your will upon the universe and bring about any and all effects you have the knowledge to, with nothing more than a thought.**

Carl had been looking at the **God of Shinobi **scenario for several minutes, going back and forth on whether he should get rid of **Perfect Control** and pick up the scenario.

In the end Carl decided to go for it. He had incredible learning perks, and had grabbed the **Uchiha Jutsu Archive** and was going to learn all those jutsu already so that he could replicate them with the sealing arts for the **Sealmaster** scenario, so adding a bit more time compression in the Time Pearl to train a bit more and master the **God of Shinobi** scenario wouldn't be that hard.

And that way he wouldn't be spending cp to get the **Perfect Control** perk, he would be getting paid in cp to do so. Besides, he had so many perks that enhanced his intelligence and learning that it wouldn't be that much of a chore to accomplish the scenario.

**Drawbacks****: You may take any number of Drawbacks you want for full cp.**

Looking at the first drawback, **This is Your Story**, that gave no cp and was basically used to self insert into an established character, Carl passed. He was going to be the heir to the Hyuga. He didn't want to end up in Neji's body or something weird like that.

**Let's keep it Simple (+0 cp): OK, let's face it. The canon plot of Naruto is an unrecognizable mess. Even dedicated fans have trouble explaining what was going on underneath the underneath all the way to the endgame, and far too many fanfics never go deep enough into their own background to make it plain how much of that canon they are or aren't using. Well, there's a cure for that.**

**By taking this toggle, any and all elements of canon that didn't exist pre-timeskip and that are not _explicitly_ part of the fanfic you are usingthat was chosen for you are strictly optional. Make Itachi an actual bad guy, have Obito actually die during the Third Ninja War, pretend Kaguya never existed, whatever. So long as the fanfic you've chosen doesn't outright contradict you on that point, it's all good. Feel free to enjoy your ninja adventures without being crushed into irrelevance by vast plots and imponderable forces that you had no interest in anyway.**

Carl sighed with mixed feelings when he saw that drawback. On the one hand, it was something that he thought was really nice. On the other hand, it reminded him that he had no idea what fanfiction world he was going into. Carl shrugged, he would get by just fine, he was sure.

He added the drawback just to make the world a little less complicated. He didn't get any options to pick and choose what kind of world he was in, more is the pity. But he figured it wouldn't hurt any so he left it.

"Let's see, next is a drawback that only gives me 100 cp that forces me to catch the demon cat Tora once a week while I'm a genin and at least once a month after that without fail? This sounds like one of those traps where I'm expected to say 'How hard can it be?' and then suffer miserably for my arrogance. It would be something like Tora is proportionately skilled to whoever tries to catch him, or something ridiculous, so even Kaguya would have _issues_ catching the demon cat. Pass."

"A ramen addiction that rivals Naruto for only 100 cp. I'm gonna be too busy to suffer from such a debilitating addiction. I like ramen, but not to the point I want to have to manage it like a drug addiction."

"And there's the drawback for **Fangirls **for 200 / 300 cp. 200 cp gets me useless and weak fangirls that makes pre-timeskip Sakura look like Tsunade. For an extra 100 cp they will be competent yandere fangirls only when they stalk me. Murderously jealous fangirls who are disgustingly ugly and only competent when they attack me? I'll hard pass."

**Diapers and…Sunshine? (+200 cp): Ignore that age roll. You arrive as a toddler. Your abilities are suppressed at the beginning, and start to come back at a rate that has them at full power when you reach your rolled age. You may choose between arriving in the 'now' or a corresponding number of years before the plot of the jump.**

"Hmm, now this one I actually have to consider a bit. Actually, now that I think about it there are two events that happened when Hinata was young that I wouldn't mind preventing. When she was three she was almost kidnapped by a Kumo ninja who was the diplomat there for peace talks, or signing the peace signature, or something. He was caught and killed by her father, Hiashi, which caused all kinds of diplomatic problems and resulted in Hiashi's twin brother Hizashi committing suicide and his body being turned over to appease Kumo's war mongering threats. That was the incident that started her cousin Neji hating her and caused her horrible case of shyness and meekness."

"The other incident was Hinata's mother dying when she was five, right when her younger sister Hanabi was being born."

Carl paced back and forth while thinking about the wording of the drawback.

"It says toddler. So that's probably a year old, not from birth like I originally assumed. If it's a linear progression of releasing my powers, then at three years old I'll have unlocked 2/7 of my powers. At five years old I'll have unlocked 4/7, assuming I do arrive in world at the age of one. 2/7of my power should be enough to at least stun a ninja or delay him to be caught in our house instead of out on the street where just any old spy can see what happened and report to their bastard superiors."

"And it says '**ability**' and '**power**', so it is likely that my Warehouse should be active, since that's not exactly an ability. Which means I should be able to use the medical bay. And if not, I know a great deal of medicine, so with just over half my powers returned I should be able to heal my new mother."

Carl nodded to himself. Saving his prospective mother and sister were worth going so early. When these problems had occurred to him after reading the drawback he had been tempted to go change his age of insertion to 2 so he could make sure he saved them. That would have meant he left the world when he was 12, just as he was graduating from the academy. This drawback actually made it so he could go through with his plan to leave the world when he was 18 and still save his family and get paid 200 cp on top of it. Carl added it to the list.

**Got Lost On The Road Of Life (+200 cp): Your sensei is probably going to live forever, seeing as how they'd be so late that they'd miss their own funeral. The last time they actually showed up somewhere when they were supposed to instead of hours later was during the previous ninja war. Even the Kage of your village has entirely given up on trying to make them be punctual anymore. Furthermore, even when they _do_ show up their time management is _horrible_. How did this person ever make jonin, anyway?**

**Which means that you're pretty much going to have to train yourself if you want to learn anything useful, since barring an emergency you're lucky if you get so much as two hours of useful instruction out of them per week. The rest of your genin team will have the same problem; you'd better hope they're the self-motivated type!**

"This drawback is most definitely based off of Kakashi." Carl snorted in amusement.

Carl thought about it. He was going to be ANBU from 8 years old, so he'd have access to the higher level stuff from an early age while in the academy. Well, he also had the **Uchiha Jutsu Archive**. He would be spending a lot of time studying the sealing arts and working with his summons. So it might be a good thing to not have a teacher around to waste his time with low level stuff. His two teammates were likely to be out of luck if he was on the team.

"Hmm. Maybe after 'graduating' the academy I can forgo the Jonin sensei thing to ostensibly work ANBU while taking care of my scenarios instead. So taking the drawback would likely not affect me or the other two genin at all. And if I do get stuck with a genin team, I'll have shadow clones to attend meetings and help my teammates train and study."

Carl had successfully talked himself into taking the drawback.

**You Baka! (+200 cp)**would ensure by jump chain fiat that there would be a violent little girl that would get mad often and for no reason and hit him. There was nothing he could do about it to stop it. No one would even think it was odd that she regularly hit his head.

Pass. There was no way Carl was going to allow someone like Sakura to constantly beat in his head. He wasn't that hard up for cp that he would put up with that kind of nonsense.

**Precious People (+300 cp)**would force him to do _anything _for his precious people. Even stick to an idle promise he made years ago, even when he was released from said promise. And if he failed the promise, he would angst enough to make an Uchiha look cheerful.

Pass. There was no way he was going to mess with his behavior such that the drawback could make him fail his scenarios. If he had a choice between fulfilling some half forgotten promise that no longer mattered and working on the scenarios with failure on the line, he didn't want the drawback to kick in and ruin his efforts.

**Super Pervert (+300 cp)**would make him a pervert on the scale of Jiraiya who peeked on the bathhouses or Kakashi who blatantly read porn in public. It would even interfere with his ability to interact with people in certain, romantic, ways. And he would be unable to defend against the righteous anger of the victims to his peeping.

Pass. He had no desire to go through all that at the age of eight to eighteen for a lousy 300 cp.

**Village Pariah (+300 cp/+400 cp)**would make him the village outcast for 300 cp, or for 400 cp they would actually try to kill him. He was going to be the heir of the Hyuga. If he was outcast, then he couldn't do a decent job as the heir. He passed.

**Dobe-Teme! (+300 cp)** would give him a foul mouth, which would kill his friendships and ruin his reputation as the heir. He would pass on the 300 cp.

**Honorary Village Council Member (+300 cp)** would change his behavior so that he acted like those bad IQ council members that make enemies and acted suicidal. His sense of strategy would be completely ruined. Carl declined the honor of ruining his ability to think.

**ROOT of All Evil (+300 cp/+500 cp)**was a drawback where Danzo had his eye on him for his root forces. He didn't want to mess with having Danzo's attention. He would rather strike the old bastard from the shadows without giving him an opportunity to maneuver against him.

**Higurashi Quality Edge (+400 cp): Whoa there, edgelord. Calm down. No? Oh, whatever.**

**You are now a total and absolute emo edgelord, in all the worst ways. You can _never_ shut up about anything that's gone wrong in your life, be it significant stuff like being used as a prison or your family being wiped out…or a paper cut you got.**

**You wear only black, and may or may not use eyeshadow. Blades and wrists are also a distinct possibility, depending on you really. Worst of all, you have no respect for _others'_ problems, and declare _them_** **an 'emo, angsty bitch'!**

Nope. Just nope. Behavioral controlling drawbacks like that are just right out. Especially ones that would give him _angst._

Carl looked at the drawback that would make sure he had no access to his Warehouse and moved right on. He wasn't going to allow that when it might be the only thing he had available to save his future mother.

And the next one that would have Orochimaru target him he turned down as well. Orochimaru was on his target list, but he didn't want that battle to go down at the Snake Sannin's discretion. Carl was the one who would strike first, and strike hard.

**Real Problems (+600 cp): Your life is the first chapter of Badfics. Forever. Or a long time, at least.**

**Seriously, you just can't catch a break. Wherever you go, girls are standing around with fists like hammers, ready to hit you in the head. Mobs form at a look of you, ready to lynch you in the street.**

**Everyone from the Kage to the street dog is conspiring against you, and when you get to a different village you find that they treat you like a spy, saboteur, assassin…and everything else they can think of, no matter how ridiculous the idea.**

**Now, the good thing is, this can be worked through. If you manage to hold on, you can terrify, charm, or cajole people into treating you well…**

**But don't expect it to be easy. Or quick.**

That drawback was basically Naruto's life in Badfics. Carl chose not get it. He had enough on his plate, he didn't need the distractions. And he was at 4050 cp still banked, so he was looking pretty good.

Carl went back to the beginning of the jump document to check if there was any last minute changes to his decisions. It was good that he did so, because a few of them caught his attention after he had added the scenarios.

In the **Demon **perks there was one that would help him immensely with his **Divine Summoner** scenario.

**Kyuubi-chan (200 cp): It can be a daunting prospect to be set face-to-face with beings of terrifying power and might, such as demons or gods. You, however, are special. You find that you have something about you, like an aura, which immortal and powerful beings find rather soothing and pleasing.**

**In addition, your mental faculties are such that you remain entirely unaffected by the status and power of the people you're interfering with, able to treat them like you would anyone else. Indeed, it's almost as if something out there _wants_ you to form relationships with such entities, because they tend to be open-minded towards you even if they normally wouldn't be at all, and you have inordinate luck and skill at charming and convincing them.**

**You could talk to a demon and get them to become anything from your friend or lover, convince proud clans or species to become your summons and/or friends, get princesses and priestesses interested in bearing your children, and in general, the more powerful and distant a figure is, the easier you find it to get close to them.**

This perk was pretty much perfect for helping Carl accomplish his **Summoner of the Divine** scenario. He was glad he had gone back looked over his options once more.

**Sample Collection (400 cp): Oh, what's this now? Doing some experiments, are we? Well, if you are, these would be _priceless_. This is a comprehensive collection of DNA samples, with blood, hair, nails, and even bones samples from…well, just about everyone who's anyone!**

**That's right. This is a collection of neatly labeled samples that have materials from very nearly every powerful ninja, samurai, random guy, demon, sage…pretty much anyone who can be considered A-class or above in the Bingo Book. The exact nature and quantity of the samples depends on the people in question and their histories. That is, someone who keeps getting injured would likely have extensive blood samples here, but for someone for whom it's a rarity you would likely see only stuff like hair and skin, and quantities dependant on how easy it tends to ordinarily be to get those things from them.**

**The exception is for dead people, in which case you get significant quantities of everything from blood, bone, skin…well, everything. Each and every sample is perfectly preserved, and experiments performed on them have significantly higher chances of success than normal. In future jumps too, you get samples from all major figures in the setting, whether in terms of fighting strength, intellect, or the rest.**

Carl's plan to study chakra to figure out how to combine two of his types of energy, physical and mental, in order to figure out how to combine all three would be helped greatly by having more samples of ninja to study. Probably.

He could even see about cloning extinct clans and have them be retainers to the Hyuga clan so they came with him to through the jump chain. There were plenty he could do with it. So, he decided to go ahead and spend the cp.

Carl blew out a breath of air from deep in his lungs as he centered himself. He looked through his selections a final time, and was satisfied. He had 3450 cp banked up, which wasn't as big as he hoped to keep banked, but there were just too many good things to purchase in this world that he couldn't resist. And it wasn't too bad, really, thanks to the scenarios, considering how many perks he actually ended up purchasing.

It was time to enter the world.

He hit the finalize button.

The world turned dark around him.

* * *

[AN: If you weren't sure of the Mel Brooks movie I was referencing in regards to Sasuke, it's from Robin Hood, Men in Tights. Look up "Hey Abbott!", it should give you the clip.

Okay, I'm sure I'll get some people all up in arms cause they love the Sharingan or the Uchiha, and they don't like how I talk about 'em here. Or they might point at my "hypocrisy" since in the ATG world Carl chose to get skills that mirrored the Uchiha's copy wheel eyes and the fire to burn stuff. Or whatever reason.

I don't know what to say guys, beyond: I felt like ranting, and that's human nature.

We constantly change everything about ourselves. We change our opinions, we change what we think is cool. We change how we react to things.

We can also have two seemingly contradictory opinions at the same time.

I can think the Uchihas have some cool powers, while at the same time being annoyed by how overpowered they were made in the show to the point that they were the espoused as the pinnacle of the peak of badass powers. And it got even more ridiculous in some of the fanfictions.

Especially if I was personally being put in a world where those Copy Wheel Eyes can steal _my_ techniques and hard work? You betcha ass I'm gonna preemptively dislike them!

I can also get annoyed at some of those power fantasies where only Naruto, the Uzumaki-est Uzumaki eva to live! Learns about the powers of Seals and Swords and everything else cause he's just that baddass! And he's the only strongk one on earth and everyone else is weak and dumb compared to him!

And yet I still like that version of Naruto about 1000 times more than Sasuke. *shrug*

So I guess what I'm saying is if you got upset about anything I said in the chapter, I understand. Just try not to be too angry when you lambast me, lol.

And thanks for reading!]

* * *

**Perks 1000 cp + 3450 cp = 4450 cp**

·**Chakra Coils 0 cp**

·**Elemental Affinity: Earth 0 cp**

·**Unlimiter -400 cp**

·**Kekkei-Genkai -400 cp**

·**True Name -500 cp**

·**Shinobi -100 cp**

·**Masked 0 cp**

·**Brilliant Mind -200 cp**

·**True Genius -300 cp**

·**Kyuubi-chan -200 cp**

**Items +400 cp**

·**Ninja Weapons0 cp**

·**Shadow Clones -100 cp**

·**Summoning Contract: Snakes -200 cp**

·**ANBU Mask 0 cp**

·**Uchiha Jutsu Archive -200 cp**

·**Clan Jumper -300 cp**

·**Sample Collection -400 cp**

**Bloodline +1000 bp**

·**Byakugan -600 bp**

·**Tenseigan -400 cp**

**Scenarios**

·**Summoner of the Divine +500 cp**

·**Sealmaster +500 cp**

·**God of Shinobi +500 cp**

**Drawbacks**

·**Diapers and…Sunshine? +200 cp**

·**Got Lost on the Road of Life +200 cp**

**Banked CP: 3450**


	87. Naruto 1

[AN: Okay, just like with the ATG world, or the HSDK world, Carl's name will remain Carl. I know it makes some people cringe when using an English name in an Asian setting, but it amuses me and I don't really care.

Just be happy I'm not going to be having Hinata call Carl Nissan all the time.

And since I'm not going to be using honorifics, since I doubt I would put them in the right places and times, I'm going to try to be using English terms like heir, miss, lady, etc..]

* * *

When he first woke up in the morning, he didn't know where he was. Or why his pillow was so damned uncomfortable. He was used to big pillow cushions that his head sank into, not this firm thing that felt almost like a rock.

He sat up and took in his surroundings. The firm pillow that was so uncomfortable and yet oddly familiar at the same time was a small tan colored rectangular thing. It was a firmly packed pillow with no give around a base of what felt like wood.

Looking around, he saw that he had been sleeping bundled up in some blankets on a mat directly on the floor, not a bed. Looking around the room, he saw that he was in a very square looking room. All the angles on everything was very right angle, was the impression he had. There were sliding doors, the walls looked like they were made out of very light material that could easily be punched through. The room was done in whites and browns.

Carl looked down at his body and saw he was in a very small child's body.

'The last thing I remember is talking with Cordelia about the Jump Chain just before leaving the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I certainly didn't expect to suddenly be in a child's body in what looks like a Japanese style room. And I'm what, four? Five years old?' Carl thought as he was looking down at his small body.

A small four year old body that seemed to be in unusually good shape, now that he looked at it. Like having six pack abs fitness level. Pushing the blankets back, he got to his feet and started poking around the room, looking for clues. There was a bookshelf with scrolls stacked on it on one side of the room.

'I guess that makes it a scroll shelf, not a bookshelf.' Carl chuckled quietly to himself. His years of hunting vampires and demons while in Sunnydale and L.A. cautioned him to keep quiet until he understood his odd situation.

And he definitely felt odd and out of place. He had a sensation that he was forgetting something. That it was just on the edge of his awareness. If he could only reach it.

Picking up one of the scrolls, he realized that he recognized a lot of the characters, even though he never picked up any Japanese back in Sunnydale. He had been too busy learning magic and training with the girls to pick up too many languages. And those he did learn were ancient languages that helped him with magic and fighting demons.

Scanning through the scroll, he saw that it was a training manual for basic exercises and stretches that would prepare the user's body for the Juken, the Gentle Fist style.

'Gentle Fist, isn't that the Hyuga's martial art from Naruto?' Carl was shocked, looking around for a mirror. Now that he thought about it, his hair was unusually long as it swished around his head while he had been looking around. He usually kept it cut short. Not to mention that it was now black, as opposed to the brown he usually had.

There was a chest and some drawers near the scroll-shelf that Carl rummaged through, finding quite a few sets of clothes in his size, some "toys" that were basically primer ninja tools, and he finally came across a mirror. Looking at his face in the mirror, he saw that he had the classic Hyuga look. His iris and pupils were the same pearl-white color so they looked like one solid color.

His face was a pale white, he had black hair that hung straight back off his head and draped over his shoulders. And he looked like a cute stern little chibi. Even when he tried to smile, he looked stern. The Hyuga clan was known for being without humor.

'Must be the Hyuga curse, or something.' Carl thought in bewilderment, completely confused about how he got from the BtVS world to here.

And it was while he was staring in his pearl colored eyes, that suddenly the sense of oddness and disorientation disappeared with a snap and he remembered his entire life here in the Hyuga clan of Konoha.

He was Carl Hyuga, the heir of the Hyuga clan.

'It must be a Jump Chain thing. I can't see them naming me "Carl" otherwise unless some outside force interfered.'

His father was Hiashi, his mother was Himari, and his twin sister was Hinata. His mother Himari was pregnant and due to give birth in the next three months.

He was four and a half years old today.

Carl started remembering more. He remembered his daily routine from the time he was one. A caretaker would come and help him get ready for the day, doing his morning toilet and face washing.

He would eat with his family, then he and Hinata would train. Their training was directed play where their "trainer" would start instilling the skills and habits needed to survive as a ninja in this world.

People in his old world would be horrified to see them starting to "train" children as young as a year old, even if it was disguised as play time. But the fact of the matter, when Carl thought about it, was that if a clan wanted to survive the cutthroat world of shinobi, they needed their children to have every advantage they possibly could.

Especially when they were part of a clan that had such coveted eyes that people were willing to do nearly anything to get the eyes. Cut out the eyes, steal genetic material, or even seduce and have a child off of them.

If surviving as a ninja clan meant that they disguised training as play time so that their children's bodies were strong and able to learn ninja skills that much earlier, than that's what they would do.

Looking through his memories, he saw how kind his mother Himari was, and how Hinata took after her. But just because those two were kind and gentle didn't mean they didn't have their strong points. Hinata could be incredibly stubborn when she wanted something, and he, as her older brother, usually gave in to her pouting puppy dog eyes.

A moment later, Carl sucked in his breath in shock. The incident at his and Hinata's third birthday party pretty much went like in the canon story, except that the Kumo ninja tried to kidnap both him and Hinata, instead of just Hinata.

But that Kumo ninja was still chased down and killed by Hiashi very quickly. And just like in the Naruto story, Hizashi gave up his life to appease the warmongering of Kumo.

Carl was filling in a lot of blanks here, since as a three year old the adults wouldn't talk about such serious matters where he could overhear.

Maybe in other worlds the adults would carelessly talk in the hearing of little kids so he could have gained a lot more information concerning the event. But this was a ninja village. They knew how precocious some clan children could be, so they were much more cautious.

No, the thing that tipped off Carl was that in his memories his father's brother suddenly stopped coming by with Neji for play/training time. And at the same time their cousin Neji suddenly became much more standoffish, not wanting to spend time with them.

'Aish, now that I've got these memories and feelings of kinship with Neji, I can see how Hinata could have still cared for Neji during the Chuunin exams even though he was a complete ass to her.' Carl sighed.

Cousin Neji was a good friend and older brother figure to both he and Hinata; he was a year older than them and acted like an older brother. And it wasn't like a switch was flipped when Neji's father died and he suddenly hated the two of them. It was a much more gradual change that had been happening over the past couple of years.

Seeing the memories of the past year and a half in one go, he could see how there was a general downward trend in Neji's behavior and attitude. Some days he would be friendly, some days he would be withdrawn.

It was likely because of the B.S. branch house slavery thing going on that Neji grew more and more withdrawn over the past year and a half. And if that trend continued, things would just get worse and worse.

In the canon version of events everything probably took a sharp downward turn when Himari died in child birth, leaving Hiashi grieving and unable to take care of five year old Hinata and baby Hanabi properly. Which left his family, especially Hinata, open to the political machinations of the clan.

Or at least that's what Carl was assuming and guessing.

It probably benefitted someone to subtly sabotage Hinata's confidence and feelings of self worth over time while Hiashi wasn't paying attention. And after breaking Hinata's confidence and ability to fight properly, whisper a few words in Hiashi's ears about how unworthy Hinata was, especially compared to Neji, and Hiashi would be swayed by seeing Hinata's poor performance.

And the worse Hinata's confidence got, the more poorly she would do in training with Neji, leading him to have a worsening attitude towards his "unworthy" cousin. Add in someone whispering poison in his ear about fate, and it made sense how their relationship had slipped away into what it was in canon.

'A perfect convergence of multiple things going wrong all at once and people nudging things to destabilize it even more.' Carl sighed. 'And just how was I able to see the signs of all these political and underhanded schemes from just a few clues? Why am I so positive that I'm right about it all? It's very strange, but it seems as clear as day to me.'

Carl placed the scroll back on the shelves and sat back down on his bedding. He knew he didn't have much time before the servant would show up to help him prepare for the day. He was desperately thinking of some way to derail this whole train wreck.

'Damn, why did I focus so much on combat and ritual magic?!' Carl frustratedly punched his bedding. 'I should have learned some more medical knowledge. Maybe then I could heal my mother here and stop a lot crap from happening.'

It felt pretty bad to know that the boulder was slowly and inexorably rolling down a gentle slope towards a big cliff. If he could just stop it before it got to that point, he could prevent a lot of sadness and heartache in his family. But he just didn't have the skills to do so!

He knew there was amazing medical jutsu in this world, but that didn't help him, not at all. There was no doubt that Hiashi already had the best medical personnel available for when Himari gave birth to Hanabi, but it hadn't made any difference in canon, his mother still died.

There was no way for him to gain enough medical knowledge in the 2-3 months they had before the tragedy.

He was pretty sure Tsunade could help his mother stay alive, but what could he, a four year old, do to get her to come to Konaha and be willing to help?

Absolutely nothing, that's what.

'I guess the only thing I can do is to pick up the pieces afterwards and try to keep this family together.' Carl sighed, pretty much resigned to it. He really was powerless to do anything about it as a freaking four year old.

"Carl, it's time to wake up." The voice of the servant, Nuo, came from the other side of the sliding door.

"I'm up." Carl followed his memories and quickly got dressed and followed Nuo to the bathroom, taking care of business and washing his face and cleaning his mouth.

He soon found himself kneeling at the table with his small family.

"Good morning Carl." Hinata gave a sweet smile at seeing her twin brother.

Carl sighed a bit inside at the sight. She had no idea what was coming for them, or that their mother would die soon. It was best to not indicate anything was wrong. Let Hinata enjoy the next three months as much as possible to store up good memories.

"Good morning Hinata." Carl smiled back at her and then greeted his parents. "Father, Mother. Good morning."

Carl picked up his chopsticks and began eating, following the etiquette that resided in his brain. The mealtime was not a time for talk, so he too kept silent, even if he was looking at his family out of the corner of his eyes.

He suddenly got a shock to his system, as he finally realized how much his vision had changed. He was able to see pretty much 360 degrees around him at all times, as long as he paid attention in a certain way. A trick of concentration allowed him to focus his vision in any direction, or to just see the wide 359 degrees at once, though that was taxing on his mind. He didn't need to turn his head to see behind him, he just needed to shift his focus.

There were so many memories over the past four and a half years that he hadn't fully grasped everything that he "remembered". Now that he focused on the subject, he remembered learning that the Byakugan always gave its user the incredible expanded field of view. They didn't always see chakra or have the x-ray vision enabled, but their expanded view was always on.

It was only when they fed chakra to their eyes that they gained the ability to see chakra, see in x-ray, and have the telescopic or microscopic vision. And feeding chakra to their eyes to activate those abilities is what caused the veins around their eyes to bulge out, giving the visible clue to their use of their dojutsu.

And from what he read and remembered from lectures, even the ability to finely see all the chakra tenketsu points and pathways was something that needed a lot of training. It wasn't something that happened naturally.

In fact, all their eye's abilities needed a lot of training. Even the ability to focus on more than one point at a time to take advantage of their nearly 360 degree vision for situational awareness needed plenty of training.

'These eyes are so badass!' Carl smirked inside at the ability to be watching his back while not appearing to.

Thinking back over his lessons, he remembered that many of the Hyuga that focused on being scouts put in more effort on training their telescopic vision. Most of the medics focused on microscopic and x-ray vision to assist them with diagnosing injuries and other medical conditions. And the combat forces mostly focused on training their combat abilities in conjunction with their ability to see the chakra pathways, which is what they needed to see for the Gentle Fist style.

It was a rare thing for someone to be highly gifted in all aspects of the Byakugan, because it took so much training time to reach the really impressive accomplishments that specialized training gave them.

'And that specialization and mutual reliance is probably one of the reasons the main house elders are so desperate to keep the house together, even if they have to resort to slavery.' Carl sadly thought about his clan's situation.

He could see the pragmatism inherent in that decision. He didn't like it, and he definitely wanted to change the way the Hyuga did things. He would just have to work extra hard, since as a nearly five year old he couldn't do anything about it for now.

'Guess in addition to my normal training I've got to study some Sealing arts, if I want to be able to change the tradition of the Caged Bird Seal.' Carl pondered as he continued eating. 'Cause I'm sure the elders here wouldn't help me figure out how to get rid of it or make one without the pain inflicting function to control the Branch House, or the death inflicting function. It really is despicable that they resort to that pain control slavery thing to control their own family.'

The meal soon finished and Hinata grabbed his hand, pulling him out of the room with her in her exuberance to start a day of training.

"Come on, Carl! It's time to do some training!" She sing songed.

Carl looked back over his shoulder to see his mother smiling gently after them, while his father nodded his head stoically, but with an air of being pleased.

It was nice to see such a carefree Hinata, even if it was a shock at first. He was so used thinking of her as a timid and shy girl because of the show. But apparently before the tragedy of her mother's death and the continual environment of verbal and emotional abuse she was a lively and vivacious little girl who was excited to play train with her brother.

Carl kept up with her as they made their way to the training "play" ground, enjoying listening to her talk about how mother had shown her how to press flowers to preserve their beauty and how to process plants to extract their essence for use in making pastes.

'That must have been where she got the skills and desire to make medicinal pastes and ointments, from our mother.' Carl realized.

They soon arrived, and Carl followed the memories in his head of the various stretches and calisthenics. It was odd though, he felt like it was much easier to get through the various sets than it was in his memory. Even his memories of the previous day showed he struggled to get through the entire thing.

"No fair, how are you still going?" Hinata was even panting on the side, while he was still going strong.

"I dunno, Hinata. I just feel so full of energy today!"

"Humph, well I'm not letting you leave me behind!" The cute little sister of his stubbornly said as she continued pushing herself.

"Don't worry, you won't be left behind, cause you're doing great!" Carl called out in an encouraging manner. He wanted to make sure his sister had the confidence she lacked in the show. He liked this cheerful version of her.

'I guess waking up my memories of the previous life had some kind of effect on me?' Carl pondered over his newfound stamina while he and Hinata were doing their cooling down stretches, but had no real answers, only guesses.

He still didn't know what was up with the jump chain. He had left the BtVS world and come straight here. Shouldn't there be some jump document for him to fill out, like what he had done before entering the BtVS world?

As he was freshening up and preparing for the book learning part of the day, he had a thought pop into his head.

'What if I picked some kind of drawback that made me lose my memories?' Carl gasped. 'Why the hell would I do that to myself? Past Carl, you jerk!'

It was a close thing, but he almost yelled that last bit out loud.

It took a while for him to steady his breathing. And calm down.

Obviously his memories were returning, or he wouldn't have remembered enough to freak out in the first place.

So his first set of memories returned when he was four and a half. Does that mean he has to wait another four and a half years until he's nine so he can remember more?

Carl groaned. He'll be in his second year of the academy by then, if that's the case.

'Well, there's not much I can do about it.' Depression was evident in every line of his body at his helpless inability to make it happen any faster.

After the morning training session, they had a bath, ate some lunch, and went to the study where they began their studies.

And that was a bit of a cultural shock for Carl at first, the family bathing situation. If he didn't have the memories of his time growing up, he would have been shocked that he and Hinata would bathe together and that they would be joined by their mother and father daily in bathing after morning practice.

Carl figured it was one of the cultural and family bonding things. He just internally shrugged and went along with it, since he already had plenty of memories of it happening.

Once they had finished eating lunch and were in the study room, he looked curiously over on the other side of the study room where Hinata was happily practicing her writing skills. She seemed in good spirits, even though she was doing something so boring. In fact, he hadn't seen her not happy once today.

Even in his memories, she only rarely got sad. And that was mostly so she could convince him to do something for her.

'Huh.' Carl was shocked at his thought. 'Maybe that's why she so gravitated to Naruto. His upbeat attitude reminded her of what she used to be, the happiness and cheerfulness that she lost in the face of the abuse and campaign to break her down in her own clan after her mother died. She admired Naruto because unlike her, he kept up a cheerful façade in the face of so much mistreatment, even if it was only mask deep.'

Picking up his own brush, he began his own practice. Copying a scroll served the purposes of both practicing his calligraphy skills and reading practice as he absorbed the information in the scroll.

But the odd thing was that he found himself retaining the knowledge from the scroll so much easier than he should have been able to.

'Huh. Is an excellent memory another perk that I just don't remember yet?' Carl thought. 'If that's the case, then it is likely I've got a whole lot of skills that I don't actively remember yet. And isn't that amusing, I have an improved memory but can't remember getting it.' He faintly smiled at the small bit of humor.

"That's enough calligraphy and reading practice for now, Carl, Hinata." Nuo said. "Pack up your supplies for now. You've got a bit of free time before dinner, but we'll expect you to be ready for Byakugan training afterword."

"Okay!" Hinata chirped as she literally hopped to.

"Yes." Carl smiled at his sister's exuberance while he followed suit, except for the hopping.

The training later that night was various exercises on how to vary the chakra being sent to their eyes and how to learn to control their eyes' various functions. They were introduced to the various exercises they could do to strengthen their Byakugan's various abilities.

It was really easy for Carl to figure out how to do it. It was almost instinctual and incredibly easy to control his chakra usage. He was quite surprised at that. He thought he would have to train a lot harder to get as good as he was. But after practicing it once, he was already figuring out how to improve and do it better.

Hinata pouted a bit when she found out how much better than her Carl was doing. So he spent some time appeasing her and giving her tips and hints. She was very talented in her own right, and was soon progressing faster and faster. Hinata was very good at working under positive reinforcement.

Carl wasn't being biased or anything, but he thought that Hinata was much more talented in pure Byakugan usage then Neji. (He was totally being biased.)

In his memories Neji's skill seemed to be focused on using the Gentle Fist combat skill. That's where he shone.

Which is what everyone that was a scheming bitca was going to be using to break down Hinata's confidence. Even from just his memories and one morning of training he could see that her body type and skills didn't lend themselves to the standard Gentle Fist. She definitely needed alternate forms.

He was actually working himself up into a fine fit of anger, thinking about how the Hyuga clan, in a completely different reality, ignored the arts, skills, and techniques that suited his sister so they could push her around and abuse her. They worked hard to break her down from the cheerful girl she was currently into someone so timid that she couldn't even bring herself to introduce herself to someone she admired and wanted to get to know, namely Naruto.

'Breathe, Carl.' He commanded himself. 'Breathe, and calm down. There's no use getting mad at a bunch of idiots that haven't had a chance to do anything yet. Or those that are in a different reality and further up the time stream.'

He was soon calm again. He was trying not to focus on the issues with his clan, it would just set him off again.

This day was just a damned emotional rollercoaster for him.

He was still adjusting to finding himself with new memories and in a totally different world so abruptly. It was a shock to his system. And it didn't help at all that anytime he saw random tidbits of information he could immediately deduce how to use it for all kinds of shady reasons from political machination to breaking a person, to ruining their reputation.

He didn't even know just where all these ideas of how to manipulate people and take control of a political entity like a clan were coming from! And he couldn't stop the ideas from popping in his head! It was maddening!

He couldn't even properly enjoy a day of being a kid, training and studying with his twin sister without realizing all the ways she was screwed over by the clan in the hypothetical future.

If he didn't have any memories at all of the original comic and show, he was sure that he wouldn't be thinking of all these things that filled in the blanks between what is and what could be. All the dirty tricks they played on his cute little sister!

As Carl laid in bed, trying to sleep, he hoped that once all these ideas of the dirty dealings had popped in his head once, they would leave him be to enjoy his second childhood of learning how to be a sneaky snake, er.. a competent shinobi.

Finally, he slept.

* * *

"He's finally fallen asleep." Hiashi stated redundantly aloud to his wife. He knew she was watching over their troubled son just as much as he was. It was unusual to see him so upset over something that they couldn't deduce the cause of.

"Do you have any idea what was bothering him so much today?" Himari queried from where she was sitting in their bundle of blankets and mats, cradling her unborn child in her stomach.

"No." Hiashi paused where he had been pacing back and forth. In public he would never show the slightest bit of worry or unease so as not to allow any weaknesses to be seized upon by their enemies. But he loved and trusted his wife and her council, so he allowed himself to relax behind closed doors.

When he saw her frowning, Hiashi stepped to her side and placed a comforting hand on her back, rubbing circles to soothe her.

"Whatever it is, we'll be here to resolve it when he brings his worries to us." Hiashi comforted.

Himari's brows smoothed out as she looked up at Hiashi with a smile of appreciation for his words of comfort.

"I just worry what would happen to my family if anything were to happen to me." She whispered. "This pregnancy…feels different. My body feels weak, like it could give out at any time."

"Nothing will happen to you." Hiashi almost fiercely stated. "Everything will be fine, you'll see."

Realizing that it was her turn to comfort her spouse, she dropped her worries and smiled winsomely up at her husband.

"Of course, dear. Now, come to bed. It's time to sleep."

Hiashi obliged and climbed under the covers on his side of their bedding, settled down with his wife's head on his shoulder.

"If our son is still upset tomorrow, then I'll assign someone trusted to investigate anyone who has any contact with them, and find out what was said to upset him." Hiashi finally stated. His wife didn't say anything, but he could feel her relax even more into his side, as there was now a sold plan to address their concerns of why their boy was acting so unnerved and upset all day long.

* * *

"Carl, it's time to wake up."

His eyes snapped open, confusion evident in them for a moment before memory returned and they cleared up. He had just left the BtVS world and was now in the Naruto world.

"I'm up, Nuo. I'll be out in a moment." Carl called. He heard the old servant Nuo settle into a waiting stance beyond the door.

'Huh, how did I know that just from the sounds of his movement? Ninja stuff I guess.' Carl dismissed. So many new things were happening to him, that if there was one more, it wasn't such a big deal. Just roll with the punches.

As he dressed and did his morning toilet, he pondered over his odd situation. After a night of sleep, as little as it had been, he felt much more rested and centered. He felt fully capable of facing this new world and his odd circumstances.

It helped immensely that he had a support structure of the Hyuga clan to watch over him and see to his needs. His memories of his new family here comforted him. He had a caring, if stern, father, a gentle and kind mother, and a cheerful twin sister that made his days fun.

If he was some nameless orphan with no resources or people he could lean on, he would probably freak out quite a bit. Especially knowing that this was a world where great physical and chakra intensive battles happened. If he didn't have a clan to teach him combat, he would really be worried about surviving here!

The only reason he had survived so much and been so successful for the past 10 years in the BtVS world was because of the capable friends and allies he had. Not to mention that he had ambushed most of those threats from the shadows before they knew he was there. If he had to fight them in straight up physical combat, he would be killed in one hit!

And while he was now in a world that focused on and relied on physical strength and combat power, he was happy that he was in such a powerful clan as the Hyuga that could teach him how to be a powerful melee fighter. It would shore up his weakness and allow him to survive, that was for sure.

Given enough time to prepare a ritual and set up an ambush, he was sure he could take out even S-rank threats with his magic. The problem was that this was a world of freaking ninja! There was no way they would give him the chance to set up said ambushes, nor would they carelessly walk into those ambushes without a care!

Not to mention that he needed some kind of sympathetic link to them to do any kinds of ritual spells against them without being there in person. And trying to do anything sneaky around them, like stealing even a bit of their hair or blood, would immediately get his throat cut. Or worse, tortured and experimented on.

So it was all the more important that he learn all the ninja skills he could. And having the opportunity to learn the Hyuga style of combat that could keep him alive long enough against big threats to pull out the magic to tip the scales was priceless.

'But it's not like I'm actually going to be facing those huge threats.' Carl thought. 'Since I've only got 10 years in each world, and being the same age as Hinata, I'll probably end up leaving this world at about the age of 15, in the middle of Naruto's training trip with Jiraiya. Those huge threats don't come around until after he gets back, which was when I'd be around 16 if I stayed long enough in this world. Well, aside from the invasion during the chuunin exam. I'll have to create a plan for that later on. Even if the plan is as simple as sneak attacking the enemy while keeping as safe as possible.'

Finished with his morning routine, he joined his family for breakfast, enjoying the tranquil atmosphere.

With his mind at ease, Carl settled easily into his memory's routine. In the morning was physical training with his sister. After lunch was study time and training various skills related to knowledge and the scholarly arts. And in the evenings before bed was the time spent training their Byakugan eyes.

Thinking about their daily schedule gave Carl many insights into the Hyuga clan and life in Konoha in general.

He knew both from the Naruto show back in the day and due to his lessons here in the Hyuga clan that chakra was a mixture of mental and physical energy. It was good to keep those two energies balanced, especially for the Hyuga style of combat which required a great deal of precision.

So one part of their day was devoted to physical training, one part was devoted to mental training. And because so much of their clan identity, life, and security precautions were focused on their special eye's dojutsu, the last part of their training was focused on training their eye's abilities.

One of the things that was interesting to Carl was that their study time wasn't solely devoted to studying ninja skills and arts. After thinking about it, he realized that any kind of study that focused on the mental aspect of a person would do. And as one of the two biggest noble clans of Konoha, it was important for them to keep up a certain amount of respectability.

So their study time wasn't only memorizing ninja skills or playing shogi. He and Hinata also practiced the art of painting, calligraphy, and playing a musical instrument, in this case the both of them practiced playing the Junanagen, the 17 string koto, or at least a scaled down version for their small sized hands. Their hands and arms couldn't stretch far enough to play the full size version yet.

Carl was impressed at how talented Hinata was at the musical instrument. She was only four and a half and she was already so good! He made sure to praise her for her skills, trying to make sure her confidence was strong, in case they ran into the same problems later that happened in the original storyline; where the clan tried to break her down mentally.

There really must be something to chakra being able to mature ninja bodies early, or something along those lines, for such young children as they were to be able to learn so much so quickly.

One of the things that surprised him over the next several weeks was how easy everything was coming to him. Both his physical training and mental studies were so easy. He only had to glance over a scroll once and it was imprinted in his memory. He only had to see someone performing an exercise and he could immediately duplicate the feat after only one try.

Granted, it wasn't perfect on his first try, he still had to do repetitions to perfect the moves. But he understood the concepts and ways he had to move to accomplish the movement or attacks and improved at incredible speeds.

Even figuring out how to use and train his Byakugan was utter simplicity. Especially once he practiced watching chakra flows with his eyes. Once he could see what someone's chakra was doing when they demonstrated a skill, it was incredibly easy to break it down and figure out how to do it himself. He could then use his eyes to guide Hinata in how to mold her chakra, so her training speed was improved as well.

It almost scared Carl to death at first, since he didn't previously have such a talent for learning, and anything unknown could be dangerous. Then he slapped himself when he realized he was freaking himself out for no reason. Obviously he still had buried memories. So he probably had a perk that was able to be used, even if he didn't actively remember it.

So Carl's daily struggle wasn't memorizing and learning the things he should, it was holding back from showing off how good he was. He really didn't want to get the reputation of a "genius" here in the ninja world for a number of reasons.

Not least of which was that it made him a target for all those enemy ninjas or bounty hunters that were perverse enough to like such a challenge, or took "pleasure" in ending a genius' life before he blossomed into an actual threat.

Too bad Konoha didn't just call every single genin hopeful a "genius" to flood the market and confuse the spies as to just who were the real talents. Of course, if the stupid teachers and bootlickers could actually refrain from bragging and crowing about the smarter ninja trainees, a lot of problems would have been solved right there. Loose lips sink ships and all that.

But that was something that just couldn't happen because of human nature.

Another important reason he held back was because he didn't want to damage his beautiful twin sister's confidence. He was working so hard to build her up and make sure she trained right. He didn't have time for some ass kisser to come along and belittle his sister's accomplishments just to try to puff up Carl's sense of self importance in a strategy to brown nose the heir of the clan.

And it wouldn't work like said brown noser wanted anyway. Carl would not be flattered in the least. Instead he would see it for what it was: an attack on his beloved sister.

There was only one response for anyone who attacked his family: end the threat.

In this case it didn't necessarily mean killing anyone who attacked Hinata like that. But he would not allow anyone to do such actions against his family.

'A Juken strike to the balls should do just fine.' Carl sometimes darkly thought. He was pretty sure he wouldn't act on such thoughts without provocation. 'Maybe I should go for the knees first? The balls are a bit extreme for a first time offense. Save that for round two if they don't get the hint.'

So Carl's days consisted of keeping his blossoming skills under wraps to remain more average while helping Hinata train. Also spending time with his new parents at meals, in the baths, and during occasional training sessions with his father, and spending time with their mother in the garden on their occasional break times.

Strangely enough, he found that it was quite easy to keep his skills hidden. It was only his own boredom and desire to test the limits of where he was that caused him to have a hard time holding back sometimes. But anytime he looked over and saw Hinata's happy face, he easily found his motivation. He didn't want to ruin that smile.

Before Carl knew it, three months had passed since he regained his memories. And his mother went into labor.

All of his fears and doubts came rushing back. Because he knew that it was very likely his gentle and loving mother would be dying in childbirth in the next day or so, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Could he keep Hinata strong and happy afterwards? With their mother dead and their father going cold and distant? With their newborn baby sister to watch over? With the vultures circling around them and trying to pick them apart?

Would he be able to do it?

These doubts circled around Carl's mind as he, Hinata, and Hiashi waited outside the birthing room, waiting for the news.

Hinata was holding his hand tightly, knowing that the situation was tense.

Hiashi paced back and forth, wincing every time he heard his wife groaning in pain.

Carl breathed deep, hardening his resolve to protect Hinata and Hanabi from the vultures at any cost.

And then Carl felt a strange disassociation in his mind. It felt like he was floating inside his own body.

And he suddenly remembered the time he spent in the Cosmic Warehouse after he left behind the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world. He remembered his choices of how to furnish his Warehouse and why. He remembered picking his body modifications that enhanced his base body and especially enhanced his senses.

And just before he was going to find out the next world he was jumping to, the flood of memories cut off.

"Carl, are you okay?" Hinata worriedly asked him.

Carl only then realized he was sprawled in his chair bonelessly, having almost collapsed from the memory.

"Yeah." He shakily answered Hinata.

Just then the door opened and one of the doctors came out. He tried to whisper to Hiashi, but Carl heard just fine. He had Tier 4 senses, after all.

"There were complications, Lord Hiashi. Your wife is fading fast, though your new daughter is fine. If you want to say goodbye to your wife, now is the time."

Carl was struck by a realization. He had the medical bay in his Warehouse! He could save their mother!

He immediately jumped to his feet and ran to his father, pulling along Hinata, who was still grasping his hand.

"Father!" Carl urgently said, grabbing his father's hand tightly to gain his attention from the shock he just received. "You need to clear out the room so only mother is there! I've just learned something that can help her recover, but it must remain a secret!"

His father gazed down at him, almost absentmindedly, while the doctor scoffed scornfully at Carl.

"I'm sorry Lord Hiashi, but there is nothing that can be done for your-urk!"

The arrogant tone and words coming from the doctor was cut off as Hiashi attacked as fast as lightning and knocked the arrogant man unconscious. The doctor offered no hope and had already consigned his beloved wife to death. Even if it didn't work out for the best, he would grasp onto the hope his son offered him. He had no time to deal with obstacles that would try to ruin any chance his wife had to live.

"Come!" Hiashi said as he strode forward and opened the door. Carl and Hinata followed along behind him. "Everyone out. Now!"

Such was Hiashi's stern facial expressions and radiated Killing Intent that the medical personnel and servants didn't question him and immediately ran for it.

The moment the door closed behind them, leaving only Hiashi, Carl, and Hinata standing there, looking down at Himari's weak and barely conscious body and Hanabi in a crib to the side.

Without explanation Carl simply opened up a portal in the wall.

"Carry mother inside, father. There is a device inside that can save her!" Carl immediately pulled Hinata over to pick up the crib with Hanabi inside. Carrying Hanabi, and with Hinata following along, he entered the portal.

Hiashi didn't hesitate either at the strange sight; this was the only chance his wife had to live. He gently picked up his wife, following along.

Carl was momentarily taken aback, as he saw that the Warehouse was absolutely packed full of items that he didn't remember. There were also a few doors and an airlock in the walls that he had no idea where they went.

Shaking off the confusion as unimportant for the moment, Carl led the way over to the medical bay.

"Place her on that bed there, father."

Once his mother was on the bed, Carl activated the scanning and healing function. The family of three, which included a sleeping newborn, waited while the process completed in less than five minutes.

"Dear, where are we?"

Carl saw his father sag in relief when Himari woke up and spoke with unexpected vigor in her voice.

"Mother!" Hinata cried and jumped on the bed to hug her mother.

There were a lot of things she didn't understand about what had been happening, but Hinata knew that her mother had almost died just now. The relief that her much loved mother was going to be fine was almost overwhelming.

Carl caught his father looking at him.

"What is this place, Carl? And how do you have access to it?"

"Father, I…" Carl trailed off. What and how much of his unique situation to explain? A reasonable explanation that wasn't too heavy was called for.

"As I was sitting with Hinata, memories suddenly flooded my mind. Memories of my past life in a different world as a completely different person. The version of me in that life had the ability to access this dimensional storage. I tried it out and could open a doorway, so I knew the memories were real. I remembered the healing bed he had, and knew it could be used to save mother."

Carl moved over and fiddled with the controls as he printed out a report on his mother's scanning results in a language his father new.

"As for why I suddenly have these memories and ability, I have no idea father. I'm just grateful I received them in time to save mother. According to this device's scans, mother was poisoned with a slow acting poison."

He handed the printout to his father. Hiashi's face became even more stone-like as anger threatened to rise at the evidence of a plot to kill his wife. The issue of his son suddenly waking up memories of his past life and having such a strange place was suddenly much less important than the fact that someone was trying to kill his wife.

Reading over the report, he saw the type of poison that was used. It was an expensive one. Which meant that any records of the poison being sold within the past several years were likely still around. He had a lead to find out who it was that was poisoning his wife. He would follow that lead back to whoever dared plot against his family, and they would pay.

"Hiashi? What's going on?" Himari asked from where she was laying on the table cuddling Hanabi while Hinata leaned against their mother.

"Nothing to worry about just now, dear. How are you feeling?" Hiashi deflected for now. They could talk about it after she had some rest.

"I feel wonderful, actually." Himari got up, still holding Hinata in her arms. "Which is quite strange because I just gave birth, and was on the edge of…" She trailed off, not wanting to state it so bluntly where Hinata could hear.

"But you're fine now, which is all that matters." Hiashi smiled.

Carl did a double take! His stern father actually smiled!

"Father, we should have Hanabi undergo a scan too. If mother's poison was passed on to Hanabi, we want to make sure it is healed immediately." Carl said after recovering from the shock caused by seeing Hiashi smiling.

"A good idea, Carl. In fact, we should all undergo a scan, just to be sure." Any skepticism Hiashi may have had about the fantastical med bay was alleviated by seeing how quickly Himari was healed.

Several minutes later, the whole family was scanned and healed. The results had shocked Carl, since they were so unexpected.

Hanabi's results had showed that she had suffered only a little bit from second hand exposure to the poison that had nearly killed their mother. With the small amount she had in her system, as long as she wasn't poisoned again, she wouldn't suffer from it. The poison would work its way out of her system within a few weeks as long as she wasn't constantly being poisoned.

It didn't take any longer to purge Hanabi of the poison than it did for Himari.

Hiashi's scan showed signs of the buildup of a narcotic that would have affected his mood in subtle ways, leading him to becoming colder and emotionally remote.

Carl thought about how the Canon story would have gone and wondered about the undercurrents that were never shown in the original story. Hiashi was a highly trained jonin, an A ranked ninja, at least. If the poisoning had been any less subtle, he would have immediately noticed. But being emotionally cold and distant in the wake of the death of his beloved wife? That's something that he would have just taken as grief, and continued his routine, coping as well as he could.

Hinata and Carl were showing signs of being drugged with something that would have affected their coordination and confidence. The more difficulties they had with their coordination and training, the more it would affect their confidence. And they would be more open to criticism and blaming themselves for not being good enough.

While he felt a little afraid at the insidious plot against his family, he was also feeling furious inside. With a little focus to shift his vision to watch his parent's faces, Carl could see that his father and mother also saw the implications in the plot.

Hiashi's wife dies, leaving him grief stricken and emotionally distant. His children show they are untalented, allowing the criticism of the Elders to intensify. This weakness in Hiashi's leadership lets the Hyuga Elders gain more power and say in clan matters. Hiashi, unable to muster the emotions necessary to remain close to his children, leave them open to attack and belittlement. Meanwhile the path is open for the clan elders to manipulate and train Hanabi as their puppet ruler.

Within 15-20 years they would be able to gather enough sway in the clan to depose Hiashi as the clan leader, put Carl and Hinata in the branch clan with the Caged Bird seal due to their unsuitability as heirs, and have Hanabi be their puppet leader. She would be groomed to listen to them and marry one of their sons, bringing the line of succession to their family.

A long reaching plan that was years in the making and execution. Carl was disgusted.

After everyone went through a round of healing, Carl's family exited the Warehouse and returned to the birthing room. He saw the significant exchanged looks between Hiashi and Himari, saying without words that he would take care of rooting out the traitors while she remained to protect their children.

Carl had closed the portal, and acting on an impulse he didn't understand at the time, opened up a pinholes sized portal on an out of the way fold of his clothes. He wasn't sure why he would keep it open, but it felt like the thing to do.

"Carl, Hinata." Carl and Hinata's attention snapped to their father. They paid special attention due to the serious tone of his voice. "Tell absolutely no one about this, especially about Carl's ability to summon up this dimensional space. You never know when someone might be listening, so don't even talk about it with each other. Do you understand?"

"Yes, father."

"I understand, father."

"Good. Now, stay here with your mother. I have some things to do." Without waiting another word, Hiashi opened the door, exchanged loving glances with his wife, and closed the door.

Carl followed his mother and Hinata back to the bed, where they sat on either side of her, cuddled up to her side as she carefully picked up Hanabi.

"Doesn't your sister look cute?" Himari cooed at her new daughter.

"Yes, both my sisters are too cute." Carl chuckled aloud. Hinata giggled at the compliment.

"What's her name?" Hinata asked as he carefully touched her sister's hands, marveling at how small she was.

"We decided to name her Hanabi."

"She's so cute." Hinata cooed, looking at her sister. "We're going to have so much fun, baby sister Hanabi."

"Yes, she is cute, isn't she?" Carl whispered as he enjoyed the time just resting with his family. His mind, though, was wandering all over the place.

He had seen how packed the Warehouse was, with mysterious doors in the walls, shelves packed to the ceiling with storage boxes, and some odd machines that he couldn't make heads nor tails of. Just how many worlds had he been through before he arrived here? And why was his memory only returning a small chunk at a time?

How was his father doing in rooting out the poisoning plotters? And would they try to use more force once they realized their schemes were found out?

"Don't worry so much, Carl. Your father is quite capable. And now that he knows about it, they cannot escape him." Himari whispered to her son, trying to ease his worries.

"Okay." Carl smiled up at his gentle, kind, and beautiful mother. He could handle waiting calmly if his mother could.

And if he got too bored, he and Hinata could play some ninja games, which was training in disguise. Everything was training.

'Now why does that sound so familiar? Everything is training indeed.'

* * *

[AN: Going into this world I kept wondering and thinking about which fanfiction world I should base this Naruto jump off of.

I had just recently read Perfect Lionheart's Chunin Exam Day, which if you haven't read it is a Groundhog Day type story where Naruto keeps repeating the same period of time over and over. Until he makes the rank of Chunin he keeps going back to the first day of the Chunin exams. It is a very entertaining read, especially some of the things he does to relieve his boredom in a world that Just. Won't. Change!

I toyed with the idea of basing this arc on that fanfiction, since I like a lot of the things that Perfect Lionheart put in his fic about how the world works and how the people are. And while I may yoink some ideas from him and other sources, I thought it too difficult to mesh a time loop that Carl isn't in on with the Jump chain.

It would probably have looked something like this:

Carl sees that Naruto is acting different from normal. He ponders all the reasons that could be causing Naruto's unusual behavior and sudden showing of skills. Deciding to act on it, he approaches the blond genin.

"Hey, Naruto. Are you stuck in a time loop?" Carl asks.

"Whoa! How did you know?" Naruto asks in shock.

"Oh, I dunno. It was a guess. Thanks for confirming it though. So, how many repeats are you on?"

"This is like, the 15th! I don't know what's going on? Can you help me?"

"Sure! Let's get some training in. Show me what you've got."

* * *

Carl sees that Naruto is acting different from normal. He ponders all the reasons that could be causing Naruto's unusual behavior and sudden showing of skills. Deciding to act on it, he approaches the blond genin.

"Hey, Naruto. Are you stuck in a time loop?" Carl asks.

"You know, you still haven't told me how you know?" Naruto asks in shock.

"Oh, it was a guess. Thanks for confirming it though. So, how many repeats are you on?"

"87! I'm starting to get annoyed. It's so hard to get any training around here!"

"Oh, have you tried…"

* * *

Carl sees that Naruto is acting different from normal. He ponders all the reasons that could be causing Naruto's unusual behavior and sudden showing of skills. Deciding to act on it, he approaches the blond genin.

"Hey, Naruto. Are you stuck in a time loop?" Carl asks.

"You know, I'm not even going to ask anymore. You never tell me." Naruto pouts in resignation.

"Well, it was just a guess, but thanks for confirming it though. So, how many repeats are you on?"

"473! Say, could you help me with [fill in the blank]?"

"Sure, let's head to a practice field."

* * *

"…So, how many repeats are you on?"

"672. What do you know about [fill in the blank]?"

"Well, that's an interesting question. Why don't you tell me where you left off and we'll go from there."

* * *

"…So, how many repeats are you on?"

"2478. I'm on a vacation loop right now, so I'll pass on training for the day."

"Aright. Doing anything fun I can get in on?"

"Sure, let's go get a super prank ready to get back at…"

* * *

So you can see why I didn't really want to go that route. From Carl's perspective the first month after he entered the world the time loop would be broken and then he's got nothing to do for the next ten years except chill. Which doesn't make for a very gripping story.

So now that I meandered off the plot, the whole point was just to say that I'm just making the story up as I go, so it's not based off any one fic in particular, but an unholy combination of all the tropes that I find amusing or like.

With the healing of his mother and the knowledge of a poisoner somewhere nearby sending Hiashi on the warpath, Carl has already derailed whatever plot would have existed in whatever fanfiction world I decided to use anyway. And he hasn't even gotten all his memories back yet. Once he does, then he'll really start meddling, bwahahaha!

*cough* *cough*

Right, then. Once again, thanks for reading!]


	88. Naruto 2

[AN: Some people expressed confusion or disgust as to just why Carl lost his memories in the Naruto world. It's because the **Diapers and…Sunshine?** drawback says that he lost his powers and would slowly get them back until at the starting age he chose he'll have all his powers back. Well, the powers are an intrinsic part of him now due to Spere 037's cheat. So the Jump Chain temporarily suppressed his memories of the powers so he won't be able to use them, thus fulfilling the drawback's purpose.

The perks are still there under the surface, which is why he learns so quick and has such an amazing memory still. And it's why he has all these thoughts about how nasty schemes to control a clan work.

Although I gotta say this: Getting angry because a drawback that Carl picks ends up giving him unexpected complications seems a bit silly to me. That's kind of the nature of drawbacks.

Even if it feels like he's taking a step back in his advancement, that's part of the process of him growing and living through these worlds.

Sometimes Carl is more bold and willing to deal with enemies and problems a drawback gives him. Sometimes he's more conservative and wouldn't touch some drawbacks with a 10 mile long pole.

Just some of my thoughts on the matter. Anyway, thanks for all you who read and review! Now I'll shut up and get to the story.]

* * *

That first day and night took a long time to pass while they were waiting for Hiashi to do what he needed to do to clean up the plotters and poisoners.

Carl found himself in a unique position. He was an adult in mind, but he was only a kid in body. And while he had the magic perk from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world and had trained up his skills in magic quite a bit, he was still pretty green when it came to the ninja world. More likely than not, he would just get in his father's way if he tried to do anything proactive.

And he didn't feel like provoking a hostage situation with ninja that could kill him before he could react.

So, he waited with his sisters and mother in their safe room, waiting for his father to finish clearing out the traitors. He and Hinata played some training games that focused on increasing hand dexterity and finger strength. Sort of the young ninja training version of "Patty Cake". The game focused not just on dexterity of the hands and fingers, but memorization skills. It incorporated the hand signs and various ninja specific code words.

Their mother Himari mostly took care of Hanabi, but occasionally joined Carl and Hinata for a game or two.

They didn't leave the room for meal times, instead they ate what appeared to be dried rations that were checked carefully for poisons. The small family unit had a bathroom attached to the room, so there was no reason to go anywhere while they waited.

Occasionally a branch family member would come by the room, passing a verbal message to Himari. Because of the Hyuga's special eyes, trusting important messages to paper was a chancy thing, since it was so easy for any Hyuga in the area to be able to read a note from across the compound with their eyes. It was important for ninja to have good memorization skills to verbally pass on messages.

Carl's senses were keen enough that he clearly heard the status reports that Hiashi sent to reassure Himari. However, even though Carl heard the messages, he still didn't understand what the code words meant, so he was still in the dark.

Finally after 36 hours, Hiashi returned to the rooms looking exhausted as he walked in. Alongside him was their cousin Neji, to Carl's surprise.

"Father!" Hinata jumped up when she saw Hiashi walk into the room. Carl was only a moment behind her in jumping to his feet and greeting his father.

"Hinata, Carl." Hiashi greeted them. "Have you been good for your mother?"

"Yes, father." Carl nodded seriously.

"Of course!" Hinata chirped in a good mood. "Carl and I have been training our hand sign speed, as well as our Byakugan and chakra control, since we couldn't leave. Mother even let me watch over Hanabi for a while. She's sleeps a lot! But, since you're back, does that mean we can go outside again?"

"Yes, you can go out soon, Hinata." Hiashi smiled warmly while ruffling Hinata's hair.

"How is it, Hiashi?" Himari asked while cradling Hanabi in her arms.

"I have taken care of many problems, and found some additional issues that they had been hiding." Hiashi sighed before looking around to spot Neji.

Carl had kept half an eye on Neji and noticed that he was standing uncertainly and was hanging back, seeming to not want to intrude.

Hiashi sat at the head of the table in the room, and motioned the rest of them to sit. Himari sat next to Hiashi with Hanabi in her arms, looking concerned for her husband's state. There was a tea set with still warm tea, so she poured a cup for Hiashi.

Hinata beat Carl to his usual place next to his father, and sat down, leaning into Hiashi. Carl sat next to her without complaint but with a smirk for her. She stuck her tongue out at him, causing him to cough to hide his laugh. Neji sat down next to him warily.

"Neji." Hiashi began with his stern countenance in place. "I called you here because there were some things you needed to hear. Reserve your judgment until you hear the whole tale."

Carl thought that was a polite way to say 'keep your mouth shut until you hear everything'. Neji soberly nodded his head. The six year old was quite the Hyuga, very stern and stoic.

"Two years ago a Kumo ninja came to Konoha, posing as their ambassador. He was ostensibly here to sign a peace treaty. After signing said treaty, he attended the party we were having here in the clan compound, since we were having a birthday party for Carl and Hinata. He and the Hokage thought it would be a good method of introducing the man to the various clans of Konoha and open up more friendly relations with Kumo."

Neji clenched his fists tightly. He knew what the ultimate result of that night was. His father was killed to save his brother, Hiashi. It was because of that night he lost his father, and it was because his father was of the branch family that he was forced to die to save Hiashi. That's why he hated the situation with the clan so much.

Hinata also clenched up at hearing about that night. She still remembered being bundled up and carried out along with Carl. She felt so helpless while being kidnapped. She was so afraid of never seeing her family again, and of what horrors were in store for her. It was an event that still occasionally gave her nightmares.

Carl clenched his teeth in frustration, hearing about that night. He had the memories of that night, of being helpless to do anything against the adult ninja. That was another reason why he was so hesitant to do anything rash in this world. Feeling that helplessness had made a big impression on him.

He knew that it wouldn't have been nearly as much of a problem if he had his magic available back then. He could have done any number of things to the Kumo ninja, from binding him, to burning him, to hiding him and Hinata. But he hadn't regained his memories until a year and a half later.

Carl returned his attention back to his father when he continued talking.

"After the party was finished, the ambassador snuck back into the compound in the middle of the night. He slipped past all our guards and was able to kidnap both Carl and Hinata out of their rooms."

Neji had a look of shock on his face. The idea that some random ninja, even if he was highly skilled, could just waltz into their clan home and steal the twins away was shocking. Their dojustu was especially good for standing guard against intruders, making the feat of sneaking in unseen incredibly difficult.

Carl had a similar reaction, along with the realization that there had to be some inside man who opened the way for the Kumo ninja to make it all the way to their room.

"Thankfully I came by their room to check on them at that time. If I had come any later, I would not have spotted him making his escape when I saw my children weren't in their room. I gave chase and soon caught him, ending his life in order to save your cousins."

"It was only when we examined the body that we found out he was the ambassador that Kumo had sent. The very next day a message came from Kumo. They threatened a resumption of the war unless Konoha gave them the ninja responsible for their ambassador's death. Me."

Carl frowned in thought. He had seen maps of the Elemental Nations. There was no way for Kumo to have gotten the information of the death of their ambassador that fast under normal circumstances. And to be able to send such a demanding message the very next day implied that someone had deliberately leaked the information to Kumo.

'Traitors." Carl internally snarled at the realization.

Neji was gritting his teeth and clenching his hands. He had heard this tale before. This was the part where Hiashi gave up his brother, Neji's father, to Kumo to gain peace.

"I immediately began sending out messages so that I could consult with the other clans of Konoha to build a consensus to go to war. If Kumo would act in such an underhanded way to try to steal our dojutsu for themselves in the midst of their peace negotiations and Konoha gave in and forced us to hand over one of our clan members, what would Konoha do the next time?"

Neji's shocked face told Carl all he needed to know. Neji had no idea of what really happened that night, but whatever tale he was told, it was all lies.

"I felt I had a good chance to win over the other clan's support. After all, what if it was one of their clan members that were targeted the next time? Or what if it was one of their clan secrets that Konoha demanded be handed over to secure peace? I knew this reasoning would gain me their support to take a stand and teach those backstabbing kidnappers from Kumo a lesson."

Neji's shocked face was so completely apparent. This wasn't how the story he was told went! Hinata was gripping Carl's hand tight. Because she still occasionally had nightmares of that night when the two of them were bound and dragged from their room, she had a fear that she would be kidnapped and never be able to come home. Both of them didn't have very kind thoughts for the village of Kumo.

"Unfortunately, someone talked to my brother behind my back. I don't know if it was the Hokage, or one of his advisors. They convinced Hizashi that Konoha was in no shape to resume the war. They convinced him that the only way to resolve this issue was to sacrifice himself to appease Kumo for the time being."

Judging from Neji's expression, Carl didn't think that the Hokage or his advisors was going to be one of his favorite people.

"That night I was to meet with the other clan heads to discuss the issues. Hizashi intercepted me before I could leave my rooms. He attacked when I was least expecting it, and hit my chakra points, knocking me unconscious. When I woke up, Hizashi was already dead, and his body was already on the way to Kumo." Hiashi paused to let them process his story. The anguish in his face and voice was obvious as he recounted that horrible time.

Neji was struggling greatly with his emotions, far from being the stoic Hyuga. Tears were leaking down his face. Carl realized that both he and Hinata were also leaking tears. Damned young body emotions!

After gaining control of his emotions, Carl shook his head inside at the ploy that Konoha pulled. He was actually very surprised that there hadn't been a resumption of hostilities with Kumo in the past couple of years if Kumo was so underhanded to pull that kind of crap. Maybe there was a change in leadership and their policies?

"Your father left me a letter explaining his decision to take my place and attempt to mend the peace. He believed it was his destiny and his choice." Hiashi handed over a letter to Neji and let him read it.

Neji's eyes continued spilling tears as he read his father's last words. The tears spilled silently down Neji's cheeks, falling on the letter. Hiashi waited until Neji was ready once more before resuming his tale.

"Your father exhorted me to wait until you were a chuunin yourself, at least, until I told you these things. But something I recently discovered caused me to change my plans and inform you now, despite his request."

Neji's face got a questioning look, wondering what it was. But he had promised Hiashi he would keep his counsel until he heard the whole story.

"You see, my wife almost died in giving birth to Hanabi. It was only by luck that she survived, but it was discovered that she had been poisoned."

Hinata clutched Carl's hand tighter when Hiashi said that outright. She had known about it already, but hearing it once more still shocked and frightened her.

"Who would dare?" Despite his promise to reign in his questions, the information was so shocking Neji couldn't help but burst out. His eyes were hard and angry.

"It was one of the clan elders. He's being dealt with as we speak." Hiashi's hard face matched Neji's so much at that very moment. Looking back and forth between the two, Carl came to the conclusion that the two Hyuga were very similar. Given half a chance, he was sure that Neji would also be a great and protective father one day, if he could get past the issues he had being a branch family member.

"What's more, my entire family was poisoned with different poisons. They intended my wife to die in childbirth. They poisoned me to affect my emotions and cause me to distance myself from my family. They poisoned my twins to lose their coordination and confidence so they would make poor ninja."

Neji was actually shaking in anger at the news, gritting his teeth. Even though he had been drifting away from his cousins the past year, he still cared for them a great deal. To hear that they had been poisoned to fail as ninja offended him greatly.

"When I investigated who had been behind plot, I learned many secrets. I learned that there was a main branch elder behind the poisoning plan. He intended to discredit me as the clan head of the Hyuga by showing my heirs as weak and me incompetent as a father. He plotted to overthrow me and place Hanabi as the puppet leader who would marry his son and make his grandchildren the future leaders of the Hyuga."

Hiashi paused for a deep breath. This was hard to say.

"And I also learned that he had been poisoning you, Neji. He was putting a narcotic in your food that would make you susceptible to suggestions. He was filling your ears and mind full of his take on 'fate' to make you act the way he desired, as well as his own doctored version of how your father died."

Carl suddenly realized that it was one more instance of the Elder betraying them and conspiring to make Hiashi look bad and lose power in the clan. With Hiashi's twin brother's own son distancing himself from them and showing his hatred of them, Hiashi would look like a man who couldn't maintain order in his own family. How could the clan trust him to handle other matters?

"And I found out that he was the one who opened up a hole in our defenses that allowed the Kumo ninja to penetrate into our clan housing and kidnap my children, which led to your father's death."

"I'll kill him." Neji growled angrily. Hiashi didn't chastise him for his words. They were ninja, after all. It wasn't surprising that they would be predisposed toward killing an enemy.

"He will die, and I'll allow you to be there to see it." Hiashi allowed. "And so we come to the why of it. Why would one of our own elders do such a thing?"

Hiashi sighed. Carl kept an eye on his mother and sister, and was wondering if and how he should comfort them. Hinata seemed to be holding up okay, though. Even though they were young, they were being raised as ninja, with a couple years of early training already under their belts. Part of that training was reading about the roles they would play, so even at a young age they were aware of what kind of conflicts they would come across.

So while Hinata may not understand all the intricacies and ins and outs, she understood enough to understand that someone betrayed them and her father ferreted out the information. That they were traitors, and traitors only deserved death.

"The reason this elder worked so hard to ruin me as the clan head, is that I've been struggling for years to change the tradition of putting our family members in the Branch House and putting the Caged Bird seal on them."

Neji, Carl, and Hinata all sucked in a breath in shock at hearing that admission from their father, the clan head. How he was trying to subvert the way the clan had worked for so many years.

"My twin brother and I were very close from birth." Hiashi reminisced, looking off to the side as the memories were playing out in his mind. "We shared everything. We were inseparable. Until the day that our father had the Caged Bird seal put on my twin's forehead for the simple reason of me having been born first."

"I was furious! They took my brother away from me! They didn't let us train together anymore. They lectured him on his duties as a Branch Family member, beating him down; forcing him to believe that he needed to be subservient to me, to give his life for me. Why? He was my brother, my friend, my companion. Why should he have to serve me? Just because of a few damned minutes and some old men who blindly adhered to tradition!?" Hiashi gritted out from between his teeth. "It was stupid. And I was determined to end that pointless tradition."

Carl saw that their mother wasn't shocked at all. She obviously knew and supported him in his efforts. Hinata was looking at their father in adoration. The goal of getting rid of the Caged Bird seal and uniting their family was something that she was proud of her father for pursuing.

Neji, on the other hand, had a very shocked face. The idea that the clan head himself could so despise their traditions had never occurred to him. It was…validating, for him to have his feelings over the matter echoed by someone who should by all rights love the power and benefits that it gave him. But instead of wallowing in the power and prestige their traditions gave him, Hiashi hated them and wanted to tear them down.

And Hiashi showed through his lack of stoic Hyuga composure just how much he hated those clan rules and laws. How strongly he felt about the matter.

Carl got the impression his father was barely keeping himself from destroying furniture in his anger at reflecting on those memories and what could have been. He was actually impressed, seeing the anger and bitterness in his father's face, since it showed how much he cared for his brother. For a man so used to keeping his emotions in check and adopting a stoic face, to show that much emotion meant he really felt it strongly.

"So because I had long been seeking to gather enough influence in the clan to abolish the tradition of inscribing the Caged Bird seal into every branch family member, and because I was seeking a means to take the seal off my brother and the rest of the branch family members, that elder decided he had to oppose and destroy me. He had to tarnish my reputation, destroy my influence, and cast me out so that I couldn't accomplish my goals."

"And he came so very close to accomplishing all his goals." Hiashi bitterly said. "So now you know…the rest of the story."

Carl exchanged glances with his sister, and a moment later the two of them bracketed Neji on either side. Hinata gave Neji a hug, while Carl patted his back. The little bit of kindness and gentleness almost seemed to cause Neji to break down, as he cried some more.

He cried for his father's senseless death, for the pain he had been living with, for the lies he had been embracing. For the family that was surrounding him, giving him love and care.

Ever since the death of his father, he had been living in such a cold environment. The people that surrounded him were cold, and they always only talked to him about his fate as a slave. That he was no better than a meat shield for the main house. But they offered him no care, no comfort, either. Even in the midst of his own clan he felt so very alone. He was a simple tool to be used.

And in the sudden presence of such sudden caring concern, Neji, who had been experiencing such coldness for so long, finally broke down and vented his emotions.

Himari placed Hanabi in a crib and joined them in hugging Neji, while Hiashi placed a hand on his head, rubbing his hair in comfort. Which was surprisingly like what Neji's father used to do to him.

Eventually Neji finished venting his emotions, and they returned to their positions, once more composed. Even through the blotched faces from crying.

"I still don't have a solution for removing the Caged Bird seal, unfortunately." Hiashi admitted. "I've been trying to find the information in the clan records, but someone has hidden or destroyed the records on its creation. But I would like it if you would join our family on a more regular basis. You are all that is left of my brother, and I would like to take you in and care for you in his place. What do you think, Neji?"

Neji spent a long moment searching each of their faces, eyes, and expressions. Carl tried to put all the sincerity he could in his gaze, telling him without words to join them.

"Yes, I would like that." Neji eventually whispered.

"Good. There is already a room prepared for you next to Carl and Hinata's. I had hoped you would join us."

"Father. Is there any way I can add the study of seals to my lessons?" Carl abruptly asked. "Maybe one day I can learn enough to remove the seal from Neji. To remove it from all the branch family."

"An admirable goal." Hiashi said with a hint of pride in his voice. "When the time in your training is right, I will have the books sent for you to study. Seals are a very dangerous area of study, so promise me you won't go trying to learn them in secret."

Carl could tell from his father's stern warnings and countenance that it was important, so he gave his promise.

"Your goal is a worthy one, Carl. But don't tell anyone else in the clan that is what you are trying to do. As you have seen from my example, there are always some that would fight against your goals, no matter how noble they are. And they would stoop to anything, to sabotage your efforts. Keep your goals secret for now until you can accomplish them in one swift act."

"Yes, father." Carl nodded seriously, liking the advice he was given.

"Could I study the sealing arts too?" Neji asked.

Hiashi grimaced at the question.

"Unfortunately, there is a trigger in the Caged Bird seal that is not often spoken of. If a person who has the seal attempts to study seals beyond the basics, the seal will cause their death."

Hinata gasped in horror, while Carl and Neji ground their teeth in anger.

"I don't know how it was designed that way, but it was done on purpose so that anyone who suffers under the seal will not be able to try to learn the knowledge that would free them from the seal." Hiashi shook his head gloomily. "And unfortunately Konoha and clan politics prevents anyone from outside the clan from attempting to work on or remove the seals. So I have only been able to work on trying to learn the sealing arts on and off. I have not been successful, to my dismay."

Carl and Neji exchanged gazes after hearing that. Neji was thinking that his future depended on his uncle and his family. He was at least comforted in seeing the determination in Carl's face to beat this and free him.

Carl nodded seriously at Neji, affirming his promise to learn the sealing arts and free his cousin from his chains.

"Do you have any questions at this time?"

"Um…is it dinner time?" Hinata tentatively asked just as her stomach growled. Her face turned red when first Carl began laughing. Followed by Neji, Himari, and finally Hiashi.

"Stop laughing!" Hinata hissed as she smacked Carl on the shoulder in frustration.

"Sorry, Hinata." Carl struggled to stop laughing. "It's just that I couldn't agree with your stomach more. I'm hungry!"

"Carl!" Hinata growled, poking him in the stomach. "Don't think you won't pay for making fun of me!"

To most, it would seem that Neji didn't show any expression on his face at dinner that night. But Carl could see the general good mood and returning cheerfulness that had been missing from his face for so long, ever since his father died. It wasn't an immediate fix, but they were on the right path.

Neji had rediscovered that he still had family. And for now, that was enough.

* * *

Now that Hiashi had tracked down the clan elder that had been responsible for the poisoning of his family and death of Hizashi, Carl's days returned to the routine they had been before, with the exception that Neji joined them in their daily training.

Neji was a bit more than a year older than Carl and Hinata, so he took it upon himself to begin showing them little tricks and tips he had picked up in the extra year he had of training over the twins. He was trying hard to make up for the time he had spent since his father's death blaming them for what happened, when they were just as much a victim of the plot as he was.

So they continued training their physical skills and combat in the mornings, then after lunch they studied and trained in the scholarly arts, and in the evening trained their Byakugan and chakra control.

After a few weeks of training together, Carl learned that his sister and cousin had their own specialties where they excelled. Neji was a natural at the Gentle Fist style. It made sense to Carl, since in the original story Neji had advanced incredibly well without any specialized training. But now he was getting the same training that the Main house got, and he was learning quickly.

Hinata was a little frustrated at first that she couldn't seem to learn and perform the Gentle Fist with near the same skill as Neji and Carl. So Carl talked to his parents about Hinata's seeming to have a different body type that made it hard for her to perform the Gentle Fist.

After checking their elemental affinities, they learned that Neji had an Earth affinity, which was normal for the Hyuga and conformed to the standard Gentle Fist style.

But Hinata had a Water affinity, which caused her to have issues with the standard style. Their mother had the same affinity, so she began instructing Hinata on a non-standard style of the Gentle Fist that worked better with a Water affinity.

Before he channeled his chakra into the chakra paper that would tell him his elemental affinity, Carl wondered just what affinity he had if any, since he didn't remember filling in any jump document that would have given him an affinity. It would be horrible if he came to the Naruto world and ended up not having any elemental affinity at all!

Much to his relief, he found that when he channeled chakra into the paper, it crumbled to dust, indicating that he too had an Earth affinity. So he and Neji ended up practicing the standard Gentle Fist style, while Himari and Hinata practiced their non-standard Flowing Gentle Fist.

Once Hinata found the style that suited her body type, she started advancing at a rapid pace. She was determined to catch up to Neji and Carl as soon as she could.

They soon learned that Hinata excelled in one area beyond Neji. She was a natural at training her Byakugan, making incredibly rapid progress in her efforts to improve her Byakugan's skills. Especially in the distance her activated Byakugan could see, she was a natural.

The realization that Hinata was much better at the Byakugan training than him let Neji realize that he wasn't the big genius that certain scheming elders had been telling him he was through whispers just inside his hearing range.

While he was very good at the clan's taijutsu, he found that he wasn't the best in every area of training. But instead of discouraging Neji, that bit of self knowledge pushed him to train harder to try to keep up with Hinata's Byakugan training.

Carl found that he was an anomaly. He was excellent at all areas of their training. He figured he must have some amazing perks hiding in the depths of his mind, since everything he did came very easy to him. But instead of racing ahead, he kept himself at about the same pace as Neji and Hinata, since once again he didn't want to get a reputation as a "genius", or leave behind his sister and cousin.

He wouldn't become a ninja for about seven years anyway, so he had plenty of time to master all the basics before he would be going on missions. And having a solid foundation and mastery of the basics would ensure that he could more easily learn the advanced techniques.

After several weeks when he inquired once more of his father about the sealing arts, Carl learned that his father wouldn't let him start learning until he graduated from the Academy, at the very least. When Carl asked him why, he soon learned quite a bit about just how dangerous seals could be.

He had to endure a lecture and graphic descriptions of just how people have killed themselves by attempting to learn the sealing arts in the past. The only two branches of the sealing arts that had any amount of known stable matrices were storage seals and explosive tags.

And even with those two "relatively safe" fields, a handful of ninja die every year when they make a mistake on those seals when they weren't paying enough attention. Even though those two fields were relatively known and "safe", the sealing arts were still an exacting and dangerous topic of study that wasn't forgiving of mistakes.

A storage seal done wrong can turn a ninja inside out, shuck them out of their skin, or pull their lungs up out of their nose, among other horrors.

A faulty explosive note could easily destroy a moderately sized house, if it cascaded out of control. And that was the smaller version of an explosive seal. The larger explosive seals would level a large part of their clan compound in one go.

So despite his desire to learn the sealing arts and get the seal off Neji's forehead as soon as possible, it would be a long time until he could actually get started on the actual art. For the time being, he was assigned calligraphy work. Since his handwriting needed to be precise and accurate at all times when working with seals, he could only start building his foundation for now. And the only way to do that was to practice, practice, and practice his calligraphy even more.

Neji and Hinata got the whole danger lecture right alongside Carl, so they too were aware of how the project to get rid of the Caged Bird seal would be a long term one. Despite being depressed that there was no quick solution, Neji found himself comforted when he saw just how seriously Carl was taking his calligraphy practice to prepare himself for the project. It let him know how seriously his cousins were taking the matter, that Carl was so determined to master such a dangerous subject for his sake.

During the weeks and months of training and normal daily routine that followed the incident that uncovered one of the clan's elders as a traitor, one of the things that Carl wondered about was that his parents never mentioned his Warehouse again. They didn't ask him about it, nor did they inquire about looking through the many things they had seen stored that day in his dimensional pocket space.

Carl had no idea if there was some kind of psychic field around the Warehouse that made them forget about it, or if they just wanted to keep it as secret as possible by never mentioning it.

It didn't take a long time for Carl to realize that a Hyuga had to go to ridiculous efforts to find a bit of privacy in the clan, what with the whole clan having the ability to develop their X-ray eyes, and add on to that the skill of mouth reading that practically all ninja were adept at. So maybe they just didn't want to chance word of his Warehouse getting out by some guard "overhearing" them?

'Was overseeing a word that applied in this case? Over-snooping? Over-reading-lips doesn't even sound similar to the original phrase of overhearing that I was going for.' Carl shrugged off the random thought and refocused on the important topic: his Warehouse.

With thoughts of caution in mind at being spied on, Carl began testing the use of his magic and Someone Else's Problem spells, or SEP fields, to keep any Hyuga from peeking on him while he accessed his Warehouse.

On a scroll he wrote in large letters, "Hinata, if you can read this, lick your finger and stick it in Neji's ear."

With an SEP field around it, he hung the scroll in a very visible place in their study room and kept an eye on Neji and Hinata, to see if either of the two noticed the scroll.

While the Hyuga could easily look around without appearing to, he was sure that his sister and cousin would have some kind of reaction to seeing the scroll telling Hinata to give Neji a Wet Willy. Even if Hinata didn't give Neji a wet willy, she was bound to stare incredulously at the scroll if she did see it.

He got no reactions from that test or several others that he performed. He even set up some low level pranks while under an SEP field to test it further. Some of the arrogant and bullying main branch Hyuga ended up the butt of everyone's humor when they fell for some simple pranks.

One Hyuga ended up with eggs being smashed on their faces before flour was blown in his face. Another ended up accidentally dumping an entire salt container in their soup. And one really annoying guy didn't see the cellophane that was wrapped across his toilet seat until it was too late.

The arrogant Hyuga had to take an extra shower that day, much to Carl's amusement.

So with all the tests complete, Carl felt reasonably sure he could get into his Warehouse without being noticed by the other Hyuga and their cheat-like eyes.

Later that night, he set up an SEP field and entered his Warehouse.

The shelves were absolutely packed with storage boxes that he couldn't figure out how to open. So much stuff and he couldn't even look at his own property!

"Moving on." Carl sadly shook his head.

There were several large machines that he didn't have the slightest clue on how to boot up or what they did. One of them looked like a vending machine, but what did it vend? Why would he need a vending machine? This was supposed to be his stuff!

"Moving on." Carl shrugged in bafflement.

His house in the Warehouse was well stocked with food, movies, books, and games. His Book of Kelsor was on the bookshelf in the living room.

Looking in the kitchen, he thought his purchase of Basic Food for the warehouse would have got him something bland but filling. But his kitchen was filled to the brim with delicious foods. And there was his Root Beer Keg!

Carl had himself a couple of mugs of frosty cool delicious Root Beer. It was the best.

"Well, no real clues here. Moving on." Carl left the house with a mug of Root Beer in hand.

Looking around the warehouse he first found a door that led to a dojo. It was a well equipped dojo, with all kinds of equipment and training areas.

"But it's not like I lack a place to train at home." Carl surprised himself with how much he felt like the house he lived in at the Hyuga compound felt like a home. "Well, let's see what else is here. Moving on."

He then discovered a door to a farm. Looking around the farm at the crops and the animals on it, he shrugged. "What am I supposed to do, spend my time farming instead of training? Moving on."

Carl found a door leading to a farm that had some crops and various items made from animal parts around. But no clues about anything, and it was only a single boring farm.

"Moving on." Carl muttered as he left.

Carl didn't see the managing VI copy of the farm hand he had hired back in the Farmville world teleport in just after he left the Farm. The artificial farm hand looked around for Carl, but not finding him shrugged and teleported back to what he was doing before.

Carl next found an airlock that had a ship docked in a base, but none of the machines responded to him. It was a freaking space ship! Right there! And it didn't do anything but sit there!

"Moving on." Disappointed that he didn't know the trick to activate anything, he disconsolately left the space base.

A bit further on he found a museum of dinosaur bones. The huge T-Rex in the entrance hall was animated, scaring him at first when it moved.

"So cool." Carl drooled over the skeletal display and continued exploring. But after seeing how big the museum was, he decided he couldn't waste too much time there. It seemed like every dinosaur that ever lived had left behind a set of bones in that pace. "Moving on."

He then found a door leading to a cold storage room that had DNA samples from dinosaurs. The room looked exactly like the one in Jurassic Park that stored the Dino DNA. Since he couldn't do anything with it, he soon left the room after oohing and awing at it.

He then entered a door with the label "Hunting / Grazing Grounds". Carl soon discovered that it was an enormous land with dinosaurs and all kinds of animals running around. To be on the safe side, he didn't go exploring, sticking close to the hunting lodge where the door opened to. He didn't fancy getting in a fight or survival situation right at that moment.

The door with the label Dinosaur World made him wonder why he had two dinosaur lands. He peeked into the inside of the house that was set up for a very large animal. It was a bit intimidating, to be honest. He knew it had to be his, but he wasn't sure of the story behind it. After poking around a bit, he made his way back to the Warehouse, not wanting to get lost in the forested land outside the dinosaur house.

"Moving on." Carl muttered as he approached the last door that was labeled "Dragon Flight".

Upon initially entering, he saw he was in another enormous room, sized for creatures much larger than him. There were some futuristic looking equipment in one corner, as well as a more human sized desk.

Well, human sized but for someone the size of Andre the Giant. Looking at the big chair and desk, Carl wondered what it would be like to be so much bigger than everyone else. Could he intimidate people just by looming over them?

After poking around a bit in the enormous castle like building outside the entrance room and not finding anything, Carl shrugged and returned to his Warehouse.

"Well, that was less than enlightening." Carl muttered. "So all I really figured out was that I visited somewhere that gave me a farm, a futuristic space age world, a dinosaur world, and something to do with dragons. I can't even access any of the tech beyond the DVD player in my house."

"Well, even if it was a general waste of time right now, it was cool seeing some dinosaurs in the distance."

Carl shrugged at the experience and left his Warehouse behind to get some sleep. He was sure that at some point in the future he would regain his memories and feel really silly about this. But he was also excited at the hints of worlds he would "rediscover" once his memories came back.

* * *

Before he knew it another three months had gone by and it was Carl and Hinata's birthday. The time seemed to pass pretty fast while he was sinking himself into training. Not watching the pot made his subjective sense of time wonky and let the water boil faster.

Carl had gotten up as usual on the morning of his birthday and prepared for his day when he froze in front of the mirror. While looking into his eyes in the mirror, memories suddenly burst into his mind.

A flood of memories of the Pokemon world ran through his mind. He remembered his life there, growing up with Claire and Clark, and getting Fiona. Meeting Rhona, and continuing on his training journey. Meeting more pokemon and training together. Talbot, Shenron, Selene, and Calibur joining his team as they worked to train up to being Legendary pokemon.

The innovations he and his father in that world worked on together. The social events his mother dragged him to.

Meeting Serena and hanging out. Going on dates with her, getting to know her, and eventually making love.

The confrontation with Lysandre and killing him with a bullet when he threatened to kill anyone who opposed him.

He remembered all his time in the Pokemon world.

'Huh, so that's what the vending machine is for.' Carl thought. 'My pokemon!'

After the flood of memories abated, Carl found himself still looking into the mirror at himself. He was now a Hyuga, but he remembered being a magic using hunter of vampires and demons in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world, and now he had the memories of being a pokemon trainer in the Pokemon world.

"Carl, it's time to wake up." A voice called out from beyond his door.

"I'm up, Nuo." Carl automatically replied.

And just like that, with the normality of his daily routine with Nuo, Carl felt himself settle back into his body as Carl Hyuga. He didn't feel displaced, he didn't feel like he was in the wrong place, or lost in his memories. His mind was settled and he was ready for the day.

He finished dressing and joined his family at the breakfast table. Afterwards he, Hinata, and Neji went to train. Just because it was their birthday was no reason to slack.

They continued their usual heavy physical exertion, doing muscle building exercises, flexibility exercises, and stamina training. They had a large field that they ran lap after lap. There was only one way to build up their physical capabilities, and that was to train every day.

Carl had come to the conclusion that they could get away with training so hard everyday because of the amazing-ness that was Chakra. It healed them up quicker, helped them develop faster, and was just overall amazing for what it allowed them to do.

He was already thinking that chakra was just as amazing as the magic he had learned in the BtVS world, if in different ways than magic.

After their morning workout, Carl had a quick bath to clean up the sweat and dirt from rolling on the ground when he would get thrown by Neji or Hinata in their practice. They each took turns practicing moves, which included throws and redirecting forces. So they all took a lot of tumbles in the dirt.

Once he was cleaned up and arrived at the dining room, Carl settled down in his place. It looked like he was the first one to arrive.

With a bit of time on his hand while he waited, Carl began thinking through his new memories of his time in the Pokemon world. Looking at the training that he put his pokemon and himself through at that time made him laugh inside. He didn't know how such laid back training ever got them up to legendary status!

It must have been more due to the nature of Pokemon than it had to do with his skills and knowledge. In just a few years here in the Naruto world he had already learned so much about training and advancing his skills, it was unbelievable.

'Guess that's what comes of having a society of ninja that focus on nothing more than how to get stronger and more deadly for thousands of years.' Carl mused.

Carl heard Neji's footsteps approaching the dining room, which caused him to be briefly proud of his Tier 4 senses. Having those senses would definitely be a huge bonus for him among the ninja world. He knew how softly everyone walked, being ninja in training, but he could still hear their footsteps approaching.

A moment later, he heard Hinata's footsteps pattering as she speed walked toward the dining room.

'She must be hungry today.' Carl mused.

Neji's sedate footsteps and Hinata's hurried ones arrived at the same time, and they both took their places at the table. The three of them chatted while they waited for Hiashi, Himari, and Hanabi to join them for the meal.

Hinata was telling them how she looked in on Hanabi and seen the cute little baby crawling around with great energy. Hinata was quite excited to have a little sister, and was eagerly looking forward to being a big sister by teaching Hanabi.

Their mother arrived soon after with Hanabi, and settled down at her place at the table. The servants placed the food on the table shortly after.

"Your father was called away for a council meeting, so he won't be joining us for the meal." Himari explained Hiashi's absence when she saw the children looking around.

Silence then descended on the table except for the sounds of eating and Hanabi's gurgling from where she was laying on a mat next to Himari.

After the meal was eaten, and they were sipping their tea, Himari began asking the three of them how their training had been going. Hinata was the most active talker among the three, and she cheerfully shared the stories about how she was doing so much better in her combat skills now.

Carl would occasionally throw in a joking or teasing comment, while Neji seemed more content to simply soak in the atmosphere, only talking when he was answering questions. But Carl saw that Neji was simply a more taciturn personality and was enjoying his time with the closest thing he had to family left in this world.

"This afternoon's training is going to be changed up a bit. You will have a shortened combined Byakugan and scholastic training session, then you will get ready for the birthday party this evening. It won't be a big party, but some of the other clan leaders will show up with their heirs to keep up relations." Himari explained before the group left for the afternoon training.

While practicing his calligraphy, Carl was thinking back in his memories about birthdays. He realized that with their birthday today, it was coming up on birthday season. All the clan heirs seemed to have been born within six months of each other. He had memories of visiting the other clans for their heirs' birthdays to reciprocate the relationship they had with their clans.

Ino of the Yamanaka clan was a cute blonde chibi version of herself in his memories. She was very vivacious and got along well with the cheerful Hinata.

Choji of the Akimichi clan was already a big ball as a little kid, and he liked to eat. Carl knew he would eventually grow and build muscles that would make him look like a strong and solid man. But for now he was just a cute little rotund ball.

Kiba of the Inuzuka clan was a hyperactive kid that could barely sit still. On first meeting the kid had taken a big sniff of both Carl and Hinata, and decided he liked the two. Especially Hinata, which had caused little kid Carl to want to protect his sister from the weird dog boy.

Shikamaru of the Nara clan was already looking for ways to be lazy. His mother had to constantly prod and poke him to get him to be halfway social, which was just typical of the Nara.

Shino of the Aburame was a very logical minded kid who had a funny introduction. The kid was already wearing his signature shades, and greeted Carl and Hinata with, "Welcome to my party, it is good to have you here. Why? Because it is necessary for our clans to work together in order to be able to fulfill our duty to Konoha. I look forward to getting to know you."

Looking back on his memories of interacting with the Uchiha at Sasuke's birthday party, Carl could immediately see the tensions and competitiveness between the Uchiha and the Hyuga. They were the two largest clans in Konoha, and they each had an eye based bloodline. It would be stranger if there wasn't any amount of conflict between the two sides. But the Hyuga acted with stiff formality at the party, and the Uchiha acted like they had a stick up their butt.

Some might wonder how acting with stiff formality was any different from acting as if they had a stick up their butt, and Carl would cheerfully explain that he was a part of one group and not the other, hence the different words he used to describe similar behaviors.

They had also visited the Kurama clan for Yakumo's birthday celebration. Looking back on the memories, Carl wondered if there was anything he could do to help the sickly clan heiress.

From what he remembered of the Naruto show, Yakumo had some kind of split personality that was fueled by her incredible genjutsu (illusions) bloodline. Her illusions were so strong they could actually affect reality. Her alternate personality was malicious and caused destruction for its own sake and she even ended up killing her own parents in a fire, but thought it was caused by an assassination attempt on her life by the third Hokage because her power was too dangerous.

Carl knew all that was some time in her future, since the storyline had happened after Naruto had already become a ninja. So it probably happened sometime around the age of 12? 13? Maybe around there, but he wasn't sure.

There was a lot of uncertainty because while he had enjoyed the original show, he had never looked into all the background, timeline, and various issues that could fill in a lot of the gaps in his knowledge of what would happen.

He wondered if there was something he could do to help Yakumo overcome her problems before they became problems. Maybe some kind of magic ritual designed to keep her mind from forming split personalities? He wasn't sure if he could really do anything like that to help her, but he would keep an eye on the situation since he remembered her being a nice girl when he and Hinata met her at her birthday party.

And now that he was thinking of problems that he could maybe possibly prevent, the Uchiha Massacre popped up in Carl's mind. He knew that the Uchiha Massacre happened when Sasuke was still young. And he had the impression that it happened shortly after he started the academy, which meant it would happen when he was eight or nine, or around there.

'If the Uchiha massacre doesn't happen, then Sasuke won't turn into the big emo that he does in the show, and I probably won't dislike him as much as I do.' Carl mused while he continued copying scrolls to practice and perfect his calligraphy.

'And yet, realistically there's not much I can actually do to prevent the events leading up to the massacre.' Carl felt depressed about his powerlessness. 'The Uchiha are under heavy suspicion by the leadership of Konoha because of the Sharingan's ability to mesmerize and control the Nine-Tails Fox, which they think is the reason behind the Fox's attack five or so years ago.'

'And as a result of the heavy suspicion the Uchiha are under, they are feeling very aggrieved by what they feel is unwarranted suspicion and they started planning a coup to take over Konoha. One thing leads to another and Danzo Shimura takes Shisui's Sharingan eye that has the ability to hypnotize anyone to do what he wants, but only every several years can it actually be used, supposedly.'

'Then Danzo convinces Itachi that if the coup proceeds, every Uchiha will be killed, including Sasuke, and war will break out among the nations, causing mass suffering and death. So in order to save his brother and prevent war, Itachi massacres everyone in the Uchiha clan but Sasuke. Yeah, real smart there, Itachi.'

'And while all this is happening in the backrooms, here I am, just a talented five year old heir of the Hyuga clan. A rival clan to the Uchiha. Even if I could somehow convince my father to use his political connections to ease the heavy suspicion the Uchiha are under, I doubt that it would work. The Uchiha would just suspect that it was some kind of ploy by their biggest rivals to get them to lower their guard in preparation for an attack.'

'Not to mention that Danzo, who operates his own underground version of ANBU called ROOT is bound and determined to kill the Uchiha so he can take their Sharingan eyes to make himself more powerful. So even if I could pull a miracle out of my ass and somehow divert the Uchiha from the path they are on, Danzo would just cause some other incident to force the confrontation so he could harvest their eyes.'

Carl sighed a bit at being unable to figure out how to do anything about the upcoming rampant deaths.

'Well, even if I can't do anything about it, I can still work on gathering intel. With the party tonight, I can use my telepathy to pick up surface thoughts, at the very least. I'm going to have to be very cautious though. The Yamanaka are a clan known for their mind delving jutsu, so I'm sure the more accomplished ninja around have mental defenses in place. And since I don't know how their ninja mind defenses would go up against my magic, I'll have to be very cautious indeed.'

'Something else I have to keep in mind is that my memories seem to be coming back in chunks every three months. So I might have more skills available as the time of the Uchiha Massacre gets closer. So it's not really something I need to worry overly about just yet. I just need to be a ninja kid and train for now.'

"Carl!" Carl was feeling pretty settled about his decision when Hinata yelled in his ear, causing him to jump and completely ruin the scroll he was practicing his calligraphy on.

"Ow, Hinata!" Carl exclaimed as he rubbed his ear that was ringing. "What did you do that for?"

Hinata gave him an impish grin, laughing at his reaction.

"I called for you five times, and you weren't hearing me!" She pouted. "Was your calligraphy so interesting?"

"Uh. Yeah. I was in the zone and making good progress. So, what did you want?"

"Mother says it's time to get washed up and ready for the party. Come on, race you to the baths!" And Hinata was off like a shot, with Carl close behind.

Carl caught up with Hinata just as they arrived at their family's bathing rooms. After cleaning up together, he got dressed in his formal kimono that his mother laid out for him, and then went to find his parents in the large hall where the birthday celebration / social event would be held.

"Oh, my son is so cute!" Himari gushed when she saw Carl, embarrassing him as she pinched his cheeks.

"Mom!" Carl protested in vain. The pains of being a good looking kid. He was only saved from the torture when Hinata showed up, looking so cute that it enticed their mother away from Carl to hover over Hinata instead.

Carl could only roll his eyes when he saw the amused smirk on Neji's face at the horrible torment he had just gone through. His cousin had enjoyed his discomfort too much! He would definitely get him back later.

A short time later the guests began arriving for the party.

'Well, let's see what I can learn about the people I'll spend the next nine plus years with.' Carl thought, pumping himself up for the social event.


	89. Naruto 3

Carl and Hinata were standing with their parents at the reception line at the entrance to the banquet hall where their birthday celebration was being held in their clan compound. Guest after guest had already come through the line with gifts for the twins. A family of three blondes stepped through the door.

"Thank you for coming to our celebration Inoichi Yamanaka, Noriko Yamanaka, Ino Yamanaka." Carl politely greeted the blond father and daughter Ino's brown haired mother.

"Thank you for the gifts." Hinata politely said.

"Oh, that kimono looks so good on you, Hinata!" Ino said while bouncing all around Hinata to look at the kimono from all angles. "The color really suites you."

"Thank, you Ino. You too look wonderful in your dress." Hinata replied with a blush at being complimented so frankly.

Carl smiled on the inside at seeing Ino and Hinata interact. It obviously wasn't Ino's obsession with getting Sasuke to notice her that started her on the path of a fashionista. She apparently had that tendency almost from birth. She liked pretty things.

After exchanging a few more words, the Yamanakas passed by to join the rest of the party while Carl and his family, minus Hanabi who was too young, remained for a bit longer to greet the last of the guests.

"That's the last of the reserved guests." Himari commented. "Let's go mingle. I'm sure our children would like to spend time with their peers, dear."

"Be sure to maintain politeness, but enjoy yourselves. It is your party." Hiashi instructed before releasing them from their reception duties.

"Come on, Hinata. Let's go see what everyone is up to." Carl led the way, smiling at seeing his sister in such a good mood.

"Sounds good." Hinata also wanted meet with the kids their age and kept pace with him as he walked quickly.

The two five year olds made their way inside, dodging through the pack of adults who were chatting each other up. Carl found it funny that there were more adults invited to a couple of five year old's party than there were kids. Eh, politics.

When they entered the room the kids their age were at, Hinata was almost immediately grabbed by Ino and dragged off to where there were several girls, including Yakumo, to talk. Carl shook his head at the sight.

A moment later he chuckled in amusement at seeing the divide by gender, the girls in one corner and the guys in the other. The bunch of five year olds seemed to be quite honest in their likes and dislikes. And the things the little girls enjoyed talking about was annoying to the boys, and vice versa.

He casually walked over to where the guys were. He soon found that the conversation was being dominated by two boys while the rest were simply looking on in either amusement or worry for how strongly the two boys were arguing.

He walked over to the side where Shino, Shikamaru, and Choji were leaning against the wall while watching the argument going on between Sasuke and Kiba. A short time later, Neji came by and leaned against the wall near Carl.

He greeted the arrival of his cousin with a smile. He had really taken a liking to Neji now that his mind wasn't being poisoned by the schemers in their clan with that fate B.S. Being a part of a family had really changed his outlook and attitude, and he had responded by trying to become a good big brother.

"So, what's that argument all about?" Carl asked.

"Bothersome." Shikamaru mumbled, causing Carl to chuckle. He had expected the young boy to say 'troublesome', but apparently the 't' word was reserved for girls that annoyed him.

"Sasuke was bragging about his older brother being an amazing ninja." Choji supplied between bites of food that he had grabbed from the nearby buffet. "But apparently Kiba thought he wasn't giving enough credit to other ninja, especially the Inuzuka nin-animals, like his sister's three hounds. So they started arguing about which was cooler."

"It's a pointless argument. Why? Because we are all allies and require to work together if the hive is to survive." Shino deadpanned.

"You got a point there, Shino." Carl nodded at the boy. "Guess their pride and competitiveness is overcoming their reason."

"They should be more concerned with their own skills and training than bragging about their relative's abilities anyway." Neji offered his own two cents, which was generally accepted as a statement of truth by the group of boys.

Conversation lapsed a bit after that, Neji, Choji and Carl occasionally continued talking about food, snacks, and some of the training they did, with Shino and Shikamaru occasionally adding in a bit here and there while they watched and laughed about Kiba and Sasuke's continuing argument.

Both Shino and Shikamaru were generally not talkative individuals, but they seemed to feel comfortable enough to engage in conversation here and there when they didn't have to carry the load of conversation.

Eventually the arguing got a little too heated between Kiba and Sasuke, and their respective siblings had to step in to separate the two before the argument devolved into a fistfight.

It was pretty amusing to see Hana angrily bop Kiba on the noggin on one side and Itachi poking Sasuke between the eyes in annoyance on the other.

"Hey, guys! Want to play a game?" A cheerful Kiba asked while approaching Carl and the other guys, completely forgetting the argument he was just having with Sasuke moments ago, not to mention the chastisement from his sister.

Carl was amused to see such entertainment at his birthday party. While it wasn't anything especially impressive to watch an argument between two five year olds, for him it was seeing a group of fictional characters that he liked come to life in front of his eyes, to have so many of the ninja clan heirs here at his party and interacting together.

And especially seeing Sasuke act like such an excitable kid before his emo phase kicked in was amusing.

"Well, what kind of game are you thinking of, Kiba?" Carl asked the hyper boy.

"We can play ninja!" Kiba almost yelled. "Ow!" He then cried out from the bonk on the head he got from his sister, who was still standing behind him to keep an eye on him.

"Mom said no rough housing at other people's party." Hana Inuzuka sternly reminded her brother.

"Yeah, yeah. I got it." Kiba sullenly replied.

"We've got some other games that we can play." Carl interrupted. "We've got some throwing games, some board games, and some card games. Which one you guys want to do? You're invited too, Sasuke!" Carl called out, but the amazing pouting Uchiha just humphed at him and walked off.

Carl just shrugged. It wasn't like he could force the anti-social little brat to join them for fun.

The guys ended up playing one of the throwing games in a corner first, since that was the most active and Kiba kept bugging everyone to pick it until they gave in.

While hanging out with the guys, Carl kept one eye on Hinata, to make sure she wasn't being overwhelmed or bullied by the other girls. He was amused to see that Neji was doing the same thing. But he soon saw that she was doing fine and holding her own in the group of girls, and even making friends. His worry was for naught.

The difference between his Hinata's attitude and behavior compared to the one from the show still somewhat shocked him. Seeing Hinata cheerful and confident was the absolute opposite of what he expected, but he was glad that she hadn't had her confidence damaged by the scheming and despicable traitors of their family.

She was his sister and of course he didn't want her to have to go down that miserable route of being a nervous, unconfident wreck just because that was how the original plot had gone.

There were a number of other Hyuga that had been accomplices of the traitor Elder, and it was highly suspicious that he was able to accomplish everything on his own, but even Hiashi's investigations had not been able to discover any evidence that anyone else was involved in the plots.

Carl highly suspected that particular elder was set up as a fall guy. It didn't mean he wasn't guilty of what he was caught at. It just meant he was the cutout in the chain of evidence that would lead to the rest of them being caught.

And aside from any other traitorous Hyuga, there were quite a few ninja outside the family that had participated and helped him in his pans. But surprisingly enough they all turned up dead shortly after Hiashi began his investigation. That alone caused Carl to suspect there were more people involved in the whole conspiracy, like maybe Danzo.

But since there was no evidence, the investigation stalled. With no new evidence, things returned back to the status quo of before.

After another round of throwing lawn darts out in the yard, Carl looked around the party, happy in this life he had, and in this moment. He was bound to a Jump Chain that tore him out of every world he was in after a short 10 years.

He would have happily stayed in the BtVS world if he had been given the choice. He had found a group of friends and lovers that made his life complete. But he wasn't given any choice in the matter. And after that world, he knew he could have found happiness in the Pokemon world. At least if he could have brought everyone with him to that world so he wasn't leaving so many that he loved behind.

He guessed it would probably get easier to handle the memories of leaving them all behind the more batches of his memory he restored. But at least in this new life he had family here with him and new friends that he could get to know and have fun with.

He was just kind of sad that he couldn't have Naruto, Sakura, Tenten, and Lee here at his party too. Apparently they weren't part of the social caste that would get an invitation to an event like this.

'Note to self, find some time to go out to some parks with Neji and Hinata and see if we can find Naruto, Tenten, and Lee.' Carl thought to himself. 'Naruto especially could use a friend. I dunno if we can make friends with him early on before the Academy, but a little early help will make a big difference to him.'

Carl was thinking about how Naruto had a lot of potential and could make a really kick ass ninja, but no one seemed to teach him the basics or help him accomplish anything. Even just having a friend would let him know he wasn't alone in the world.

He's seen how big of a deal it was for Neji when he was returned to a good and loving support environment after living for nearly two years in a cold and friendless environment. And Naruto hadn't ever had someone like that in his life, except maybe the third Hokage and the Ichiraku ramen stand father daughter duo.

Carl figured if he could make friends with Naruto and include a bit of guidance and help from some friends early on, it would help Naruto come into his own a lot quicker than would originally happen. The early intervention may even help him avoid being the dense bonehead that a lack of teaching and social interaction while growing up caused him to be.

Of course Carl wasn't sure just how close to depicting the real person the show had come. There seemed to be a lot of pratfall type humor at Naruto's expense in the show, to showcase how much of a knucklehead he was, but that he powered through it with grit and determination, and finally made something of himself.

So while Carl realized that, for literary purposes, Naruto or Hinata's suffering led to a particular path of character development that added to the overall story, he felt that leaving them to walk a lonely and miserable path served no purpose for a real live person. Especially if that real live person was related to him, or was his future friend.

'Now that I think about it, there's a lot that I can do for Lee as well.' Carl thought. 'I'm sure my medbay can fix his undeveloped chakra coils. But I gotta get him to the medbay without letting anyone know about it, even him. Maybe some magic will help me there. Ah well. I'll keep it in mind for possible future plans.'

Rock Lee was an unfortunate soul at first glance. He wasn't able to actively mold enough chakra to do any jutsu. But he found a mentor in Might Guy and focused completely on Taijutsu, becoming a very strong combatant ninja purely through taijutsu.

'I wonder when it was that Lee met Might Guy? I really like the duo, as cheesy as they were with their bowl cuts, green spandex suits, and overdramatic cries about the Springtime of Youth. I wouldn't want to deprive him of having the amazing mentor in Guy that he did in the show.'

Eventually the party wound down, the kids that had come for Carl and Hinata's party were gathered up by their parents and left for their own homes, and it was time to go to bed for the Hyuga twins. They would be up early in the morning for training.

* * *

With their successful party now complete, the Hyuga twins and cousin resumed their normal daily training routine.

Now that they were five years old, they were being officially introduced to more of the specifics of using chakra with the Gentle Fist style, rather than just the forms. They had sort of been cheating, since Neji had already been introducing to them the subject of using chakra to disable an enemy's chakra network over the past few months.

The Hyuga's martial arts style had two main components that made it such a devastating art. The first aspect of course tied into their Byakugan eyes. With specific training for their eyes they could clearly see the entire chakra network of their opponents. The second aspect of their martial art was attained through hard training, the ability to wield their chakra to attack the chakra network of their opponents.

Instead of doing physical damage, they were very good at attacking and blocking chakra passageways, which could lead to incapacitation or even death, depending on which pathways were blocked. Which is why their martial art was called the Gentle Fist, since they weren't focused on doing physical damage.

Being able to see the chakra pathways of their opponents had both offensive and defensive applications. Since they were able to see an opponent's chakra pathways, it was really hard to fool a Hyuga in a taijutsu match with feints or moves designed to confuse. They could also see the buildup of chakra leading to the use of jutsu, so catching a Hyuga off guard with silent or hand seal-less illusions or ninjutsu was very difficult.

And being able to see the flows of the opponent's chakra could allow the Hyuga to judge how and where the opponent was attacking so they could defend better. Some of the more skilled Hyuga could tell what kind of jutsu the opponent was about to cast based on the chakra movement alone, they had become so skilled in the Byakugan.

During their morning exercises, after the exhausting strength and endurance training, Carl and Hinata also began practicing their Gentle Fist skills against actual opponents, instead of simply going through the Katas they had been learning or attacking dummies.

As the weeks passed by, Carl was really sinking into his role as a big brother. His twin sister was lively and always tried to make their day a bit brighter, even in the midst of hard training. Carl made sure she got plenty of positive reinforcement so she wouldn't feel like she wasn't living up to some impossible ideal.

His younger sister Hanabi was adorably chubby in that way that all babies were. She wasn't even a year old so there was a limit to how interesting a conversationalist she was. But from what Carl had seen at his and Hinata's birthday party, he would take Hanabi over Sasuke as a conversation partner anytime. She was certainly a lot cuter than the Uchiha. And that had nothing to do with clan rivalry, or family bias. Nope, not at all.

So much was Carl sinking into the daily life of his ninja family that it came as a shock to him that he hadn't noticed another three months had passed and he received another batch of memories three months after his fifth birthday.

Just after waking in the morning, Carl remembered his visit from Spere 037 and his time in the Farmville world.

After the memories had been unlocked and he remembered all his time in that game-like world, Carl was left staring in the mirror once more.

'Well, that explains why I have the urge to keep a tiny portal to my Warehouse open at all times.' Carl thought. 'It lets my farms continue producing all the goods and products they do.'

At the call from Nuo that it was time to get up, Carl quickly finished getting ready for the day before leaving his rooms.

'Hmm. Maybe I should use a magic spell to keep anyone from paying attention to my room so I can go explore my Warehouse again. I can use the number of farms I have to figure out just how many worlds I've been to, 'cause it seems like every three months I'm getting a packet of memories. If that trend continues I can figure out when I'll get my pre-Naruto memories based on the number of worlds.'

Despite Carl's new memories and intentions to go look at his farms, he had training to do. When he arrived at the training ground and began his training, he so completely sank into the training that it was days before he thought about exploring his Warehouse once more.

So he popped in his Warehouse at night and quickly counted how many farms he had and figured out the number of worlds he had visited. Once he had that information, nothing really changed for him. He couldn't rush the recovery of his memories, he was enjoying growing up with his new family, and he had nothing pressing happening.

Carl decided that unless some emergency came up that he would simply wait until the memories revealed themselves in their own time. He was enjoying his life too much to care too much about it.

Because he was the clan heir, he didn't really have any needs he couldn't have met by a simple request so he felt no urgent need to go grab his farm resources for anything. He was also too young to go gallivanting around the world with his admittedly good skills for a five year old. He really needed to grow up more to be effective in the ninja world.

That was one thing that always blew his mind about having 8 year old chuunin or jonin ranked ninja. Even if those little kids were the smartest and most genius kids around, they were limited by their physical capabilities.

If they faced off against a similarly skilled, but adult opponent, the fact that they had shorter arms, and a shorter reach, would put them at a huge disadvantage in a fight. They would have to be much more skilled than their opponent to overcome the reach disadvantage. And since they were just several years old, it meant they didn't have the wealth of experience needed to develop that kind of skill.

By the time they did develop enough experience, they were already grown up.

'Huh, now that I think about it, that could explain some of Naruto's teacher, Kakashi's laziness. Supposedly he was fighting highly skilled opponents from when he was really young, which meant he had to struggle a lot to overcome that reach disadvantage. But with his physical growth, that meant that he was finally fighting on an even playing field, so it would probably have felt like his opponents were getting weaker as he grew older. And with how much weaker they felt, he didn't feel the need to push himself to learn and grow as much as he did when he was a kid.'

Carl thought about that idea for a while and shook his head in disgust. 'But just because he had all kinds of head trauma doesn't really excuse him for not being a good teacher. Even just being tardy all the time was a huge sign of disrespect. How did the Hokage tolerate that kind of insubordination?'

So overall, with how dangerous the ninja world was, and how he had all his needs provided for, including training resources, Carl felt no real need to fast track his life or rush things. He would enjoy this nice life while he could.

And so, when another three months passed, the memories of his time in the History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi world were unlocked.

His newly restored memories of his training with the Masters of Ryozanpaku restored to him the Ki senses he had developed in that world. Which made him aware of just how powerful his little five and a half year old body was, now that he had his memories restored of how to properly use his Ki and training.

Later that night after regaining his memories of the HSDK world, Carl couldn't wait any longer. He needed to train!

So he once more cast the SEP field that would prevent anyone from paying attention to any unusual happenings in his room and made his way inside his Warehouse. The Dojo that was attached to his Warehouse was too small and designed for disciples and expert level martial artists, not master or grand masters.

So he made his way to the Hunting / Grazing Grounds to find some large space so that he could really let loose with his skills and abilities.

He still stood by his decision to limit the skills he displayed in public to what Hinata and Neji were capable of. He still didn't want the attention getting labeled a "genius" would bring him. But now he felt the need to really stretch himself and push his training to the limits.

He felt somewhat like Might Guy and Rock Lee, those martial arts nuts. He needed a challenge!

"And if I can't get a challenge, then I will walk up the Hokage mountain on my hands, backwards, 500 times!" Carl said out loud from where he was standing in the hunting lodge looking out at the hunting grounds. He paused for a moment, contemplating what his imitation of Might Guy and Rock Lee sounded like. "Yeah, I'm not saying that kind of thing out loud again, even just to motivate myself."

Carl shook himself, getting rid of extraneous thoughts. He stepped out of the Hunting Lodge and into the world of dinosaurs. He had been too nervous to explore the Hunting / Grazing Grounds before because he was afraid that even with his new ninja skills that he wouldn't be able to handle some of the dinosaurs. But now he had at least a master's skills in martial arts, and he didn't think he would have any problems with any normal beast, even if they were giant lizards.

Keeping his Byakugan up so he wouldn't be taken by surprise by any ambushes, Carl began running through the forest, really pushing his speed and endurance. He would pause every now and again to practice his various martial skills, blasting apart trees and boulders here and there.

He spent almost the whole night pushing himself, and dragged himself back to his room in the morning before Nuo would come to wake him for the regular day of training.

That evening when he was once more in his room, Carl spent a few hours sleeping before he woke and entered the Warehouse for training. Even with his master martial artist's physique he needed at least some sleep.

He then entered the Hunting / Grazing Grounds once more, and was surprised to see that the land that he had torn up had already healed up and was whole once more.

"Oh, this is even better!" Carl grinned at his new training ground. "I don't even have to clean up after myself."

During the day he continued his ninja training. And at night Carl added at least four hours of training a night to his schedule. He enjoyed his night training where he wouldn't hold back at all as he pushed himself while running around and fighting with dinosaurs.

But even with his great powers and skills, there were some areas of the Hunting Grounds that he avoided. Some of those huge beasts were powerful, and Carl wanted nothing to do with them right now. He figured when he gained some more memories, they wouldn't seem so terrifying as they were now.

Three months later he regained his SAO memories.

With his new memories and looking at what he knew about Konoha, it seems he wouldn't have a chance anytime soon to introduce his virtual reality technology from the World Seed to the Naruto world. With how paranoid ninjas were, he couldn't see them embracing it unless they could understand how it worked and be sure it was safe.

And it would take quite a long time explaining just where he got the technology, let alone teaching them the scientific knowledge they would need to understand it.

So, no thanks. It was better to just leave that little bit of tech in storage for now to avoid being sent to T&I, Torture and Investigation.

So he continued his routines of training.

On his and Hinata's 6th birthday, he recovered his memories of the Monopoly Gauntlet. Carl spent an extra amount of time that night blowing stuff up to work out the resulting anger he had lingering in his mind from so vividly remembering that…annoyance.

But since the day was his and his twin's birthday, he had to hold on for the entire day before he got a chance to get away at night and do some stress relief.

Carl thought about getting Hinata a feather dragon from SAO as a pet for her birthday present. On the one hand, he would probably have to answer questions about where it came from. He might be able to get away with "found it". Maybe.

But on the other hand, his sister would like it a lot.

On the third hand, she was going to be an active ninja, so the feathered dragon would have to be useful in some capacity for a ninja to warrant taking it with her.

And on the other other hand, it would probably be targeted by ninjas if she brought her pet out into the field. Leaving the dragon home alone without her wasn't really an option, since the feather dragons refused to be left behind for too long. Which would happen on long missions.

After tossing the idea back and forth in his mind for three months, Carl finally decided to say "Screw it". He gave Hinata the feather dragon as a pet. It should be fine as long as he doesn't produce anymore of them. And if something bad happens to her pet, then she'll have to deal with those feelings. She was training to be a ninja, after all. It's not exactly an easy life.

Hinata was incredibly happy about her cute present, and became the envy of all the other girls at the party when they saw how cute the little feathered dragon was.

And Carl didn't even get sent to T&I for "finding" some random flying beast and giving it to his sister as a present. Being a 6 year old member of a clan was great for getting away with things under the very noses of the ninja of Konoha!

He knew there were limits to what he could get away with, but there was no way someone would make a big deal about one little insignificant pet. The ninja world was full of stranger things. Heck, some of the ninjas had summons contracts with beasts that were 10 stories tall. A little feather dragon was nothing.

Three months after his 6th birthday, Carl recovered his memories from the Harry Potter world.

"Rover?" Carl called out, hoping to see his Phoenix familiar show up, but he was disappointed when nothing happened.

'Damn, what happened to Rover?!' Carl thought in worry. His memories of the Monopoly Gauntlet didn't include anything after he finished the game, but now he remembered the fun little pewter dog that turned into his Phoenix familiar. And Rover wasn't anywhere around.

Even when he spent the whole night looking around his Warehouse, he didn't find anything to tell him just what happened to his Phoenix.

"Dammit, I really should have kept some kind of written journal." Carl lamented just before exiting the Warehouse to start his day. "Or maybe leave a clue to myself just what the password for the computer was."

Even though he had found plenty of computers in the Warehouse, including the one in the Space Station, he hadn't been able to access them. If he didn't have the memory of the password, how could he possibly guess what he set the password as?

Carl resigned himself to waiting for the rest of his memories to be recovered before he found all the answers.

Now that they were a bit older at 6 years old, Carl and Hinata's parents agreed to let them meet with their friends for some "play dates" and go to the public parks. Since they were meeting up with Ino on the public playgrounds, it was inevitable that Shikamaru and Choji showed up too, since the three's parents were such good friends.

And while Neji's life had changed greatly and he was no longer on the path to becoming a fate obsessed emo like he was before, he declined the invitation to join Carl and Hinata at the park. He only had a year left until he started the academy and he wanted to be as prepared as he could be for it in the time remaining.

So Carl and Hinata were escorted by their guards Nuo and Ko to the park once or twice a week for a few hours to spend time with the other clan heirs that were their friends.

From the first day when they arrived at the park, Carl was somewhat excited because he knew there was a possibility to meet the rest of the cast of young future ninja at the park. Sakura, Lee, Tenten, and Naruto were the ones he was especially interested in meeting.

Carl's excitement to be allowed to go out and _do_ something ironically helped him act more like a kid, similar to how excited Hinata was to get to go out and do some fun things with the friends they had made.

After the several worlds that Carl had gone to, that he had memories of at any rate, he had somewhat become inured to the novelty of interacting with fictional characters come to life. So while he may not act like a super excited fanboy to finally be meeting more of the key characters of the Naruto story, he was still excited to be able to go out and start interacting with his current peers.

So when he and Hinata arrived at the park to see a bunch of scenes playing out from the story, Carl's smirk grew even bigger. It was fun to see it playing out in real life in front of him.

Over in one corner of the park Shikamaru and Choji were standing among a bunch of boys that were about to "play ninja". Carl had no idea what the game consisted of, except picking teams was apparently part of it.

In the other corner of the park Carl saw Ino confronting a group of girls that appeared to be making fun of a pink haired girl's forehead. The pink haired girl was Sakura, and she was standing meekly behind Ino. A far cry from her aggressive and forward personality of later years.

'Well, if a lively and carefree girl like Hinata can be ground down into a timid mouse, then a timid mouse like Sakura is early in life can be bolstered up into a confident young woman.' Carl reflected momentarily.

And in a final corner of the park, Carl saw the blonde head and orange jumpsuit of Naruto, sadly looking on while the other kids played without him. All the other kids were very obvious in how they shunned Naruto.

"Why don't you go join Ino and her friend there, Hinata? It looks like they could use some company." Carl suggested.

"Okay." Hinata agreed after a moment of frowning thought while looking at the situation. "I'll meet back up with you in a bit, okay brother?"

"Sounds good." Carl replied to her back as she jogged over to join Ino and Sakura. Carl turned his attention back over to see Shikamaru and Choji walking away from the group of boys that were playing ninja. None of them had wanted to have Choji on their team because he was big and not sneaky enough, so they claimed. So Shikamaru had declined playing with them to hang out with Choji.

Carl made his way over to the corner where a sad looking blonde was sitting alone on a swing. Now if he could only come up with a clever means of endearing himself to the blond and making friends.

"Hi, I'm Carl. Wanna hang out?"

Eh, he was a six year old. He didn't have to be subtle. He could go with blunt and straightforward.

"Are you talking to me?" A look of disbelief appeared on the blonde's face as he pointed at his own face with his finger. Carl chuckled a bit inside; he didn't think anyone would actually react by pointing at themselves like that outside of a cartoon. Guess he was proven wrong.

"Yeah, you look like you could use a friend." Carl shrugged as he sat on the swing that was next to the one Naruto was sitting on. "So, you wanna hang out?" He repeated his question.

"Sure! Whachu wanna do?" The blonde jumped up in excitement, but then slumped a bit later. "I don't think anyone would let us join their game…"

"Eh, don't worry about those bunch of wierdos." Carl shrugged as he got up from the swing, ignoring Naruto's muttered 'wierdos…?' question.

"Come on, let me introduce you to a couple friends I met at my birthday party a while back. They were pretty laid back, so it'll be fine." Carl finished with assurance when he saw the hesitation on Naruto's face.

"Okay…" The blonde muttered as he followed Carl.

He began leading Naruto over to where he had seen Shikamaru and Choji going, a small hill in another corner of the field.

"That's my sister Hinata." Carl pointed out where Hinata, Ino, and Sakura were. "She's the nice one with the black hair, she's pretty good with plants and medicine. The blonde one is Ino. She's kind of excitable and likes flowers and fashion, but she's fun. I don't know the pink haired one yet, though. If you ever see my sister anywhere else, go ahead and introduce yourself and say hi. Mention that you're my friend and she should be friendly enough." Carl threw out as they marched off.

"Okay…" Carl could tell from the confused but hopeful look on Naruto's face that he was having a hard time believing that this was actually happening.

"Hey, Choji! Shikamaru! How are you guys?" Carl sat down next to the two kids that were simply eating chips and watching clouds from the little hill they were on. He pulled out some snacks to share among the group of four, motioning Naruto to sit down next to him as he handed over some snacks for him.

"Hey." Shikamaru was too lazy to even look up, since he could tell who was greeting him from the voice.

"Hi, Carl. Who is your friend?" Choji asked between handfuls of chips.

"Oh, this is, you know, I never asked for your name?" Carl turned to Naruto, not wanting to make it seem weird that he already knew the kid's name without being introduced. Naruto had a dumbfounded and disbelieving look on his face as he looked down at the box of pocky in his hands. If even a strange one like Itachi liked the things, they must be alright.

"Hi, my name is Naruko Uzumaki! It's good to meet you!" The blonde finally stated cheerfully while looking a little nervous about whether or not he would be accepted.

Carl mind froze like a blue screen for a moment. 'Did he say Naruko, not Naruto?' Carl thought. 'But if it's Naruko, then that probably means that he's a she.'

Carl saw that the three were chatting just fine and kept an ear out, occasionally throwing in his own comments about his daily life and training, but most of his focus was on observing _Naruko._

And without the preconceptions in his mind that it was a boy named Naruto, he soon spotted the signs that it was indeed a girl named Naruko in front of him.

'What the hell is going on here? I guess I'm in some alternate version of the world where Naruto isn't a boy but a girl?'

Carl desperately struggled to keep himself acting normal and conversing with the three new friends. But inside he was worried. If this one fundamental fact of Naruto – no, Naruko's gender was different, then what else was different about this world?

If even the basic information about the world was so very, very different from what he knew, he couldn't trust any of the information he had to be accurate.

"So, you're saying that your mom is the scary one in your family, and that she gets after you worse than your dad, who just likes being lazy?" Naruko fell back on her back, laughing uproariously, but with a tinge of envy that Carl could see.

"Women are troublesome." Shikamaru replied while on his back.

Carl snorted in laughter when he saw Naruko stiffen up in outrage.

"What, you think I'm 'troublesome' too?" Naruko challenged Shikamaru while Choji simply watched like he was at a tennis match.

"Let's just say that Shikamaru here finds even the effort needed to fork food into his mouth as bothersome. Girls like to yell at him because he's so lazy, so that's why he finds them troublesome." Carl interjected to break up the incoming fight.

Naruko paused with her mouth open. She was about to yell some more at Shikamaru when Carl's words caused her to visualize Shikamaru with his head down on the table next to a fork, bitterly complaining that it wasn't doing its job to feed him. The odd image caused her to burst out laughing.

After Naruko explained the thought she had, Carl and Choji joined her a moment later in laughing at Shikamaru's expense.

"Forks are bothersome, they don't do the work for me." Instead of getting offended, Shikamaru ran with the joke, the corners of his mouth twitching as he fought the grin that was trying to materialize on his face while he continued staring up at the clouds.

The four of them continued to chat and joke around for a couple hours more before it was time for Carl, Shikamaru, and Choji to return to their homes for dinner.

As they were leaving after saying their farewells, Carl could see how glum Naruko looked to have her first friends ever leaving. She seemed to want to grasp on and never let go of the nice feelings she had for those short few hours. Since all she had to look forward to was going home to an empty house with graffiti proclaiming her a demon, it wasn't any wonder that she was looking glum.

"Hey, Naruko? Would you like to come visit me and Hinata for dinner?" Carl asked impulsively. Seeing any kid that glum touched his heartstrings. He didn't like the idea that she was living on her own at 6 years old, even if she had the Hokage to look out for her. Well, mostly look out for her. He was a busy man, being the Hokage.

Assuming any of his meta-knowledge applied to this alternate world he found himself in and the Hokage actually cared for her. Which was a big "If" at this point.

"You mean it, Carl?" Naruko looked uncertainly at him. Carl nodded affirmatively. "I dunno. Adults don't seem to like me too much, are you sure it's okay?"

"I wouldn't have offered if I wasn't sure." Carl replied, only having firmed up his resolve that it would be fine when he said the words. He didn't want to break the building hope in the little girl's eyes. "Come on, I want to introduce you to my twin sister, Hinata."

Carl soon found Hinata sitting with Ino and Sakura over by the balance beams and made his way over with his orange clad friend following along behind him.

"Hey, Hinata. Ino, good to see you again." Carl said as he approached. "This is my new friend, Naruko Uzumaki." Carl introduced them to each other, then turned to the pink haired girl. "And I'm afraid I don't know our new friend…?"

"Oh, this is our friend, Sakura Haruno." Ino introduced the girl.

"Nice to meet you, Carl, Naruko." Sakura nervously greeted them. It looked like it was a mix of her not being very confident, mixed with a bit of caution against Naruko. It looked to Carl like her parents or someone had warned her against being friends with Naruko.

"So, did you girls have fun today?" Carl casually asked as he jumped up on one of the beams, looking over the girls as he balanced on one foot and casually spinning around.

"It was fun, brother. I made a new friend in Sakura here. She's very smart! And Ino is great too! She knows the most amazing things about flowers, since that's what her family does." Hinata then cheerfully told Carl about the confrontation with the other mean girls, and how Ino stuck up for Sakura.

"That's great that you ran off those nasty, dumb girls." Carl offered to Ino, while also smiling at little Sakura. "It wouldn't do to have you argue with the dumb ones, Sakura. They are certainly not worth your time."

He was amused by the bashful look Sakura had. It was very different from the loud and forward version of her later in the show.

"So Ino's knowledge of plants is a good match to talk with you about the medicinal pastes you and mom make? That's great!" Carl agreed. "And I always like meeting smart people to hang out with. It makes it much more fun to learn together! So, we're all friends, now, yeah? We look out for each other and fight off the bullies together!" He proclaimed.

Looking down at Ino and Sakura, Carl noticed their cheeks were pink from embarrassment. Sakura was a mix of having her embarrassing moment being retold and also being praised for her good qualities. Ino for having her actions portrayed in such a heroic light.

"That's awesome!" Naruko shouted, caught up in the moment. "If you ever need someone to back you up again against those jerks, I'll be there!" Naruko, caught up in the moment and desperately wanting more friends, grabbed Sakura and Ino's hand when she fervently promised them she would fight on their side.

Carl chuckled at the sight, having seen that Naruko was riding an emotional high and was swept away in all the positive feelings she had experienced today. In order for it not to turn awkward, Carl moved forward and placed his hand on the group's hands too. Hinata, seeing what Carl was doing, didn't even need a prompt from him to join in and add her hands to the pile.

"Well, since we're all friends, then it's all for one and one for all!" Carl announced in an overly dramatic voice. "If anyone attacks any one of us, then we're all going to fight them!"

And after a bit of encouragement, he got all four girls to repeat the "All for one, one for all" phrase. He was pretty sure they never heard of the Three Musketeers around here, but even if they had, he was ripping off their catch phrase regardless. It was so succinct and useful, he couldn't not make use of it.

After chatting for a bit more to let the four girls get to know each other, they went their separate ways with promises to meet up in the park again in a few days.

After Ino and Sakura left, Carl, Hinata, and Naruko made their way out of the park and back towards their clan housing. Nuo and Ko suddenly appeared behind the group of three just as they exited the park. Eh, ninjas…

"Where did you come from?!"

The way that Naruko jumped and freaked out at the way that the two Hyuga guards showed up out of nowhere was quite amusing. The way that Ko looked at Naruko like she was a bug wasn't so amusing. Nuo kept a more neutral face, but he didn't look happy with her presence either.

"Relax, Naruko. These are Nuo and Ko, part of their duties are to escort us around to make sure we don't get in trouble." Carl explained.

"It's okay, Naruko. You're our guest, so they won't bother you." Hinata smiled and took Naruko's hand to calm her down.

The fact that Naruko was so jumpy and nervous around adults made Carl think that this must be one of those worlds where Naruto…Naruko wasn't treated particularly well.

'Man, it's still hard to get used to the differences of this world having a female Naruto.' Carl muttered in his mind.

"Let's go, dinner waits for no man." Carl announced as he strode forth, manfully ignoring his sister's question of wondering where the man was, which caused Naruko to burst into laughter. With his man dignity he manfully ignored the joke at his expense. He was a man, after all.

And he definitely didn't mutter anything along the lines of 'I'll show you a man!'

Cause yeah, he was still only six years old.

They soon arrived home. Carl casually made sure he was on one side of Naruko while Hinata was on the other side. They had noticed how differently the adults around Konoha looked at her, and they were trying to give her emotional support. That or be in place to grab her if she tried to run away from them due to nerves.

They made a trip to the baths first to clean up before dinner. One of the things that Carl had to adjust to in this world was that his family had a family bath that they all used together if they were bathing at the same time. It wasn't exactly public bathing, since it seemed to go by family units. But getting used to bathing with his sisters, mother, and father had taken a bit of time.

Carl assumed the Hyuga's lack of concern over seeing each other naked had a lot to do with their eyes. With a small application of chakra, everyone looked naked to the Hyuga.

Carl wondered if Superman had that problem…

But Naruko wasn't used to the semi-public bathing, so Carl remained outside while Hinata pulled her inside the baths. Carl had a servant bring an extra kimono that would fit Naruko so they could clean her orange overalls while they ate.

'Seriously, the Hokage isn't exactly doing a great job if he's forcing Naruko to run around in this orange monstrosity.' Carl thought in his mind when he handed off the offending clothes after Hinata and Naruko entered the baths.

The squawks and squeals from Naruko, while amusing to Carl, made him wonder if anyone had ever sat her down and explained how and why to bathe properly, or if the Hokage and the people of Konoha had simply let/forced her to run wild and learn everything on her own. Which was no way to raise a kid.

Once the girls came out of the baths, Carl took his turn while Hinata took charge of Naruko. As he sluiced the water over his body to rinse off the soap, he couldn't help but chuckle at the oddity of his life and position in this world as the Hyuga heir.

With a chuckle, he dried off and got dressed in his clean clothes and made his way to the dining room.

"…so, yeah I mostly hang around the edges of the forest, but today I was passing by the park when Carl came right up and bluntly told me we'd be friends, then dragged me off to meet the laziest boy I ever met and another boy who really likes snacks." Naruto was narrating their day to Himari when Carl arrived.

Carl rolled his eyes. Judging by the looks his mother and Hinata were sending his way, he was going to get teased for a while over his impulsive actions where he basically shanghaied Naruko as his friend.

"But it was a lot of fun." Naruko continued. "Then I met Hinata, and Ino and Sakura, and we got along great! It was an amazing day." She finished with a smile and a sigh.

Carl was pretty happy that it seemed his kind mother had a knack for bringing Naruko out of her shell around adults. Even his father had an amused air about him while silently listening to the story while sipping a cup of sake.

Carl took his place between his father and Neji at the table, and soon the food was placed on the table by the servants. Naruko seemed a bit intimidated by the food and the family's manners at first. Cute little one and a half year old Hanabi sat next to their mother as she was fed. So Hinata, who was next to Naruko, whispered explanations of the food, the way they usually eat, and other such things to help Naruko not to feel so awkward around them.

Once the meal was finished, Carl noticed the little nudge that Himari gave to Hiashi. His parents stared at each other for a moment, before his father sighed in resignation. He then turned to Naruko.

"Naruko, you're welcome to stay the night, if you wish." Hiashi offered in his stoic way.

"In fact, we insist. You can sleep in Hinata's room with her." Himari jumped in before Naruko could reject the offer.

"You…you really want me to stay the night?" Naruko had a mess of emotions fighting their way across her face. Disbelief being prominent. No one had ever been so kind to her before.

"Yes, we would love to have you stay over." Himari offered with a gentle and kind smile.

No one was prepared for the tears that started falling from Naruko's face as she began bawling. Himari moved over and hugged the girl, while Hinata patted her back. Hanabi followed the example of her older sister and walked over to pat her back. The caring concern just caused Naruko to cry even more.

Carl, Nejii, and Hiashi pretended to be furniture while the women got the emotional things taken care of. Very stoic furniture.

When he made his impulsive invitation to Naruko, Carl had no idea it would lead to such a scene. But when he thought about it, it made sense. Someone who had lived all their life with the hate and disdain of everyone around them would be hard pressed to remain steady when they finally found an island of kindness to rest in.

Naruko ended up crying herself to sleep, even though it was still early. His mother and Hinata took her to Hinata's room to put her to bed, while Carl picked up Hanabi and followed along. His father left to take care of more paperwork for the clan, while Neji retired to his room to start his Byakugan training before going sleep.

Once Naruko was placed in the bedding in Hinata's room, Himari took Hanabi and left to get her ready for bed. Carl and Hinata moved next door to Carl's room to do their evening Byakugan practice.

"Why did Naruko react like that, Carl?" Hinata broke the silence after a while.

"You remember how the adults on the streets were looking at her when we were coming back home?"

"They looked at her like they hated her." Hinata frowned as she thought back. "Even Ko and Nuo didn't seem to like her."

"Yes, exactly." Carl nodded. "I don't know why, but it seems like a lot of people really don't like her for some reason. It doesn't really make sense, cause she's a nice girl. But if all she ever sees is hatred or indifference in everyone's eyes all the time, being suddenly confronted with kindness so unexpectedly can really touch her. The warmth of kindness is something she is unused to feeling. Since it was so unexpected, it slipped past the guard that she usually keeps up against everyone. It's kind of similar to how Neji reacted when we welcomed him back into the family, only more so."

"Hmm." Hinata thought about it for some time while Carl resumed his practice. "We shouldn't let her go back to her previous life. No one should live like that here in Konoha." Hinata firmly declared.

"I agree." Carl said, looking over and through the wall with his Byakugan into the room that Naruko was sleeping in. "She definitely doesn't deserve to be treated like she has been. She deserves a better life."

Carl was thinking of how the Nine-Tail Fox had rampaged in Konoha a bit more than six years ago, killing many ninja and citizens of Konoha. How Naruko's father, the Fourth Hokage, gave his life to seal the fox inside her so it wouldn't continue its massacre. He thought about how her mother and father protected her from being impaled by one of the Fox's claws just before it was sealed, and how they protected her with their dying breaths.

And as a result, she grew up without parents in a village that couldn't differentiate between her and the Fox. How they hated Naruko because she was the thing they could focus their anger on for the Fox's rampage and death.

If the villagers truly thought she was the Nine-Tail Fox, the last thing they should be doing was abusing her. Provoking a demon fox wasn't the smartest thing to do. So they probably just used it as an excuse to let out their horrible behavior and feel superior to someone who couldn't fight back.

And if they truly trusted their hero, the Fourth Hokage, then they should trust that he did his sealing work just fine and that Naruko was just a kid who was the jail for the Fox.

But people were dumb, panicky animals. There seemed to be no escape from that trope even in alternate universes.

Coming out of his thoughts, and retracting his gaze from looking at the little girl sleeping in the next room, Carl then ignored the smirk his twin sister was giving him as he resumed his Byakugan practice. He didn't want to know what caused that expression to appear on her face. His twin was just too mischievous sometimes, loving to tease him for the oddest things.


	90. Naruto 4

After that evening where she broke down crying, Naruko moved in with them. Carl was happy to see his parents in action in this instance as they took in and comforted the young orphan, it made him proud of them for stepping up. Now that she was a friend of their children, Hiashi and Himari weren't going to just stand by and let things go on as they had been and let Naruko run wild with no guidance.

Naruko began joining Carl, Hinata, and Neji in their daily training schedule. She joined them in the mornings for their exercises in a spare set of Hinata's workout clothes at first, which mostly fit her. Their parents had already arranged for a new wardrobe for her, which would take a bit of time to make.

When asked what colors Naruko liked, she admitted that the orange monstrosity that was her jumpsuit was the only thing she could get to wear. As a result of her stubbornness, she had convinced herself she actually liked the bright and obnoxious orange.

"Orange isn't too bad a color, Naruko." Himari patiently began explaining her opinion on the matter. "But too much orange just doesn't look good, either. Having some orange mixed in with other colors will look much better. And if you are serious about being a ninja, you should know that ninjas shun colors that are too bright. They make it too hard to hide from enemy ninja when you need every advantage."

"Okay. I'll listen to you about the colors." Naruko thought about the issue for some time before giving in and agreeing to follow Himari's lead on the colors and styles of her clothes. Despite being a wild child, she was still a girl and had those same impulses and desires for pretty things that any other girl did, even if it had been carefully buried under the imperative to survive in a hostile environment.

After breakfast at their morning workout, Carl was amused to see that while Naruko's strength was only slightly above average for their age, she had speed and endurance to spare. She was like a little energizer bunny that kept going and going.

He figured it was the physical boost she gained from being the Jinchuriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox. The Fox's chakra that leaked from the seal it was imprisoned in had quite an effect on her physical body, breaking it down at the same time it was healing her. It was also probably where the three whisker marks on each cheek came from, which was one of her most distinctive features.

In addition to her stamina and speed, she had a health regeneration ability that made it so any nicks and scrapes she got in training were fully healed without scarring very soon after they finished training. It was truly impressive.

Despite joining the Hyuga in their physical training, the Gentle Fist was not a martial art that would be a good fit for Naruko, since she didn't have the Byakugan or body type for the martial art. So their tutors got Naruko started on the basic academy martial art that would be taught to all the students. It would give her a good foundation for building on when she began learning other, more advanced martial art styles.

After lunch Carl and Hinata dragged Naruko along behind Neji to the study where they would continue to train their mind with scholarly studies and the arts.

"Uh." Naruko uneasily blurted out when she hesitated to enter the study/library full of scrolls and books. "I don't know about me being here."

"Why?" Carl asked her after looking at her for a bit.

"I was always told that I was a natural disaster and would ruin any scrolls. So I don't wanna do that to your scrolls." She almost whispered in response. She didn't want to ruin the hospitality they had given her.

Carl and Hinata exchanged glances. With a subtle nod, Hinata grabbed Naruko's hand and pulled her in and sat her down at the desk.

"Naruko, whoever told you that was a bad person. Don't pay any attention to what they say, okay? We want you here, and want you to learn along with us." Hinata gently said, with Carl nodding along and adding his 'yes' to what Hinata was saying. Neji even gave a serious nod along with them.

"R-really?" Naruko asked in disbelief, looking from one to the other, still having a hard time believing that someone could be so…nice, to her. That they wanted her around.

Carl internally tsked at yet more evidence that the girl who should be an upbeat and never say never kind of ninja was so…uncertain and tentative.

'Well, I guess it makes sense, really. If she had to live another six years all on her own with the hatred of the civilians all around her she would have developed bigger and stronger emotional walls to hide behind. Her public mask would be nearly impossible to get past, and it might have developed into her actual persona. Right now she's still at that vulnerable stage where she still has some small amount of hope that things could get better.'

Needless to say, Carl realized that if they betrayed her at this point, she might never trust anyone else ever again. He had no intention of doing that to Naruko though, and judging by Hinata's look, his cute six year old sister would make anyone who harmed Naruko her enemy of a lifetime.

"Really, really." Carl sincerely answered Naruko's question, unable to keep himself from quoting Shrek.

"Yes." Hinata replied at the same time. "Now, come. Tell me what you know about reading and writing."

"Uh…nothing." Naruko awkwardly scratched the back of her head. "No one had any time to show me anything."

Carl could tell by the clenching of hands and grinding of teeth that Hinata didn't like what that answer said about Naruko's life. His twin sister took that as a declaration of war, of sorts. She soon had her new blonde friend digging into the trenches of academia, determined to do battle with the helpless ignorance that Naruko was forced to battle every day of her life!

'Well, that's what it feels like at any rate.' Carl chuckled inside as he watched Hinata tutoring Naruko on the basics.

Looking over at Neji's face where he was studying in his own corner, Carl saw that his cousin had been tracking the conversation. While Neji hadn't been putting a lot of effort into interacting with Naruko, he had been following the conversations and learning what her life had been like.

Carl saw the realization hit Neji that even with how much it sucked to be a branch member of the Hyuga clan, there were people out there that had it worse than him. It was that realization that soon proved to Carl that Neji was just as invested in seeing Naruko excel in her training and studies as he and Hinata were.

Carl thought it was a sort of vicarious victory over fate that drove Neji on. If Naruko was able to overcome the fate that the civilians tried to foist on her, then he had hope that his fate could change as well.

While intellectually Neji knew the obsession with Fate was foolish and had simply been a malicious plot that the dead Hyuga elder had preached to him to ruin him, emotionally he hadn't been able to overcome yet how deeply it had been embedded in his psyche.

So Neji desperately hoped to see Naruko turn her Fate around, which would give him hope that Fate had no real hold on him.

And from then on in their afternoon study, the three Hyugas would take turns tutoring Naruko, trying to get her caught up to where they were in their studies.

In the evenings while Carl and Hinata trained their Byakugan eyes, Naruko started learning to access her chakra and practice control exercises. With her enormous chakra reserves, Carl knew that she would need all the control exercises she could get to be able to tame her chakra.

Now that Naruko was doing those chakra control exercises, Carl realized that the Hyuga's eye training exercises basically did the same thing as the leaf floating chakra control exercises. It was no wonder, really, that the Byakugan training served more than one purpose. The Hyuga's martial art, the Gentle Fist, needed a great deal of skill and control to accomplish.

If they didn't have an exact control over their chakra, they could accidentally inject too much chakra into their strikes and kill or permanently disable their opponent when they were simply trying to incapacitate and capture.

It was also important of the Hyuga members to start very young. They could gain control over their chakra and practice the Gentle Fist style before they really gained enough chakra to accidentally paralyze or kill their practice partners.

Carl felt lucky that even though he had unusually high chakra reserves for a Hyuga, he was able to learn control so quickly. Well, he felt lucky but it was probably the result of perks that he still didn't know about. So, he still felt lucky, just in a different way.

After the first few days of Naruko's stay, Carl saw the third Hokage visit Hiashi for a meeting. He wasn't able to see exactly what they spoke about, their anti-spying measures were quite good. But his Byakugan training was quite advanced so he was able to at least see them while he channeled chakra to his eyes. After the two men sat down in his father's study, Carl watched his father pass a report to the Hokage.

After reading the report, the Hokage slumped a bit in his seat, apparently disheartened by what he read. Carl could only assume it was a report on an investigation into Naruko's life and all the things the civilians put her through. The reports the Hokage received were probably not that accurate or detailed. Either that or the old man didn't have the time to read everything when he was swamped with paperwork.

As a result of that report and whatever else Hiashi and the Hokage talked about, there were no more obstacles in the way of their having Naruko live with them. The Hokage actually seemed quite relieved and pleased with their help for the young blonde Uzumaki.

But a few things did change in their weekly schedule. Aside from their regular play time meetings with their friends in the park, the Hokage came by at least once or twice a week to spend time with Naruko, talking about their lives and getting to know her better. He even sometimes came to their training sessions and took over for the tutors to train Naruko.

Carl, Hinata, and Neji were allowed to sit in on the training, as long as they didn't try to take over the focus of the lessons the Hokage gave Naruko. Each of the lessons were quite good. The old man's teaching methods were quite good for getting them to learn. He did train the three Sannin. And whatever else they became, they were highly skilled S-class ninja.

In regards to the Hokage's renewed vigor in being a part of Naruko's life, Carl could only assume the tired old ninja felt guilty over how he allowed Minato Namikaze's daughter's situation to degrade so far and was trying to make it up to her. Minato Namikaze was the fourth Hokage, and he had sacrificed his life and soul to seal the Nine Tailed fox away in the seal in her stomach to stop its rampage across Konoha.

Minato had summoned up the death god Shinigami at the cost of dying and having his soul be sealed in the Shinigami's stomach for all of eternity. Apparently the death god thought souls were tasty? Who knows.

Naruko's mother was Kushina Uzumaki, which was where Naruko Uzumaki got her last name from, rather than her father. She was the last member of the Uzumaki clan (as far as anyone in Konoha was aware of). The Uzumaki clan of Uzushio had been staunch allies of Konoha for years, and were cousins of the Senju clan.

And Kushina had been the previous jinchuriki of the Nine Tailed Fox, holding the demon fox back from going on rampages. She had left her home in Uzushio at a young age to come to Konoha to take up the burden from Mito Uzumaki.

So with those two people as Naruko's parents, Carl could see how the old man Hokage would have felt some guilt over letting their daughter fall into such abuse. It was a poor way for Konoha to repay those two ninja who literally gave their entire lives to making Konoha a better place.

Three months passed since that day that Naruko came to live with them, and another packet of Carl's memories were restored. This time it was his memories from the Against the Gods world.

'Well, at least now I know what happened to Rover, or Feng Ra now.' Carl chuckled, relieved. His earlier panic on finding out he was missing his familiar was kind of funny now that he knew what happened.

Aside from his suddenly restored control over his profound energy cultivation, the time pearl, his sword Blue Orchid and his armor, his pocket dimension, the inner world and all the energies stored there, and remembering his relationship with Caiyi; the best thing aside from all those best things was that in this round of memories coming back was his knowledge of medicine and healing.

He was positive he could help Yakumo now with her problem. She hadn't been showing up at the park with his other friends, which was something that concerned them all. From what they had been told, her physical frailty had taken a turn for the worse, so she hadn't been able to join them.

Since he hadn't heard about a fire or her parents dying, he was sure he still had some time before her tragedy occurred. And since he had no idea about just when it happened, he figured now was the best time to help her before something bad happened.

That very night, instead of going into his Warehouse to train in the Hunting Grounds, Carl teleported out of the clan grounds after putting up his SEP field on his room. He had only ever been to Yakumo's clan house for her birthday celebrations before, so he didn't know where her bedroom was. He teleported outside their clan housing to do some recon, floating in the air above the buildings.

Channeling a bit of chakra to his eyes to activate his Byakugan, he scanned through the walls of the Kurama clan housing, looking for his friend. Once he located her, and saw that she was alone, Carl teleported into her room.

The moment he arrived in Yakumo's room, he could sense the _wrongness_. Something smelled foul to his senses, and it felt even worse to his magic.

That feeling wasn't something he was likely to forget. He had sensed it a lot in his time in the BtVS world. It was the presence of a demon.

Instead of following his first plan of doing a medical diagnostics, Carl cast a sleep spell on Yakumo to give him time to work. He then cast an SEP field on the room, as well as silencing charms. He didn't know how loud this was going to get.

After a series of diagnostic spells, Carl found out what kind of demon he was dealing with. It was similar to Eyghon the Sleepwalker, in that it was a possessing demon. But since Yakumo hadn't invited the demon into her body, it was limited in what it could do. But still, it was ruining her health and messing with her mind, and it needed to go now.

Some third party had apparently performed a ritual that caused her to be possessed by the demon, since the demon wasn't the kind that was powerful enough to wander around the physical plane on its own power.

And the possession was draining her life force, which was causing her weakness. It would also eventually give the demon access to her illusions based bloodline at some point if it wasn't cast out soon, which would allow it to affect the real world and act as if it was a split personality. Everyone would think she was mentally unstable, and her situation would get even worse.

Carl scowled at seeing his friend in this situation, being schemed against by unknown parties.

There was a memory he had of something like this happening in one of the Naruto fanfictions he had read. He had no idea if it matched up, since that story had a male Naruto, not a female Naruko. But it was something that could be checked up on at some point, probably.

He cast another series of diagnostic spells, took her pulse and inspected her body with profound energy. And he found out that in addition to being possessed, she was also poisoned.

He hadn't ever run across that particular poison, but he could see what it was trying to do. It was trying to suppress and destroy her control over illusions that her bloodline gave her. Once he saw that, Carl scowled even more.

In the story he remembered, this poison was aimed at the Kurama clan to weaken them and lessen the influence they had over Konoha. And eventually kill them all off. Yakumo had such a strong and concentrated version of their bloodline that the poison couldn't affect her control over illusions.

So the perpetrators had performed a minor summoning of a demon to possess Yakumo to continue to destroy the Kurama clan.

And the clan that was responsible for the poison and the demon in the story was none other than the Uchiha clan.

While Carl didn't want to jump to conclusions and immediately label the Uchiha as the perpetrators, he was at the very least incredibly suspicious. He would have to investigate and figure out what really happened.

For now, it was time to get rid of the demon and the poison in Yakumo's body.

Carl first pulled out a bezoar that he had enhanced to be much better at dispelling poisons than normal. Thank goodness he now had access to his dimensional storage space. With Yakumo unconscious, he forced the small stone down her throat.

A brief smile appeared on his face when he force fed her a bezoar, despite the seriousness of Yakumo's condition. He had thought of an amusing scene from the movie The Princess Bride.

"You're not even mostly dead, Yakumo. But it is a miracle I've got this stone, I'll admit. It's even chocolate covered."

After waiting for a few minutes Carl ran another diagnostic spell and was relieved to see the poison was being neutralized. It was breaking down and being passed from her body by her normal biological functions.

With the poison gone, he focused on getting rid of the demon.

He retrieved the items he needed from his Warehouse and set out the ritual that would cast out the demon. Carl set out two circles, both in blessed silver. The first one he placed Yakumo in. It was connected with a line of magically infused stone crushed into powder. Various herbs and candles were set around at key points.

Once he had the ritual prepared, Carl began the chanting that invoked the magic. He felt the metaphysical gears of the world being shifting as he continued to employ the ritual. After a few minutes, he felt the spell anchor enter Yakumo and fish around for the target. A short time later, the ritual's probe hooked the demon, like a fish.

It slowly began pulling the demon out of Yakumo. The demon reacted like a fish would, flopping around and struggling to escape, which caused the host, Yakumo, to begin yelling and screaming in pain. Carl ignored the thrashing and screaming of his friend to continue the ritual. He couldn't finish until the demon was out of her.

It was good he had remembered to put up silencing spells. He didn't need her clan member to come mobbing him during the ritual.

After several minutes of struggle, the demon was finally completely separated from Yakumo. Carl changed the pitch and cadence of the ritual, and his magic that powered the ritual pushed the demon along the path of the magically infused stone dust from one circle to the next. The moment the demon arrived in the silver circle that Yakumo wasn't in, Carl brushed away the dust and charged the prison circle the demon was in. It wouldn't be able to escape now.

Carl looked over and finally saw the appearance of the demon. And it was ugly as sin. It's vaguely humanoid body stood only four feet tall. Its poison green skin looked festooned with boils and warts and cancers. Its arms and legs had at least four, no five joints. No, it was back to four again. And now three.

Well, however many joints it had at any one time, the way it moved around the inside of the blessed silver circle that was trapping it was unnatural. It's "face" had a mouth that was very similar to the Predator alien, with side mandibles. It had no eyes, but it did have restless tentacles for hair as it sought some way to return to Yakumo's body.

Carl began another chant, starting up a ritual to tear the demon limb from limb and scatter its essence back to the demon realm it came from. It would be torn into so many small particles that it would never be able to reform. While the demon was annoying, it was so low level in power that he would waste more magical energy in powering the ritual to suck out its essence and power out and cleansing it of taint than he would gain for storage and later use. So he decided to simply destroying it.

After several minutes, the inhuman screeching from the demon stopped, as it was finally destroyed and cast out.

"Carl? What's happening? What was that thing? Was that inside of me?"

Carl's eyes snapped over to the circle that Yakumo was in. Apparently the ritual also got rid of the sleep spell Carl put on her, and she had seen everything.

So he had two choices, either wipe her memory of the event and act like nothing happened, or tell her a bit of the truth.

Looking into her nervous brown eyes, Carl caved. He couldn't callously erase his friend's memories like that. His shoulders slumping down, Carl sighed as he began to explain.

"We were all worried about your sudden declining health, Yakumo." Carl began as he sat next to her in the circle he had laid out. "And I happen to have some special abilities, don't ask about them for now. I could tell there was something really wrong. So I snuck in and got rid of the demon that was in you that was making you sick."

Carl kept it simple, no long explanations. Even though she was a smart ninja kid, she still wasn't even 7 years old yet.

"So, like another bloodline besides your Byakugan?" Yakumo asked as she leaned closer to look in his eyes.

"Yeah, it's pretty much like that. But, you've got to keep it a secret, please." Carl requested.

"Of course!" Yakumo loudly declared as she nodded her head vigorously. "I already feel a hundred times better, now that that thing is out of me." She shuddered in disgust at her memory of the demon. That disgusting thing had been inside of her!

Carl put an arm around her shoulders in comfort, and she leaned into him for a few minutes.

"So, how can I be sure that it won't come back?" She asked him eventually.

"The…jutsu, tore it to pieces. It won't be able to come back." Carl reassured her, though she still didn't look comforted.

"But…what if another one tries to get inside of me?" She asked in a tiny voice.

Ah. He should have thought of that. Carl pulled out an amulet from his storage and presented it to her. The metal was filled with magic and charmed to be unbreakable and so that it couldn't strangle the wearer even if someone tried to choke them with it. The amulet would prevent any demon from possessing the wearer.

"Here, wear this to protect yourself from any other demons. They won't be able to possess you while you wear it." Carl explained the properties of the amulet.

"Thank you!" Yakumo hugged Carl fiercely for the gift.

"You're very welcome."

Carl really didn't want to tell her at this point that it was most likely not happenstance that she was possessed by a demon. He had no proof who the culprit was, yet. And causing her to worry about enemies that she couldn't do anything about right now would just cause her unnecessary worry.

So he needed some way to protect her, beyond the amulet, from subsequent attacks. He couldn't be sure that whoever sicced the demon on her would not find some other method to attack her once they found out the demon hadn't worked out properly.

He discreetly made the chain of the necklace into a portkey that would bring her to safety at his room if someone were trying to kill her, and alert him to what happened.

It might take some time, but he would have to figure out if it was the Uchiha that was to blame or not for Yakumo's condition. One thing for sure, if the Uchiha were responsible and they were doing the same things to other clans in order to try to gain supremacy in Konoha, he was feeling a lot less motivated to prevent the Uchiha Massacre from happening.

Who cares if stopping the massacre would prevent Sasuke from becoming an emo? If the Uchiha clan was behind it all, then they deserved to be massacred. Well, all the adults anyway.

Especially because if this kind of treasonous sabotage and killing of Konoha's clans was done by the Uchiha, then they definitely wouldn't stop until they won the entire board. Which meant they would be looking to end his own Hyuga clan at some point in the future. And he wasn't about to let anything happen to his family.

As flawed as the Hyuga were, they were still his family.

"Your health should restore back to normal, Yakumo." Carl finally told the little girl that was hugging him. "Try to get some sleep now to recover better. And you should join us at the playground in a couple days. Everyone has missed you."

"Thanks again, Carl."

While Yakumo had been distracted with hugging him with her eyes closed, Carl had discretely cleaned up the ritual, storing everything in his dimensional storage. Now he got up and tucked Yakumo into bed.

He slipped out of her bedroom door when he saw the coast was clear, dropping the spells that kept anyone from investigating the happenings in her room that night. He silently apparated back to his room, and sat down in thought.

If it wasn't just Yakumo that was poisoned, but all the members of the Kurama clan, then that was something that would be hard to counteract without alerting the poisoners. And how did a whole ninja clan get poisoned anyway? That was definitely something that needed investigating.

He wasn't sure how or even if he was going to do anything about healing the Kurama clan anytime soon. There were too many things he didn't know the answers to. He wouldn't make any decisions until he got some solid answers.

Investigating would be annoying. He had the skills to do so, but he was going to have to spend a lot of his time sneaking into different high security record locations. And chances were that the secrets weren't written down, so he would have to spend plenty of time trawling through ninja's minds for those secrets.

And he still didn't know how good the average ninja's mind defenses were, let alone the Yamanaka clan who specialized in mind based jutsu.

Sighing at the thought of how much work his investigation would entail since he only had free time at night to do it, he settled down to meditate the rest of the night away. He had a lot to think about and plan for the future.

* * *

The next day Carl went about the normal routine of training with Hinata, Naruko, and Neji. It was another day where the third Hokage, Hiruzen of the Sarutobi clan, came to teach Naruko.

The man who, before he became the Hokage, earned the nickname The Professor for his incredibly varied knowledge on the Ninja Arts never came at the same time of day more than once in a row. One day he would show up for the morning physical conditioning. The next visit he would be there in the evening for chakra control training. And then he might come to guide Naruko's martial art practice, then he might show up for an afternoon study session.

Carl thought the Hokage was trying to set an example for Naruko of how a ninja must be unpredictable to stay alive. They must vary their routine and never allow their guard to drop.

Either that or he was just fitting in the lessons in between meetings. Carl hadn't completely made up his mind on that. There were always mundane explanations that could be the reason rather than sneaky ones and conspiracy theories.

The Hokage's visit came in the morning, and they spent a bit of time going over different traps that ninjas were expected to know. And there was a lot.

A trap that a ninja sets for any other ninja chasing them through a forest. A trap for the same thing in the open plains, or the desert. A trap for when one is ambushing a caravan, or even a trap when one is defending a caravan. A trap for a quiet assassination with poison, or a loud and public assassination.

There were no end to the amount and types of traps. And all of them required one to get in the head of the victim of the trap and see the world through their eyes. What kind of bait would get the target of a trap to dive willingly into said trap? What kind of things would heighten their vigilance to cause them to veer away from false traps and into the real trap? What kind of things would let them relax their guard and so not see the trap before it was sprung?

While Carl had a great deal of knowledge in utilizing traps for hunting beasts, the lecture the Hokage gave them about how to set traps when their targets were ninja was a welcome and thought provoking lesson for Carl. Especially since it came from such an old and experienced ninja, whose skills had lasted the test of time.

When the Hokage left that day, Carl saw an unholy gleam in Naruko's eyes. Carl chuckled inside. It appeared that Naruko wanted to make use of all the civilians that treated her poorly as a means of gaining experience in laying traps.

Carl even helped Naruko convince Hinata that it was the right thing to do, since even the civilians needed to be kept on their toes. Hinata wasn't completely convinced by that argument, but by the remembrance of all the hate filled glares that were aimed at her best friend. That was enough to get her on board. Carl himself never had a problem with it. It would be good experience, especially anytime they needed to escape from ninja forces that might try to catch them.

A few days later, the trio had just arrived in the park to meet up with their friends when they heard a loud cry of soul rending agony coming from behind them.

Turning around, on the far side of the market, they saw a most amusing sight. A civilian man in his 40s was covered in some sticky solution and had feathers stuck to him. But he was completely ignoring the feathers while he was jumping up and down, trying in vain to reach a book with a red cover that was dangling from a rope that was just out of his reach.

"Huh, never expected to see Mr. Sato, the clothes retailer that will only sell me ugly orange jumpsuits for 10 times what they are worth looking so…unkempt in public." Naruko sniggered.

"Yeah, who knew he had such weird hobbies." Carl chuckled.

"What's the book he's trying to grab?" Hinata wondered.

"That's one of those books of smut all the perverts love reading." Naruko stated.

Carl looked sideways at her, seeing that apparently she was just repeating what she had heard from a number of gossiping women.

"Smut? What's that?" Hinata asked.

"Things like kissing and naked wrestling." Naruko stated.

"Hmm, weird. We should really start carrying a camera with us to immortalize moments like this." Carl tried to change the topic. He didn't want to listen to his six year old sister and friend talk about smut. They were still at least six years away from starting puberty and their opinions were bound to be a bit off kilter and embarrassing.

'Hmm. On second thought, I should be treasuring these conversations so I can bring them up as embarrassing blackmail later on.' Carl chuckled internally.

"Yeah. I would like to treasure this moment for all time." Naruko agreed with a huge grin as she watched the huge crowd gathering and laughing at the feather man. It felt pretty darn good to practice her ninja skills and get some payback at the same time.

"Well, let's go meet up with everyone. I heard that Yakumo is doing much better and planning on joining us." Hinata said as she turned back around.

"Alright!" Naruko turned around and started running, grabbing Hinata's hand as she pulled her along. "We'll see you later Carl! Have fun with your lazy, stinky, and boring friends!"

Carl chuckled as he waved bye to the girls before he left to find Shikamaru, Choji, Shino, or Kiba to hang out with. Ever since Naruko had met Kiba she loved calling him stinky, since he positively reeked of dog. It's like he slept with the dogs in the pound and didn't bathe in the morning.

And since Naruko was now following Carl and Hinata's schedule, she had grown used to the family bathing situation and bathing at least a couple times a day. At the very least they had one bath after each morning exercise and one just before bed.

So now that she was used to regular bathing, running into Kiba who always smelled of dog, she gave him the nickname "Stinky".

Shino didn't talk very much. Carl thought it was because he was always "chatting" with his hive. Since he easily filled his quota of daily communication, he didn't feel the need for idle chatting and joking, usually. And Choji was always chowing down on his snacks, so he usually kept his mouth busy. Either that or he was too shy to be a proactive talker. So they were both nicknamed "Boring". They didn't even get their own nickname, that's how boring they were.

Carl wasn't the only one who laughed at that. Even Shino and Choji weren't bothered too much by it, since it was obvious that Naruko was just teasing them.

And of course Shikamaru was the only one among them who could gain the title of "Lazy" because he was the stereotypical Nara.

It was strange to Carl that they never saw Sasuke at the park meetings with the other clan heirs. Maybe that was another reason that Sasuke got such a fan following; through his anti-social ways he earned the reputation with the brainless fangirls of being "mysterious".

It was certainly a reason that Carl didn't feel bad about not helping him more. He wasn't a friend. He was barely an ally.

Carl usually spent most of their park time hanging out with the guys. Because of Kiba's inability to sit still, if he was around they would push at Shikamaru until he finally gave in and joined them in playing some kind of active game, like the combination of hide-and-seek and tag that was called playing 'ninja'. Sometimes playing ninja was like a game of kick the can. Other times it was like assault the fort. There really were unending variations on playing ninja.

If Kiba couldn't make it then they would most likely play some cerebral type game like Go, or just relax and chat.

And after spending most of his time with the guys, he would go join Hinata and Naruko in hanging out with Ino and Sakura, getting to know them. And now Yakumo was included in that, now that Carl had freed her from the demon and her health was recovering.

Today was a sedate day, with no Kiba present. They just sat on the hill and talked about some of the things they learned in the past week. Carl had a good discussion with Shikamaru and Shino about traps. Shikamaru and Shino had a lot of good ideas, since one of their clans had the shadow manipulation bloodline, and the other had hives of chakra eating bugs that nested inside them. Both the boys had their own ideas and takes on how to cause people to fall into their traps, which expanded on the basics.

Choji, on the other hand, was from a clan that was quite straightforward and focused on pure strength. Their idea of a trap was to grow their hands really large through their body expansion jutsu and clap them to death. Trap, successful!

Eventually Carl said his goodbyes to the guys and moved on to chill with the girls. Unlike the other guys his physical age, he didn't find the topics of conversation among the girls to be off putting or troublesome. And they would be working to be ninja as well, so it was important to have good relations and be able to work together.

Not to mention that he was hoping that by making friends early on with Ino and Sakura, he could keep them from making the mistake of becoming fangirls. It really was an insult to their intelligence and potential for them to fall into the category of brainless hormone factories.

"How's it going girls?" Carl said when he was still a few feet away.

"Carl!" Naruko and Yakumo called out his name excitedly.

"Brother." Hinata nodded at him with a more sedate smile.

After Carl sat down next to them, Ino and Sakura greeted him in turn.

Carl just lay back in the grass and watched the clouds while letting the conversation of the girls wash over him. They were talking about some of the things they had overheard some female ninja talking about being important.

"So I overheard this one kunoichi, who was talking to another about how important it is to _diet_ so they always looked good while they were completing their missions." Ino was just gossiping.

Carl started coughing, trying to stop himself from laughing out loud.

'I was just thinking about how to head off the stupidity that the fangirls spread, and here it is. The perfect opportunity.'

After he finished coughing, he looked up at the five sets of eyes looking at him. Two sets seemed to be glaring at him, Ino and Sakura, for interrupting them. The other three sets, Hinata, Naruko, and Yakumo, were looking at him quizzically.

"Yes, Carl?" Ino said in what she thought was a tone of voice laden with danger, but Carl just thought the little girl was amusingly cute. Little chibis were so innocent, even with their ninja training.

"Well, funny you should mention that word _diet_." Carl started. "I ran into this kunoichi who was berating a couple of girls who had just graduated the academy. She was a jonin and she had an entirely different thing to say about the word _diet_."

"Oh, and what would _you_ know about the needs of a kunoichi?" Ino queried haughtily.

Carl chuckled on the inside. Just because female ninjas, or kunoichi, had a different gender didn't mean that their food intake and exercise requirements were fundamentally different from a male. Food was energy in, and exercise was expending that energy. It was like an equation, balancing the energy requirements versus the food intake.

But obviously saying something like that would be dismissed out of hand. Since he was a boy and was their own age, he didn't have any authority on the subject, in their minds. So a different approach was needed to drive home the lesson.

"Me? Nothing. But this is coming from that jonin kunoichi that I overheard. She was saying that there are two meanings to the word diet. One of the meanings is simply what you eat regularly. It's a descriptive term to mean what kinds of food and what amounts you eat on a daily basis."

"The other meaning of the word diet is used by civilian women and lifelong genin corps kunoichi to describe how they starve themselves to try to make themselves look better to pick up a guy to be their sugar daddy."

"What's a sugar daddy?" Sakura interrupted, followed by all the girl's looking interested in the answer.

'Ugh…I should have used a different word. How to explain to six year olds what it is?'

"Well, from what I heard, some girls use only their looks to get guys to buy them everything. Like, they don't have any useful skills other than their looks. They can't cook, clean, file paperwork, and they can't throw a kunai, or do a jutsu, or anything. Sugar daddy is the term for the guys that pay for her to look good." Carl tried explaining.

"But what does the guy get out of it?" Hinata asked.

"Is it like the smut thing?" Naruko asked. Whatever else she was, she had basically lived in the streets for six years, so she had overheard a lot more of such things than Hinata, Ino, or Sakura.

"What's smut?" Sakura asked.

"It's when a guy and girl do some naked wrestling in bed." Naruko promptly answered.

"So the girl doesn't know how to do anything but gets some guy to buy everything for her and does the smut with him?" Ino asked.

"Yeah, it's like the whores down in the poor section. They do the naked wrestling smut thing, then the guys give them money." Naruko added on.

"Anyway." Carl desperately interrupted. He was hoping the girls didn't bring these particular conversations home, but he was pretty sure they would at some point. Not his problem, unless he got the blame from their parents, somehow.

"That jonin I was talking about went on to lecture the girls that if they want to be an actual kunoichi then they need to exercise daily to build up the strength, flexibility, and speed to be able to fight. And if they starve themselves with their _diet_, then they will be weak and probably get injured due to lack of nutrition. And if they are weak on a mission when their teammates are relying on them, then they could cause their whole team to die because of their weakness."

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the girls exchanging sober and shocked glances. Even though they were in ninja training, as six year olds they didn't often dwell on the topic of death that was all too common to the ninja profession. Either dealing it out or receiving it.

'Huh, now that I've got a Byakugan, is anything really in the corner of my eyes anymore?' Carl pondered a totally unrelated idea for just a moment before returning his attention to the girls. Before plowing on with the topic.

"Oh, and when she saw me being interested in what she said, she passed these pamphlets off to me. She ordered me that if I ever heard any kunoichi hopeful saying the word _diet_ then I was to pass them a pamphlet to combat the number one Killer of Konoha Kunoichi: Diets." Carl pulled out some pamphlets that he had prepared earlier.

_The Dangerously Sexy Kunoichi's Guide to Kicking Ass and Looking Good While Doing it._

Carl had spent some time over the past few months, ever since he got his Harry Potter memories, seeking out and making memory pictures of the fit and powerful jonin kunoichi that looked curvy and sexy, and then comparing them to the life-long genin corps kunoichi and civilian women that looked weak and stick thin.

The contrast between the two categories was shocking.

After a bit of an interview with some of those jonin kunoichi he had included in the pamphlet, Carl had all the information he needed to compare the two kinds of kunoichi: those who took the job seriously versus those who didn't.

And he had put all that information into the pamphlets for this exact situation, to visually show the difference between the dedicated and sexy kunoichi that didn't starve themselves and took their training seriously versus those life-long genin kunoichi who barely exercised and dieted and looked ill, weak, and not sexy.

He handed five pamphlets to the girls and watched as their eyes grew wider and wider as they looked over the visual evidence. Everything was laid out, plain as day, that if they wanted to get strong, powerful, and look good doing it, they needed to eat enough food and exercise regularly. Otherwise they would be the laughingstock of the ninja world, languishing in the bottom of the ninja totem pole: weak and unappealing.

Upon seeing the fires of determination burst into flame among the young girl's eyes as they found real kunoichi to be their role models, Carl patted himself on the back. It had been worth it to spend some extra time hunting down and interviewing some of those scary jonin. But they had certainly gotten a laugh out of his pamphlet when he passed them their copy. They certainly had zero respect for fangirls.

"Carl, Hinata. It's time to return home." Ko said from his positions standing over them. He was looking at Carl in a disapproving manner for lying on the ground so casually.

"Hmm. Since that's not all of us in the group who are to go home together, I guess we can't go yet." Carl laconically stated while staring steadily in Ko's eyes. Nuo was standing nearby, but making sure by his body language that Carl knew he wasn't of the same opinions as Ko.

Despite his casual manner, Carl was feeling quite a bit of irritation and even anger with Ko. The man had never accepted Naruko, and he occasionally did things like "forgetting" to add her name in when telling them it was time to go home. A little passive-aggressive means to try to let Naruko know he didn't approve of her and that she was an outsider that wasn't welcome. As if Ko's approval of Naruko really meant anything. But the petty actions pissed Carl off, since it was designed to hurt his friend.

If the man wasn't so damned loyal to his father, Carl would have asked for a replacement for Ko already. But the man was getting on his last nerve with his subtle digs at Naruko. And since Naruko was their honored guest, then Ko's digs were a stain on his family's honor.

Not to mention the bastard kept trying to police Carl's behavior. Kept trying to stick that stiff stick up Carl's ass so he would act like a stiff pompous douche in public; like the "proper Hyuga heir". Carl wanted none of that.

Carl got a little bit of pleasure from seeing Ko's face stiffen at the implied rebuke that Carl sent his way.

He jumped to his feet, looked over at the girls, and told them he would be back in a moment.

"Ko, come with me. We need to have a little talk." Carl strolled away from everyone else so no one could hear them. Once they had gotten out of sight around a nearby wall, Carl turned around and stared at the man.

"Ko, you have been giving loyal service to my family for many years. It is very commendable. And so it is with respect for your service that I say this to you now. Your behavior has been getting more and more unacceptable. Naruko is an honored guest. She is a close friend of both me and my sister. My parents have accepted her into our homes with open arms. So whatever problems you may have with her, you need to figure out how to get over it if you wish to remain in the position you are in."

Carl left it unsaid that he would be replaced as he eyed the man as he watched him struggle with the issue. It was very obvious what he meant, and Ko wasn't exactly a dumb person. Just apparently stubborn and blinded by hate of the Kyubi.

"So what is your problem with her anyway?" Carl finally asked when it looked like Ko wasn't going to say anything anytime soon.

Ko looked away in both shame for being chastised by a six and a half year old and anger for the same thing. As well as whatever his problem with Naruko was that was making him stubborn.

"I cannot speak of it." Ko said while looking away. "It is a high rank secret."

Carl snorted loudly, causing Ko to look at Carl in question.

"If that is the excuse you use for having a problem with Naruko, then you are more of an idiot than I thought you to be." Carl bluntly told the man. "She is the jailer, not the prisoner. And if you can't comprehend that simple fact and can only see the prisoner, then think about how powerful that prisoner is. You really want to keep poking it with a stick until it gets angry enough to snap back at you?"

Ko looked quite shocked at Carl's veiled words that showed he clearly knew that Naruko carried the Nine-Tail Fox and didn't care. It was an open secret among the adults, but the children were not supposed to know about it.

Even without his enhanced senses, he could have easily heard all the civilians muttering about the "demon girl" when they were out walking with Naruko. So even if he didn't have some prior knowledge of the world, he would have been quite suspicious of just how his friend was treated.

"But if you are so stupid and full of hate that you can't see the girl that Naruko is and act accordingly, then I suppose we need to move you to a position that will allow you the distance you need from her. Because I'm telling you right now, Naruko is not going anywhere. And I won't put up with your passive aggressive attempts to make her feel bad. You have one day to think this matter over. If you can't fix your attitude and behavior, then I'd appreciate it if you were up front about it so everyone can be happier from now on."

"Understood." Ko was looking down, and Carl was happy to see the man actually looked like he was thinking about it.

'Huh, looks like I might not have to actually beat someone up to induce a bit of decency in them with that perk from the ATG world.' Carl thought in wonder as it looked like Ko was reevaluating his attitude and outlook on life.

Satisfied with a job well done, Carl turned around to return to the group of girls, and saw that they were piled up just behind the wall listening to his rant at Ko.

Carl sighed as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. He really should have been a bit more careful about what he said and where. Having awesome X-ray eyes didn't give him any advantage if he didn't channel chakra to them and use them. And he had been so focused on what he was going to say to Ko, that he had neglected his other senses that would have told him they were being followed, since the girls didn't exhibit any malice towards him.

Looking at the girls staring at him, he saw a number of different reactions. His sister had a smile that told him how proud she was of her brother, and that it had been fully expected he would act in such a manner.

Ino and Sakura were gaping at him and looking like they were quite impressed by his defense of their friend, and shocked that he would chastise an adult like he had.

'Damn, I hope those two have enough motivation to avoid the trap of the fangirl, and that they don't fixate on me if they don't.' Carl muttered in his mind.

Yakumo was looking quite…fixated on Carl. He may have screwed up his opportunity for her to treat him like a normal friend when she discovered him exorcising that demon out of her and he let her keep the memory. Well, nothing to be done for it.

And Naruko had tears in her eyes as she looked at Carl in near worship for him actually standing up for her!

"Well, shall we go grab a snack before going our separate ways?" Carl offered. He knew the possibility of them forgetting what he'd ranted about to Ko due to being distracted with snacks was unlikely, but he had to try. A token effort, at least. "My treat?"

He was almost pulled off his feet as the girls snapped out of whatever thoughts they were in as they pulled him along to the nearest snack shop to the park.

It would be just his luck if a report got back to the Hokage about him skirting around talking about an S-rank secret.

Well, at least Carl had a cinnamon roll to console himself with. Yummm, cinnamon rolls…


	91. Naruto 5

Carl sighed inside at his current circumstances. He was seated in a hard backed chair next to his father in the Hokage's office. The old man third Hokage was sitting behind his desk with his elbows resting on the desk and his hands were held over his mouth as he stared steadily at Carl in a stern manner.

'Like that bit of intimidation is going to make me nervous, old man.' Carl worked to convey his message through his body language and gaze, mocking him with his eyes.

He knew how much the old man doted on Naruko from seeing him interact with her over the past several months. He could guess how bogged down the old man had previously been with endless paperwork and problems thrown in his lap, such that he had allowed things to get so bad for Naruko in the first place. And that he was now being very much overprotective of her to compensate for his failure and guilt.

And Carl couldn't care less about all that. He wasn't the problem here, so he wasn't going to get all nervous and bow down before the Hokage because of a bit of a staring contest.

"So. I've gotten a report that you leaked an S-rank secret." The old man finally stated in a monotone voice.

Carl internally rolled his eyes and scoffed at the man's intimidation tactics.

"Pardon me, Hokage. But if that's what your report actually said, then you really need to re-train your information gatherers and reporters. Either that or, and excuse my language here, someone is blowing smoke up your ass."

"Carl!" Hiashi barked, scandalized that his heir would be so crass.

The Hokage, on the other hand, let his face relax a little bit as he motioned to Hiashi to allow Carl to continue talking.

"Cause I only skirted around the topic with someone who was already in the know about the secret. And if someone is trying to get me in trouble for what I said to Ko in order to try to change his mind about Naruko and treat her better, then I have to wonder about their motivation for tattling." Carl bluntly said while looking directly at the old man's eyes. This was a form of negotiation session with the old man, after all. He couldn't be weak. And the old man hadn't interrupted him, so Carl continued.

"It seems to me that they hope to cause trouble for Naruko. If they could get the Hyuga heir in trouble with the law in regards to that secret, then maybe they can get Naruko kicked out from the haven she has found in our home. And then they can continue to abuse her like they have been, or maybe…I don't know, turn her into a weapon?" Carl sarcastically continued as he tried to spread the seeds of distrust between the third Hokage and Danzo, who ran the illegal ROOT organization.

"And if you seriously think all those civilians are following even the letter of the law when they are constantly muttering things like "demon girl" and "kyubi brat" within our hearing when we're walking with Naruko through the streets, then you need to get your head out of…yeah, I probably shouldn't finish that sentence, Hokage." Carl cut himself off before he got too crude.

A leader's dignity could allow a certain amount of leeway for his people to give it to him straight. But crossing the line would cause them to have to levy some kind of punishment. It's just the way it was, and Carl didn't feel like dealing with the fallout that would happen if he got too direct and crude with the Hokage.

The Hokage gravely looked at Carl for a long few moments, judging and thinking.

"And what is your motivation in being nice to dear Naruko, Carl Hyuga?" The old man finally asked with a hard glint in his eye, probing for his intentions behind befriending Naruko.

Carl couldn't help it. He really couldn't. He deliberately and obviously rolled his eyes at the Hokage, just to let him know what he thought of that question.

"She's mine and Hinata's friend. She's a good girl that will grow up into a kick ass kunoichi. I saw what a bad hand she had been dealt and agreed with what my sister said. No one deserves to be treated like that or live like she had been here in Konoha. Not if we want to live up to the dream that caused our village to be founded in the first place. The Will of Fire that you go on about in your speeches dictates how we behave."

Carl allowed his face to show his determination and unwillingness to move on the subject. No hint of levity or uncertainty showed. He knew the Hokage needed to be reassured that they weren't simply using Naruko for their own advantage, so he allowed his determination to shine through to reassure the old man and motivate him to be in Carl's corner on this issue.

And it worked as Carl saw the perceptive old man relax a bit when he clearly saw the sincerity Carl showed in regards to Naruko.

"Very well. You have reassured me of your intentions. But you are still not allowed to inform Naruko about the secret you have chanced upon. I will inform her when I feel the time is right."

Carl relaxed at his success in convincing the Hokage. He knew that now wasn't the time to argue with him about when to tell Naruko the secret. Naruko was still not quite seven years old, so holding off until she was a little older and more mature before telling her the secret of what was sealed in her wasn't exactly the wrong choice. Maybe not the right choice, either, though. Only time would tell.

"Hiashi, I'll back you and your clan's efforts to provide a home to Naruko. If anyone tries to bring you grief about it, report it to me and I will deal with it." The Hokage stated while looking steadily at Hiashi.

"I will, Hokage. And I will chastise and correct my son's behavior for his…uncouth mouth." Hiashi side glanced at Carl, who played along and gulped nervously.

It didn't cost Carl anything to play the nervous kid that was afraid of getting punished by his father. It was kind of fun, actually. Especially because no matter what kind of punishment he was dealt, it wouldn't really impact him or hurt him.

Have him run all day until he collapsed? Hah! He would only "collapse" as part of the act of portraying a normal ninja kid. And he was anything but normal by this point, with his returning memories and perks. He could run for days on end and be fine!

Force him to write out the etiquette rules over and over all day long for a week? Hah! He could sit in one place and watch paint dry for a month and not be bored!

But acting like a smart and precocious ninja boy was kind of fun, so Carl embraced the role.

Carl and his father were released and made their way home in silence. He was idly wondering what his punishment was going to be as he walked home next to his father.

"I'll see you at lunch, Carl. Until then, get what training you can with the remains of the morning." Hiashi patted his shoulder affectionately once they arrived home and then turned away to go to his office.

"Wait, that's it? What about what you said to the Hokage, about 'chastising' me?" Carl asked, a little confused.

Hiashi turned to look at him with a faint smile on his face.

"Don't do it again, keep your language clean. There, consider yourself chastised." Hiashi turned away once more, and as he was walking away, his voice floated back, barely loud enough to hear. "You're not the only one who has wanted to use crude language to shock the Hokage out of the…rut he had gotten himself in. But don't make a habit of it."

Carl couldn't help himself, he started chuckling, then laughing out loud. His proud and stoic Hyuga dad, living vicariously through his foul mouthed son!

Wiping a tear off his face, Carl couldn't help but shake his head as he thought about it. The stoic Hyuga demeanor was a matter of training rather than preference. Pushing them into a confining box that limited what they could do or say for fear of bringing shame to the clan. It was obvious to Carl now that his father wanted to break that prison confining them.

It wasn't just the Caged Bird seal that was enslaving the branch family. It was the entire Hyuga system of rules, etiquette, and…everything. It all needed to be broken down and reforged into something better.

And his father was struggling under the burden to do something about it. He was making some small amount of headway, but within the clan he found opposition to change everywhere. It was all the little things that added up. A little bit of agreeing to his face and doing the opposite when out of sight. The teacher's continual teaching of the old Hyuga ways to the children, even when they had been instructed not to. The entitlement of some of the scions of the main branch elder's grandchildren that would gang up and bully the branch house family kids.

Maybe Hiashi saw hope for the next generation being able to do what he couldn't accomplish? Maybe he hoped that Carl and his brash and crude ways that refused to conform to the Hyuga standards would be able to carry on his work and do what he hadn't yet been able to?

Carl smiled a bit at his thoughts, shook his head, and then made his way to the training grounds to get in what exercise he could with the rest of the morning.

Seeing Hinata, Naruko, and Neji hard at work in the training yard, Carl called a greeting and ran to join them in a sparring session.

Like what was said in the original show, there is an underneath the underneath. People had layers. And he was enjoying seeing the glimpses of layers he saw of the people close to him.

* * *

Unfortunately for Carl, Naruko and Hinata didn't forget about what he said about jailers and prisoners, and it being the cause of why the villagers didn't like Naruko. They did wait a couple days to see if Carl would come to them and explain, but he kept his mouth shut. So they went to him to demand an explanation.

While he knew he had a lot of leeway in what he could do because he was the heir of the Hyuga clan, he knew that if he deliberately went against the Hokage's directly expressed intentions, then old man Sarutobi could make things difficult for him and his clan. He was the ultimate head of the ninja forces, after all. And if Carl showed he couldn't follow his leader's orders, then he wouldn't be trusted with more as a ninja.

So when he was cornered by Naruko and Hinata during their evening chakra control / Byakugan training time, he knew he couldn't just dismiss their concerns, since it would hurt his relationship with them; and he couldn't directly tell them what it was about without falling afoul the law to not divulge the secret about Naruko carrying the Nine-Tail Fox in a seal on her stomach.

"Carl, please tell me." Naruko was giving him the dreaded puppy dog eyes with welling up teary eyes. "It's my life. I have a right to know!"

Carl looked at her, looked at the pleading Hinata, and sighed. He wouldn't explain things in detail, but it didn't mean he couldn't give them some kind of explanation and hints. Running his hand through his hair, he grumbled at the position the damned old man Hokage put him in. He wasn't in Carl's position, having his sister and friend living with him to constantly beg him for answers, making him feel guilty for not telling them.

Carl decided he would have to get back at the geezer at some point.

"Look, the Hokage directly told me not to talk about it." Carl shook his head on seeing the crestfallen expressions on the girl's faces. "He said he would tell you when the time was right. There's an extremely strict law that says no one can talk about this S-rank secret with the younger generation or anyone who doesn't know. It has a death penalty attached to breaking it. So while I don't think the old man would actually carry out the penalty on me if I broke it, it wouldn't do me any favors to make an enemy of the old man."

"But that's not fair!" Naruko exclaimed.

"It's Naruko's life, she should know about it." Hinata firmly stated with a glare at Carl.

"I know! And I agree with both of you!" Carl sighed once more, exasperated at the situation. "Look, the Hokage said that he would explain it to you when you got older." Carl explained while looking at Naruko. "I might be able to give you some hints, and if you figure it out then that's not on me. But I can't flat out _tell _you. You understand my position, right?"

Hinata and Naruko exchanged looks for a few moments, determination to get answers evident in their eyes. At that moment Carl thought that the old man was being a fool by not explaining things to Naruko. It was a worse torture for her to not know why she was so hated by the population. At the very least, if the Hokage explained her role as the jailer and how she was fulfilling a noble duty to keep the village safe, she might be able to take pride in the important role that she had.

But leaving her to ignorantly swim in a sea of hatred among the villagers was just asking for things to blow up in the Hokage's face. Naruko could very well decide, after years of abuse, that she didn't care about the villagers and wouldn't even piss on them to help them out if they were on fire.

"So, give me some clues, then." Naruko said with a firm look on her face.

"Yes, brother. Give us the clues needed." Hinata echoed, also with a firm look on her face.

'They grow up so fast…' Carl thought with a momentary touch of humor at their determined behavior.

"Okay. You win. I'll give you some clues. But before I do, it's important for you to remember this, Naruko."

Carl took one of Naruko's hands in his own, and grabbed one of Hinata's. Hinata then grabbed Naruko's other hand, following his lead. He stared soberly in Naruko's eyes.

"Remember. You are Naruko Uzumaki. You are our friend, and nothing will change that. No. Matter. What. Got it?"

Naruko nodded her head soberly, hints of nervousness and fear in her eyes.

"Okay. First clue you already overheard when I was talking to Ko. I won't repeat it here, to give me even more deniability against the Hokage." Carl said. He could see Naruko and Hinata turning over his words about Jailers and Prisoners in their mind.

"Second clue. We have storage scrolls that can hold all kinds of ninja tools in a little pocket space. But the thing to remember is that no matter what kind of tool the storage scrolls hold, the scroll is different from what it stores. The storage scroll doesn't suddenly become a kunai just because it holds a kunai."

A little bit of re-emphasis on her not being the Nine-Tailed Fox wouldn't exactly hurt. Just because the kunai-storage scroll comparison had become a bit of a trope didn't mean it wasn't useful in explaining the situation.

"Oh, yeah. I was totally going to give you this on your birthday on _October 10th. _I know it's eight months early, but I thought I'd give it to you now. You know, it's odd that your birthday coincides with the day the Nine-Tailed Fox attacked Konoha and was defeated. Odd, that."

Carl handed her a box with fancy looking runes on the outside. The runes didn't do anything, but they were there to hint at and remind her of seals. Specifically seals to store things.

Looking a bit confused at his strange change of topic instead of giving her another clue, Naruko grabbed the box that Carl was handing her. She opened it up and out popped a stuffed doll of a cute Kyubi plushie that had nine tails. The Kyubi plushie was dressed in orange prison clothes. He didn't know how much more explicit he could make it without saying it outright.

Carl saw the exact moment that all the clues sunk in and made sense to Naruko and Hinata. Her gaze shot down to her stomach where a weird seal would appear whenever she channeled lots of chakra. Tears began falling down from her eyes. She sniffled a bit as all the clues suddenly made sense and she knew why the villagers hated her.

She had the Nine Tailed Fox inside her.

Hinata got the clues just as quick and immediately reacted and pulled Naruko into a hug to comfort her. Carl joined them a moment later to give her the support she needed to get past the moment of revelation. To reassure her that she wasn't alone, she wasn't the Fox.

Carl and Hinata whispered reassurances to her that they were her friends, no matter what. And that she was just Naruko Uzumaki, and no one else. That the villagers were stupid poopyheads, and other such bad names.

Eh, Carl wasn't even seven years old. He was totally allowed to be childish.

After some time, Naruko gave out a little bit of a laugh and scrubbed the tears from her eyes. She then turned to Carl with a mischievous grin on her face.

"Since you gave me this present now, it doesn't count for my birthday. You still owe me one in October!" She declared.

"She's right. You can't get out of giving her a present just because of a plushie doll." Hinata joined in.

"Sure, sure. I'll be sure to get you something nice." Carl gave in to their demands. He only said the plushie doll was a birthday present to have plausible deniability for the Hokage anyway. It was a silly bit of fiction, but he would cling to it anyway. He had planned to get her something else for her birthday anyway.

Naruko then laughed a bit, smiling a true smile. And Carl and Hinata knew she would be just fine. At least now she _knew_. Naruko could get a handle on the big issue, now that she knew what the problem was. And she had some good friends to help her out.

* * *

Three months before Carl's seventh birthday he recovered his memories of the Stargate SG1 universe. And with those memories he finally had the key information he needed to be able to access all the computers and technology he had seen in his Warehouse and pocket dimension but couldn't get to do anything without a password.

The fact that he had to use his magical signature as his password to interact with the technology would have never occurred to him without those important memories. All that time he was trying to find a password that he hadn't even written down anywhere!

The first thing Carl did, as he had done on so many other worlds but wasn't yet aware of it, was to pull out the Yamato and place it in orbit above Konoha. His farms had produced plenty of the metals and alloys necessary to continue to build his spy and survey satellites, so that was the next thing on the docket.

And with his communications network being set up, he finally got in contact with the managing VIs of his properties around the Elemental Nations. And information began pouring in about the state of the world.

Looking over the map of the world that the satellites now had, Carl wasn't exactly surprised to see that there was a lot of land outside of the Elemental Nations. From the show Carl only really knew about the five main lands that held the five Hidden Villages and a few of the smaller countries in the surroundings.

The Land of Fire was the home of Konoha.

The Land of Wind was to the south west of the Land of Fire and was home to the ninja village of Suna.

The Land of Earth to the north west of the Land of Fire was the home of the ninja village of Iwa.

The Land of Lightning to the north east of the Land of Fire was home to the ninja village of Kumo.

The Land of Water to the east of the Land of Fire across the Chigiri Sea was the home of the ninja village of Kiri.

And that was only the five big Hidden Ninja Villages and the lands they were located in. There were hundreds of other countries and lands around the world and across the oceans. Some of the countries were small islands in the oceans, or of a similar size scattered around the land masses. On the other side of the spectrum, some of the countries were even bigger than the Land of Fire.

As Carl looked over the map he was getting from his satellites of the entire world, he realized how small a part of the whole world the five Elemental Nations were. The original story had only been concerned with those five main nations and the numerous smaller countries that were surrounding them, because the story had focused on Naruto and his adventures as a ninja.

'Well, damn. The Yamato VI will have its work cut out for it in keeping track of the movements and politics of the various countries around the world.' Carl chuckled. 'Lucky for it, since I'm living in Konoha, I don't really care very much about those lands unless they impact on my life here. So I'll set the VI to just keep track of whether anything will impact on Konoha. Most of its resources will be focused in the immediate area.'

Carl put words to action and began detailing orders of how he wanted the VI to prioritize the spybots and information gathering. He was mostly interested in anything that impacted him and his life in Konoha, rather than the day to day minutia of a far away country.

He had already gotten his fill of politics from building his own Empire in the Stargate world. He was just going to enjoy his simple life as a ninja and clan heir as a sort of vacation. Sure the clan had politics, but it was the scale of it that made it different from what he had done in the Stargate universe. That had just been annoying, with planet after planet full of self-important people thinking they were entitled to chunks of his time.

At least in the cultivation world of ATG, the nobles all had their own cultivation progress as their priority, and knew that his wife, the Empress Caiyi had her own cultivation to take care of. They wouldn't dare frivolously demand the time of their Empress.

'Note to self: When I go back for my girls in Stargate, institute cultural reforms so they know not to mess with my time.' Carl nodded firmly.

So most of the VI's focus would be on the lands surrounding Konoha, which was a much smaller requirement for the VI to spy on. And there were several priorities that Carl knew he needed more information on.

For example, he knew that at this moment Orochimaru was probably building up the Hidden Sound village so that in about six years he could attend the chuunin exams and invade Konoha. Orochimaru wanted to punish Konoha for kicking him out, and he also wanted to get an Uchiha body to possess so he could use the Sharingan's ability to copy jutsu to gain even more power.

Carl made sure that the VI put priority to watching over and spying on the Sound village in Rice Country on the Land of Fire's northern border. It wouldn't do to be blindsided by some unexpected plot that Orochimaru cooked up early. Since this world was very different from the canon one, he couldn't rely on all the same plot points coming his way.

The other priority that Carl assigned the VI was to ferret out all of the secrets of Konoha.

Even more important than keeping an eye on Orochimaru, at this moment, was watching local developments. There was Danzo, his ROOT forces, and his underhanded plans. The Uchiha and their coup plans. The civilian council and their vendetta against his friend Naruko. Any of the other Hyuga Elders that might have similar ideas of usurping his and his father's place in the clan leadership.

And any other surprises that could hit close to home that might be detrimental to him, his family, and his friends.

After sending out orders to the VI, he didn't have any more time to browse his computer banks for information about the worlds he still hadn't regained his memories on. It was time to start his day, so Carl continued to follow his normal daily routine.

While he was training with Hinata, Naruko, and Neji, though, Carl tried to multitask. He mentally connected with the Yamato and began reading through reports and files of what he had been doing before in his hidden memories.

At first he found it a bit of a struggle to have his attention split in more than one direction. Mentally reading reports while also completely focusing on sparring tested his limits of maintaining control over his strength and powers while soaking up information. But it was good training for him and his control. Much more useful training, really, than simply following the basic ninja training he was doing.

During the following several days, Carl continued to explore the records of his time in the other worlds he had visited in the Jump Chain and what he had done in those worlds. Based on the timing of his past memory retrievals, Carl figured that he would regain his Game of Thrones memories on his 7th birthday.

Three months later he would re-experience the Cooking Show world that he had turned into a Gourmet Grounds world.

Three months after that he would have a couple hundred years of memories of being a Dinosaur to sift through.

Three months before his 8th birthday he should regain his memories of the World of Warcraft. And possibly about the Naruto world that he was currently in. Or more likely those would wait until his birthday, since that was a significant date.

Since he couldn't do anything to speed them up, Carl resolved he would just enjoy the time he had while not worrying about things too much. The only big event on the nearby horizon was the Uchiha Massacre, and he was already gathering the information he needed to make a decision on that event. So he wasn't in a bind to do anything special right now, and he felt the need to decompress after he had conquered galaxies.

So he focused on playing and training with his other almost seven year old friends. Being a kid again with no responsibilities was quite fun, and he subtly influenced the play time so it would be more training time. Even the less active games they played were designed to enhance their memory, observation skills, or their hand dexterity for making hand seals to do ninja magic.

Aside from those games that all of them, boy and girl, were playing, Carl was quite pleased at the progress his female friends were making in traveling away from the path to eternal horror that was known by the expletive: fangirl.

His friends were all reinforcing their good development when they met up at the park on a biweekly basis. The girls were more focused on talking about their training and boosting each other up as kunoichi than focusing on the purely social aspects of being a girl/woman.

Not that they didn't talk about girly things, they were still girls after all. It was just that the priorities of girls that were training to be kunoichi were very different from those civilian girl's priorities. They, as kunoichi, were becoming more practical in nature.

Even talking about fashion was not just about how to "look the best" anymore. The various aspects of ninja requirements were taken into account: the toughness of the cloth, the cut of their clothes that allowed for maximum movement, the colors that could also blend in to both urban and natural environments.

And they treated the word _diet_ like a four letter curse word.

Carl was proud and happy to see them so motivated to train and avoiding the route to damnation that was the fangirl, praise the Log.

Even Sakura, with her civilian background, was figuring out what she needed to do physically on a daily basis to start meeting the kunoichi standards by asking them a lot of questions. It was slow going at first for her, since she had never had adults in her life direct her "play" in her earlier years into being trained as a kunoichi. So she was far behind the progress of everyone else, but she was very determined to catch up and not fall behind.

Carl thought it was a very good thing, because in the original story Sakura had been the weakest member with the least amount of skills of anyone in the rookie 9, at least for quite a while until she became Tsunade's apprentice and finally got serious training. But now that she had friends that were focused on training, and she really desired to be that kick ass kunoichi, all her natural talent, intelligence, and drive was focused and motivated to build up her physical skills as part of the whole.

So while he was going through his daily routine and training occasionally with his friends in the park, which was their version of relaxed play time, Carl was also learning all the secrets of what was going on around Konoha due to the flooding of mini spy bots into the village.

One of the things that changed Carl's opinion on what he was going to do was the recorded conversations his spy bots overheard in the Uchiha district and verified by going through their clan's records.

He learned that the Uchiha were definitely behind Yakumo's poisoning and possession. And that the Uchiha elders who did the deed were upset to see her physically recover. They were planning on summoning another demon to possess her, since either the previous one was gone, or it wasn't enough to ruin her.

Carl began planning further ways to protect her from any more actions by the Uchiha. While she couldn't be possessed anymore, it wouldn't stop the bastards from taking a different approach when the possession failed once more.

Those same Uchiha elders were quite pleased with how the rest of the Kurama clan had succumbed to the poison and could no longer utilize their bloodline. It was only a matter of time before they ceased to exist as a ninja clan, according to the Uchiha plotters.

Carl also heard hints from the conversation of the elders that they had done similar hit jobs on other ninja clans or upcoming and powerful ninjas.

After a search of their records, Carl found out some of the examples they were talking about. He was somewhat surprised the Uchiha kept records of what they did. It wasn't exactly smart to keep that kind of evidence around.

'I suppose they want to make sure their future generations of Uchiha know all the tips and tricks of underhanded dealings for power?' Carl mused. 'Can't have the future generations fail to live up to their potential, right?'

The records Carl found showed that Kakashi's father, Sakumo Hatake was one such ninja that had been getting too powerful for the Uchiha's liking. So they used a fortuitous happenstance to assassinate his character.

In one particularly difficult mission where Sakumo's team faced ninja opposition, he was faced with the difficult decision that he could either choose to save his teammates after they were captures, but at the cost of failing his mission; or he could complete the mission at the cost of his teammate's lives, since the enemy ninja who captured them would have escaped by then.

Sakumo Hatake had made the decision to save his teammates at the expense of failing their mission. The Uchiha had worked overtime to inflame opinion against Sakumo. They had instigated the civilians and even other ninja to bring social shame to him for failing as a ninja, for failing their village.

They had even used their Sharingan eye's abilities to hypnotize others to cause Sakumo's own teammates to heap scorn on him for rescuing them at the cost of the mission.

The Uchiha were so successful in their campaign at shaming the man, especially after the friends and teammates he had saved turned on him, that he eventually committed suicide in an attempt to make up for his perceived failure and keep the shame from following his son through his life.

The Uchiha plotters had been ecstatic in their success.

Another huge case the Uchiha had been involved in was the downfall of the Senju clan.

The Uchiha had worked together with Danzo to set up the ambushes that killed Tsunade Senju's brother, Nawaki Senju, and her fiancé, Dan Kato.

The Uchiha never got over their hatred of the Senju clan, and were more than happy to ruin the last remnants of it.

Danzo wanted to gain power in Konoha, and breaking down the various clans as powerful political entities would open the way for him to rise in power.

So Danzo and some of the Uchiha elders plotted the ambush that would kill off Nawaki's whole genin squad. They couldn't have the young Senju heir grow up strong and repopulate the clan they had worked so hard to decimate.

Later on, when Tsunade and Dan were dating and gaining prominence in Konoha for their medical skills and renovation of teams so there was always a medic present, Danzo and the Uchiha elders didn't like how much recognition Tsunade Senju was gaining.

Especially as it looked like Dan would marry Tsunade, join the Senju clan, and help restore it.

So the Uchiha and Danzo got the band back together and plotted his death by leaking information to the enemy during the Second Shinobi War. Their actions resulted in Dan's death that seemingly broke Tsunade and gave her hemophobia. Her fiance Dan bled to death in her arms, and despite all her medical expertise she couldn't save him.

Tsunade was pretty much broken from the deaths of everyone she cared for. She took Dan's niece, Shizune, as her apprentice and departed from Konoha. Which was a situation that both Danzo and the Uchiha profited from, to have the last Senju broken and abandon the village, even if she wasn't labeled a missing ninja.

Carl shook his head in disgust at discovering the sabotage by both Danzo and the Uchiha. If those two forces hadn't been working so assiduously to destroy up and coming powerhouse ninja, or destroy the ninja clans of Konoha for their own power, then the village would be a lot stronger than it was now.

And yet Danzo and the Uchiha clan claimed they were doing everything for the good of Konoha. If they actually believed that, they was more…insane? Stupid? Deluded?

They were more [All of the Above] than Carl had previously suspected.

Sakumo was easily an A-rank ninja at the time of his suicide. By now he could have been an S-rank and possibly even the fifth Hokage. Heck, he could have been the fourth Hokage instead of Minato Namikaze. Who knows, right?

Dan Kato, along with Tsunade Senju, could have helped completely revolutionize the medical ninja corps, as well as add to the numbers of the Senju clan. And from the story, Carl knew that Dan was aiming to be the Hokage so he could have the power to enforce the changes in the way the medical ninja operated. He could have been the fifth Hokage, maybe.

And if the Senju clan members hadn't been killed off over the years, especially Nawaki who had signs of possessing the Mokuton wood element bloodline, then there would have been many more skilled bloodline holders that would have made the village strong.

There were many more examples of the traitorous sabotage by Danzo and the Uchiha that made Konoha weaker in the long run in order to make themselves stronger. So any of their justifications about doing the dirty deeds they did to strengthen Konoha was just a load of lies.

'Huh, come to think of it, they remind me of "Senator" Kinsey back in the Stargate world. Anything to gain power and influence, even if they make the enemies and problems themselves that they use to justify their actions.' Carl snorted in disgust.

So after having ferreted out all those dirty secrets of the Uchiha, Carl was no longer planning to do anything to stop the Uchiha Massacre. He was more than happy for the leadership and adults of the clan to die out. It really served them right for their actions against Konoha and the other clans. The bunch of traitors.

The only thing Carl was debating was whether he should save the very young children of the clan. Those who haven't been steeped in the arrogance and evil culture of the Uchiha.

How much of the Uchiha's treacherous actions over the years was learned behavior? And how much was inborn because of their Sharingan bloodline?

Normally Carl wouldn't ask something like that. But in the case of the Uchiha, he wondered. Did the need for extreme emotions to evolve their Sharingan eyes cause them to subconsciously set up situations where they could fulfill those needs?

The Uchiha thought that in order to evolve their eyes to the Mangekyo, they had to kill someone very close to them. Their best friend, lover, or family. Living in a clan that believed that the path to power was through the murder of a loved one was bound to twist them to something inhuman, especially if all their family were obsessed with gaining power by any means. As evidenced by what they had been doing in sabotaging the very village they helped found.

So Carl was debating the idea of saving the young children to have them be raised in a better environment so they wouldn't be taught the poisonous culture of the Uchiha. Maybe do a wipe of a lot of their memories of living in the clan?

Carl wasn't sure if he would go that far. But he also didn't want to see the children he was thinking of saving grow up into power hungry Uchiha traitors who would backstab him for his good deeds.

And he was pretty sure he could accomplish reforming them here in Konoha as a nearly seven year old. He would have to set them up in a different location than Konoha to discover if they could be changed with a different upbringing.

In the original story, after the Uchiha Massacre the people of Konoha treated Sasuke as some kind of tragic prince. They gave him everything he needed on a silver platter. But he ended up being an ungrateful traitor to his village, even though they bent over backwards to allow him anything he wanted.

So Carl didn't trust this village not to treat any remnant Uchiha kids the same way. Through their actions the people of Konoha would end up twisting the kids into a parody of the same arrogant Uchiha that went before them by treating them like they could do no wrong. Growing up in that environment would convince the kids that they really were privileged elites that couldn't do wrong. That kind of attitude would have them making the most appalling choices at the expense of others.

While Carl was continuing to gather intel and debate with himself about just what he wanted to do, he continued with his daily training.

He was really enjoying his days of no responsibility as someone who wasn't the leader of an empire. All he had to do was train daily and spend time with his friends.

After a few weeks, half the time that they visited the park, he found that Yakumo would follow him over to the guys instead of joining the girls and join in on making Shikamaru and Choji play something active. Most of the time she brought the rest of the girls too, which led to a large group playing tag or hide and go seek re-labeled as playing ninja.

Carl had spent some time talking with her and found that as long as she could remember, Yakumo had wanted to be an active kunoichi and restore her clan, which had been in decline for many years. Her months spent wasting away in what they thought was a sickness had been the most horrible time for her. Her dreams were slowly slipping away the weaker she got.

As a result of his exorcising the demon and healing her, she was completely loyal to him as a friend, since he gave her back her dream, her goal in life. Another result of her recovery was that she wasn't so content to just sit back and not be active, now that her health had been restored. So she got along great with Naruko, who was a bundle of energy at any time, and Hinata, who had been training with said bundle of energy for months now and could mostly keep up.

Ino and Sakura were surprisingly on board with the active games, even the ones that got them dirty playing them. Carl was only really surprised because he remembered their behavior from the show being much more girly, afraid to ruin their hair or nails. But then again, they had been warned off the path leading to the fangirl side in this life, so it was understandable.

All these different personalities combined together in the park to add up to a fun time for Carl. Even if some of that time was spent chilling with Shikamaru, Choji, and Shino while certain members of their group argued for dozens of minutes about what game they were playing that day.

Most of the time those arguments were between Kiba, Ino, Naruko, and Yakumo, who all had very definite ideas about what kind of games they should be playing. Hinata, Shino, and Sakura often joined Carl when he would pull out some card game or other to pass the time until their friends got it out of their system and decided what they would be playing.

On one particular day, they kept arguing until half their time was spent uselessly.

Seeing the frustrated faces of the four most forward personalities, Carl shook his head and stepped in at that point with the suggestion to rotate who got to decide what they would play on a particular day. Everyone in the group got a chance to do their favorite thing on their day to pick.

If they missed a day, they would be skipped and the next time they showed up they could decide. Everyone generally agreed to the idea, and a roster was made.

The days that Shikamaru got to pick their activity would have been torture for the more active among them if Carl didn't always bring some kind of card or board game to keep them distracted while they stared at clouds.

Carl kind of assumed it was Shikamaru's revenge for being forced to be active all the other times. It did amuse him a bit to see the subtle Nara at work.

* * *

The big day finally arrived. It was a couple days before his seventh birthday that Carl found himself with no more time to debate about the issue and was forced to make the choice on whether to save the little Uchiha brats or not. His spy bots had spotted Danzo ambushing Shisui and stealing one of his "precious" eyes before Shisui managed to get away. Shisui fell into a river and died in his escape.

Danzo moved fast after that, seeing that the window to deal with the Uchiha clan was closing. Before the Uchiha clan realized that Shisui was killed, Danzo went to Itachi and conned him into believing that the Hokage wanted him to kill his clan so that peace could prevail.

Itachi fell into Danzo's rhythm and allowed himself to be convinced that it was for the best for Konoha, since an open rebellion from the Uchiha could lead to the obvious weakening of the village which would lead to open attacks from their enemies and the start of the next Shinobi War.

Itachi held out just enough to extract the promise from Danzo that his brother Sasuke would be saved and protected as he was raised in the village.

Carl thought he had until near his eighth birthday before these events would play out, but it turns out that the massacre was happening in the next few hours.

'Tch. That's what happens when I rely on vague cartoon timelines that don't give any actual dates for when events happen while I'm living in an alternate world where those dates probably wouldn't do me any good.' Carl thought about the suddenness of the approaching massacre.

As he sat at the dinner table with his family, looking at the two year old Hanabi that was shoving food in her mouth so adorably, Carl made his decision. The young kids were still innocent. He would save them and work on raising them away from the negative influence here in Konoha so they at least had a chance to avoid becoming the arrogant power seeking Uchiha.

But he had to smuggle them out of Konoha in such a way that there was no suspicion that they survived. Otherwise, it would kick up an ants nest. Too much chaos happening. Too many questions asked.

Once dinner was finished, he made his way to his room, set up an SEP field, and reached out for his profound energy. Activating the Time Pearl, he found himself appearing in the world of the Time Pearl.

Over the past several days as he was debating whether to save the kids or not, he had his spy bots gather the needed genetic material to clone a body that would replace each of the kids that were under eight years old.

Once he was out of time compression, he would have the Yamato's VI replace the actual kids with the bodies which would be rigged up with animation charms, illusions, and holograms to fake them moving around on their own until Itachi went around "killing" them.

He was making use of the time pearl to create all these bodies in the short time he had available. There were over 100 of them. Not all the Uchiha kids became ninja or activated their Sharingan. Some of them were from subordinate branch families that acted as merchants and servants. But they all had the Uchiha blood in them, and the potential to awaken the Sharingan.

Once the bodies were grown to the same size as the original, Carl exited the Time Pearl. The Yamato VI immediately began making the switch, teleporting out the kids, sedating them, and putting them in suspended animation until Carl could arrange for their care.

A short time later, the massacre started. Carl watched over the spy bot's feed as Itachi, Madara, and a number of ROOT agents were running through the Uchiha compound, killing everyone.

And just like in the show, Itachi killed his own parents and put Sasuke in that horrible three days compressed into seconds illusion hell.

Carl shook his head at the stupidity of Itachi. Using the special illusion from his Mangekyo Sharingan, he could pack three days into a few seconds. Instead of torturing his kid brother to instill hate in the kid, Itachi should have packed some training montages or just spend time with the kid. Maybe even, dare he say it, explain what the hell was happening so that Sasuke wouldn't become such an emo prince.

He thought Itachi was even more stupid for doing what he did to Sasuke because of the supposed reason he was killing his clan in the first place. He was trying to maintain peace to limit the number of people killed in war, right? So why would he act in such a dumb way to instill hatred in his brother? Did he not figure out after all these years that many atrocities in war were perpetrated by people that were filled with hatred?

If his goal was peace, then why didn't he work on instilling some of that philosophy into his brother?

Was it all because Itachi wanted Sasuke to grow strong and come after him so he could be punished by his brother? Itachi could then gift Sasuke with his evolved Sharingan eyes, the Mangekyo, so that Sasuke's eyes would upgrade to the Eternal Mangekyo eyes that wouldn't go blind with usage.

Yeah, that plan was all kinds of dumb.

Itachi was treating his brother similar to a tool in many ways. He felt guilty over what he was doing, so he made his brother a tool to enact his own punishment for the act of killing his clan. Itachi certainly wasn't doing what was best for Sasuke. He was fulfilling his own selfish desires.

And that was why Carl didn't think of Itachi as some kind of hero to admire. He was a twisted wreck of a person that made things worse through his selfish actions. First killing off his clan at the orders of Danzo, then torturing his brother into a twisted hate filled boy, and then living as a spy in the ranks of the Akatsuki organization that was trying to end the world, before finally dying at his brother's hands.

Tragic, yes. But not worthy of admiration.

Well, Itachi was what he was because he was raised in a power hungry clan. And it didn't help that Danzo was there to push his buttons. So many different forces pulling and twisting him.

Nope, Carl wasn't going to feel sorry for the guy. He was still willing to kill off his parents, his clan, and all the innocent kids rather than finding another way. He still tortured his brother who he "loved".

Calr returned his attention back to the spybot feed that was showing the aftermath of the massacre.

Itachi was "escaping". In other words, he was being escorted out of Konoha by ROOT forces.

Carl turned his attention to another cancer in Konoha and tsked at seeing that Danzo couldn't help but get in on the massacre and act personally while monitoring the job done by his ROOT forces. Carl saw the man's gloating face as he oversaw the medical ninja extracting the Sharingan eyes for his personal use.

Danzo was planning on using those Sharingan eyes to implant into himself to give himself extra lives through the use of Izanagi. One of the fully grown three tomoe Sharingan eyes could be sacrificed and destroyed to basically bring someone back from a death strike. With the number of eyes that Danzo had, he could have at least a dozen life saving eyes, ensuring his survival.

While Carl thought that the Uchiha deserved to be killed off in the same manner they had been secretly killing off loyal ninjas and clans of Konoha, seeing Danzo acting so smug and pleased with himself irritated Carl to no end.

So he sent an order to the VI to have any Sharingan eyes that Danzo stole from the Uchiha be ruined or replaced with duds. Many of the eyes were injected with a formula that would break down the eyes in a manner of minutes by the nano spybots. He couldn't afford to have a bunch of white flashes of light happening around Danzo, since that was the telltale sign of his technology's teleport, so he used the spybots.

If Danzo saw multiple small flashes of bright white light, he would think someone was doing some jutsu and would become even more paranoid. Better to just have the eyes get ruined so the despicable old man couldn't make use of them. Including the one he stole from Shisui Uchiha earlier, that Danzo hadn't had the chance to implant in himself yet.

Hours later when Carl saw the video feed of Danzo getting news that _all_ of the Sharingan eyes had melted and were useless, he had to hastily cast a silence spell around his room before he busted out laughing, rolling on the ground.

"The _look _on Danzo's face when he found out his oh-so-clever scheme had netted him exactly zero Sharingan eyes!" Carl howled in laughter. "It's like he tasted the combination of ultra pure concentrate of lemon and shit! How does that fecal-ade taste, Danzo? Hahahaha!"

"Ah, that was so worth it." He muttered while wiping away the tears of laughter after having calmed down from his hysterical laughter. "It couldn't happen to a more deserving asshole. I gotta do this kind of thing more often."

* * *

The next few days saw great changes in Konoha. One of the largest clans was wiped out overnight. There was only a single survivor, Sasuke, who was in the hospital.

Carl watched the aftermath through the reports and videos from his spy bots while he was training. And it was interesting to see the repercussions of the massacre play out over the days and weeks.

The Uchiha clan had been in charge of the local police force. They had almost total control of such an important and integral aspect of Konoha's daily running.

Thinking about it, Carl pondered about the Uchiha's plans and plots. Being in control of the Police Force gave them a lot of power over the city, and allowed them to get away with their plans to sabotage and kill off any competing powers in the village.

And in times of war, the Uchiha had most of their clan members safe back in Konoha "keeping order" while the bulk of the wartime forces were sent out from other clans and the civilian born ninja to die in the war.

Carl shook his head at seeing just how insidious the Uchiha were in their plots and plans. While the other clans and ninja would lose plenty of their members through missions and wars outside the village, the Uchiha kept growing their numbers and gaining control of more and more aspects of the village.

And now that power base that the Uchiha built over the years was suddenly gone, just like that.

So with such a huge void in the power structure being left behind because of the massacre of the Uchiha, things were a hectic scramble for a while. The Hokage was too busy for his regular visits and tutoring of Naruko.

Old man Hiruzen Sarutobi had to adjust and redeploy ninja to cover the duties of the police force that was almost completely wiped out. And at the same time he had to keep up the pace of the missions and patrols of their lands so Konoha didn't appear weak to their enemies. Looking like they were hurting was a good way to invite attack from their enemies.

In the power vacuum Danzo, the Hokage's advisors, and the civilian council were perfectly positioned to grab up more power under the guise of "lightening the burden" on the Hokage. And since he was an old man that trusted his advisors and Danzo, very foolishly in Carl's opinion, Hiruzen was actually grateful for their assistance.

Carl shook his head at the results. Old Man Sarutobi thought that the various factions were coming together in the spirit of the Will of Fire to ensure that Konoha continued to run and survive in the aftermath of a great tragedy. When the reality was more like the vultures were swooping in to pick the choice bits of meat for their meal.

The Hokage's advisors were Homura Mitokado, an old man with graying hair and glasses, and Koharu Utatane, a wrinkly faced grey haired old woman. They were part of Hiruzen's genin team back in the day, so he trusted the two greatly, which allowed them to make use of that trust to solidify their own power bases.

With more responsibilities and powers that should be the province of the Hokage being foisted off onto the civilian council, Danzo, and the Hokage's two advisors, Carl could see how the old man's power as the Hokage was being eroded.

Danzo had a large, officially illegal, organization of ninja called ROOT that was his version of ANBU. So Hiruzen was no longer the sole commander of the ninja forces, which meant that in reality he didn't have complete executive and military control of his village, even though on paper the Hokage was the ultimate authority.

Carl thought it really was foolish of the third Hokage to allow Danzo so much leeway in how he operated. Hiruzen was basically allowing Danzo to brew a schism in the military chain of command and organization by giving him free reign to recruit and control his own military forces. Nothing good could come from such a schism.

And now with the civilian council and his advisors taking on more responsibilities and powers, it was no wonder that the powers of the Hokage were greatly diminished in the original story by the time Tsunade was convinced by Naruto to return to the village and take up the Hokage hat.

So even though on paper the Hokage was the ultimate authority, in practice it had been many years since the third Hokage basically gave that power away to various people. And those schemers had placed their own people in key positions to entrench their power. So even if the Hokage gave orders, if they didn't want to carry out said orders they could just come back with all kinds of false reports that showed his orders were being carried out. How would the Hokage know differently if the people reporting to him never told him?

Even with the presence of loyal Konoha ninja, the Hokage would have to have some clue that things weren't right in order to start an investigation and find out just what was really happening.

And with the vultures being very well practiced in telling the Hokage what he wanted to hear, how would he ever suspect that the reality was different from their reports?

But all of that was happening in the shadows and background; it was mostly hidden from the majority of the villager's sight.

What the majority of villagers actually saw and heard was that the Uchiha clan that ran the police force and made sure they were safe in their beds at night had been cruelly massacred by one traitor of that clan: Itachi Uchiha. The despicable scum!

And that the very wealthy and powerful clan that kept them safe was survived by only one seven year old boy: Sasuke Uchiha. The last loyal Uchiha!

The hearts of all the civilian mothers went out to the poor boy. And their talk of the poor, tragic boy was overheard by their daughters. Their talk about how Sasuke was the heir to the vast wealth of the Uchiha was also heard by those same daughters. Their talk about how the girl who caught Sasuke would have access to those riches were also overhead by those same daughters.

The possibility of gaining control of those riches Sasuke was set to inherit caused the figurative dollar signs to appear in the eyes of those civilian mothers. If their daughter could manage to snag the last Uchiha, their circumstances would immediately change for the better. They would be rich!

And if those civilian mothers didn't have a daughter to throw at poor Sasuke, but only a son? That's too bad they didn't have a daughter, but their son could still become poor Sasuke's best friend.

And if their son could succeed in getting close to the Uchiha they could only benefit! Surely poor Sasuke Uchiha would make sure that the family of his best friend that helped him through his personal tragedy was taken care of. His best friend did so much to help him in his time of grief, it was only right that he repay them in any way he could.

Suddenly masses of mothers started teaching their daughters what they would need to do to snag the most eligible underaged bachelor. And sons were taught how to flatter and cozy up to him.

The conflicting idea of how an under-aged boy could possibly be an eligible bachelor didn't have to make sense in the minds of gold diggers and fangirls. They be crazy like that.

All those civilian mothers knew that Sasuke would be entering the Ninja Academy in a little over a year. And the best way to get their daughters close to him was to enter them into the Academy to have a better chance of catching him.

But they also knew that their daughters really didn't meet the standards of ninja, having not trained a day in their lives.

A simple fact like that couldn't get in the way of their daughter marrying the last loyal Uchiha and bringing home all those ryo!

So they talked to their husbands, who talked to the civilian council members, who offered their services to the third Hokage to oversee the Ninja Academy so he could focus on more important things that were overwhelming him in the struggle to stabilize things in the aftermath of the massacre.

And over the next year the curriculum of the Academy started changing, and not for the better. If all those civilian gold digging daughters were failed out of the academy in their first year, then they would never have a chance to get close to their precious meal ticket er…precious Sasuke. So the curriculum had to be changed, to allow them a chance to be able to stay enrolled so they could continue to get close to their golden ticket.

It was sneaky, it was insidious, and it would be the single biggest reason that the next several classes of ninja that graduated from the academy were filled with those who were weak and ill prepared for ninja life and would be failed by their prospective jonin sensei.

Many of those would have gone on to be in the genin corps, and eventually die out in great numbers due to lack of skill in the invasion that Orochimaru planned years in the future.

If nothing was changed, that is.

All because the Hokage trusted his people too much and the gold digging women of Konoha saw a meal ticket in a seven year old boy who had just had his whole world destroyed with the murder of his family by his own brother.

And speaking of Sasuke, he of the unstable psyche. He came from a proud ninja clan. He came from a massacred ninja clan. And the single biggest motivation he had at the moment was getting revenge on Itachi, his once beloved brother.

To do that he needed strength.

Sasuke knew that his brother was a genius. He had bragged about his older brother's talents often enough. So he needed to get strong, and he needed to do it as fast as possible.

Those gold digging civilian women never realized that the very actions they took to ensure their daughters stayed close to their precious Sasuke also completely tanked any chance their daughters had of actually gaining his regard, due to his mindset of strength being important above all.

Sasuke was only interested in getting stronger. The weak fangirls and gold digging civilians playing at ninja were only an irritant to him. They didn't help him get stronger, and only tried to distract him from his goal.

So without their realizing it, the civilian mothers that were desperately throwing their underage daughters at an underage boy who wasn't old enough for his balls to drop were doomed to failure by their own actions.

The honeypot trap didn't work very well when both sides hadn't even gone through puberty and had no sexual desires. It was just an exercise in crazy greed fueled madness.

When Carl put all these pieces together that gave him the full view of the situation surrounding the last Uchiha, he couldn't stop chuckling in amused disbelief for a good several minutes. Half a dozen parts comedy gold, five parts exasperation at the sheer madness of the gold digger and fangirl combo, and one small, very small, part pity for Sasuke's situation caused him to find the situation so ridiculously humorous.

In a strange way it reminded him of the cartoon chases between a certain cat and mouse, or a coyote and roadrunner. None of it made sense in the context of the real world, but that didn't deter those caught up in the madness from continuing on no matter what. And no matter what they did, they would never, could never succeed.

And they couldn't even take a step back and realize what they needed to do to change the paradigm they were stuck in. They were stuck in the endless chase for something they couldn't catch. They couldn't even conceive of giving up; thus failure was their only option.

It was almost too funny.

But once Carl got over the laughter he spent the next 15 minutes complaining about the situation. He had just realized it was his sister and his friend's education that was going to be sabotaged by those damned gold digging whores and their pathetic chase of Sasuke.

And while it wasn't fair at all to the boy himself, Carl couldn't help but dislike Sasuke a little more because of the fact that his precious sister and his good friends were being sabotaged because of those who wanted to chase the anti-social twit.

Even before the massacre Sasuke never came to train and play with them. So Carl didn't have any feelings of friendship for the kid. And now, after the massacre, the little emo only had revenge and power on his mind, making him even less appealing as a possible ally.

He really wanted his sister and friends far away from the last Uchiha. The powder keg that would one day become a traitor and go missing nin if the canon plot was within sniffing distance of this world.

And now it was even more likely that Sasuke would go missing nin because the Academy was dumbed down and not teaching him how to get stronger. Sasuke would definitely recognize that he wasn't being pushed to grow as much in the weakened version of the Ninja Academy.

About six months before starting the Academy, Carl would finally come to a conclusion that he didn't really want to come to.

He would have to at least offer to help Sasuke train in order to curb his traitorous leanings.

It was likely that there would be two of Carl's precious people on Sasuke's team, so he needed to work on keeping the boy from exploding and turning traitor in order to keep his people safer. And the best way to keep Sasuke from turning traitor was to offer him actual training to get strong so he would see no reason to escape to another village.

If the power obsessed boy didn't get what he wanted in Konoha, he would leave in an instant to find what he sought.

'The things I do for family.' Carl sighed, depressed that he would have to interact with Sasuke. 'Maybe I could just kill him instead?' Carl mostly joked with himself. Mostly.

He wouldn't actually kill the boy unless if he did something unforgivable. But he was tempted…

Oh, so tempted.

* * *

But all that happened over the course of several months. Going back a little bit in time, on the morning of Carl and Hinata's seventh birthday, Carl regained his memories of the Game of Thrones world.

After the flood of memories, Carl spent a few moments remembering the time he had spent on his vacation in the land of Westeros with his girl Lyanna. It was a good time.

With his newly restored memories, he thought about the magic he learned in Westeros. Some of the blood magic he learned made him think of experimenting with the chakra conducting metal that he could find here in the Naruto world, to see how it would react to magic.

'Come to think of it, why haven't I placed some orders for those metals yet?' Carl asked himself. It had been three months since he gained access to his technology. He was slacking!

So he sent out the order to the Yamato VI to start gathering samples of the various new beasts, plants, and metals of this world so he could add it to his farms. And if there were any interesting gems, crystals, woods, or anything else that was of use to add those too.

The sooner he added them to his Farms, the sooner he could produce his own goods to experiment with. And the sooner he could make some nice toys to play with. Ninjas needed weapons and toys, after all.

* * *

**Omake:**

A few days after the Uchiha massacre while Carl was walking towards the park, he overheard a couple of civilians talking about it. That wasn't too unusual, since it was a huge deal and everyone was worried about the fallout from the sudden depletion of their military force. But it was the contents of the discussion that captured his attention.

"Have you heard news about the little Uchiha boy?" The early 40s brown haired civilian lady said to her black haired late 30s good friend after they hugged and kissed each other's cheeks.

"Yeah, he's the only one to survive the clan. He's going to be rich from inheriting all the property."

"No, that's outdated news. When the ANBU forces found him, they rushed him to the hospital where it was found out that his eyes melted from his face. He's blind!"

"No way! How's that possible?! He'll never become a ninja now, especially without his amazingly magical eyes that can do anything!"

"I know, right? Without their magical eyes that can trump anything and make them super powerful, he's just a normal boy now. A normal blind boy. Nobody will care about him now."

"Cruel, but true. Oh! But what happens to the Uchiha estate?"

"Of course he can't access any of it. The Uchiha were so proud of their eyes, anyone who doesn't have the fully mature Sharingan can't inherit."

"So what happens to all that property?"

"Well, the estate is supposed to be in the charge of the Shinobi council until someone can inherit. Which means any of Sasuke's children who gain their mature Sharingan eyes will inherit…"

"This changes everything."

"I know, right? I was going to wait for my little Chitsu to grow up and snag him as her husband. But now I'm thinking…"

"No way. I thought of it first! I'm going to be the first one to have dear Sasuke-kun's children, you hag!"

"Not if I get to him first, dead fish!"

The pair of ladies looked like they were on the verge of tearing each other apart as they hurled insults at each other, when they were interrupted by a lady that looked like she was in her early 70s.

"Ladies! You're arguing for no good reason. You should stop it!"

The two "good friends" backed off from their fight for a bit to see who was interrupting them. It was the butcher shop owner's mother-in-law.

"Why? Thinking your daughter is going to be able to get there first?" The black haired lady cattily spoke.

"No, it's just that there's no use fighting now. Sasuke-kun is only 7. He won't be able to father children for at least 5 years, maybe 6 or 7. So squabbling in the streets like this, it's unbecoming of you."

The two ladies sheepishly looked at each other in apology.

"Sorry, Riki, I don't know what came over me." The brown haired lady apologies with a sheepish smile.

"Don't worry about it, Raira, I'm sorry too. I was a bit hasty and rude as well. Why don't we go get some tea and settle down?"

"That sounds perfect."

The brown and black haired ladies departed arm in arm while Carl shook his head in disbelief. Since Sasuke couldn't inherit his estate without a child, it looked like the gold digging mothers of Konoha weren't content with waiting for their daughters to get old enough to marry him. They wanted a child off him _now_. What would their husbands say? What would their children say?

"Heh, suckers." Carl's attention was suddenly drawn to the old and wrinkled lady who looked like she was in her late 70s who was saying some unusual things. "Ninja clan members mature earlier than civilian born, so Sasuke will be able to have children in 1, maybe 2 years. And I'm only in my early 50s, so I've got a good chance of popping out one more sprog, which will net me the prize! I've got 2 years of competition free time to prepare! Come to me, dear Sasuke-kun!"

And off she walked, crooning in what she thought was a sexy voice but that reminded Carl of cats going at it in the back alleys. He shuddered at the imagery now in his head. Maybe he should have been a bit more specific in his orders to the VI about just which Sharingan eyes should have been melted so Sasuke didn't go blind? Maybe Sasuke would appreciate a mercy killing right about now?

Oh well. Not his problem.

Carl whistled innocently as he made his way to the park.

"I wonder if we'll be playing ninja, playing ninja, or playing ninja today?" Carl mused as he looked up at the clouds. It wasn't the Nara's turn to choose, so they wouldn't be cloud watching today.


	92. Naruto 6

Three months after his seventh birthday Carl regained his memories of his time in the cooking show world. Even though he didn't get any great perks from that world, it was fun remembering how he had transformed that world into a gourmet world.

It also sparked some odd ideas into his head. What would a world of ninja, samurai, and other such beings think of their world being transformed into a gastronome's dream?

Would the sudden appearance of Gourmet Grounds allow the various factions to focus on those rather than making war with their fellow ninja? Or would the struggle for control of a Gourmet Ground and the benefits accrued from it simply intensify the conflicts?

Carl shrugged away his idle idea of changing the Naruto world into a gourmet hunting ground. He may revisit the idea later, after some of the big threats out there were dealt with. Or he may not.

"Carl, time to wake up." Nuo called out from outside his doors.

"I'm up, Nuo." Carl called as he finished getting dressed.

He exited his rooms and made his way to the breakfast table. He saw that Neji and Hinata were already there.

"Good morning Hinata, Neji." Carl called out as he took his place.

"Morning!" Hinata cheerfully called out.

"Good morning, cousin." Neji calmly nodded.

"So, tell me more about how your classmates acted in the exercise, Neji." Hinata badgered their cousin for answers about their class activities.

Shortly after Carl and Hinata's seventh birthday the Academy started up once more, and Neji was enrolled. Hinata liked to dig for information and stories about Neji's fellow classmates, ask him about what he thought of them, and generally dig for information from their taciturn cousin.

Neji always answered her questions, but he wasn't a very talkative sort. So Hinata had to continually ask specific questions to get more detailed answers. Carl thought it was good training for Hinata in the interrogation skill of chasing after the information trail.

"There weren't a lot of students that stood out." Neji thoughtfully answered as he reviewed his memories. "Most of the class has never trained their bodies before, so they struggled to even finish the obstacle course, let alone excel at it. There was one boy with very shaggy hair that finished two minutes behind me. For a civilian born orphan, he did very well."

Carl thoughtfully looked at Neji who was deep in thought about what had happened in his class. From what he said, Carl wouldn't be surprised if Neji was talking about Rock Lee. Carl mused that it looked like Hinata wasn't the only one who was benefitting from the regular interrogation she put Neji under. The original Neji would never have had cause to actually take a second look at any of his classmates, or compliment them as he was doing now.

Hinata's line of questioning over the past couple of months had already caused Neji to start to actually look at his fellow classmates and evaluate them and their potential as his future teammates. And in order to answer her questions, he had to do a bit of information gathering himself to find out their circumstances.

And since the easiest method of finding that information out was to simply talk to his classmates and ask them, it was occasionally forcing him to become a bit more social. At least when he couldn't gather the information in the sneaky ninja way.

Carl thought it was a wonderful development in Neji. He was more observant of his peers and was looking beyond the surface to see who they actually were.

"And one of the girls was unusually accurate from the first time she picked up a kunai. She was the most accurate on that portion of the obstacle course, even if her conditioning needs to improve." Neji continued explaining to Hinata, probably speaking about Tenten.

"Moaning..." A sleepy eyed Naruko yawned as she stumbled into the dining room, plopping herself down in her spot next to Hinata and promptly leaning all over the girl and starting to snore.

"Morning sleepy head." Carl called out, while a red faced Hinata was poking her clingy companion. Hinata only got a couple of incoherent mumbles from the blonde from where she was draped over his sister.

Hiashi, Himari, and Hanabi entered the room then and took in the situation with a glance. Hinata looked at her parents in a helpless begging manner to ask for their assistance. She only got amused smirks in return as they took their place at the table.

Breakfast was soon served, which acted as a wake up switch for Naruko. The moment the food was placed on the table she popped upright, fully awake and hungry.

The family chuckled a bit, even Hinata joined in despite the embarrassing moment, at the familiar sight of Naruko's reaction to good food. Even after more than a year of living with them, Naruko was still so excited to be able to eat a variety of delicious foods that she could only have dreamed of before.

While the family ate in silence, Carl thought about just how much Naruko had improved over the course of the past year.

At first it had been a struggle to get her to sit still in their reading and writing lessons. She just seemed almost incapable of paying attention. It was a struggle for her to focus.

That had lasted for a few days until Carl seriously thought about what was causing her to be so anxious when it was time to study.

One of the thoughts he had was that Naruko's somewhat hyperactive fidgeting was a result of an imbalance of energies. As the Jinchuriki of the Nine-Tail Fox, chakra was constantly leaking from the seal in minute amounts, defusing through her body.

The chakra of the Kyubi was generally corrosive to people, so it was constantly breaking down Naruko's body. But the health regeneration that came from being an Uzumaki, and which was probably enhanced by being a Jinchuriki, caused her to heal the damage very fast.

The result? Her physical body was stronger and more robust than others her age. And her physical energy far outstripped her mental energy.

The imbalance of physical energy to mental energy caused her to be very hyper and it was hard to settle down for the mental portion of their studies.

Aside from that imbalance, Naruko was simply not used to sitting down for scholarly studies, since the first six years of her life she was living as a wild child and was focused on struggling to stay alive in the midst of so much anger and hate directed her way.

So the first part of Carl's plan had been to increase Naruko's workout greatly so she bled off a great deal of physical energy in the morning. Her stamina was insane, so she didn't tire easily or for long, but at least the heavy workouts bled enough energy off that she could focus easier in the afternoons.

And the other part of Carl's plan was to simply explain certain things so that Naruko understood them. A short but detailed explanation of the nature of chakra and how their training schedule was designed to help them grow as ninja saw a huge transformation in Naruko.

When someone actually took the time to explain to her just _why_ something was the way it was, or why they were doing something, it was amazing the effect it had on her.

Naruko was an orphan that had never had anyone to explain anything to her. Ever. She only ever learned as much as she did by observation and imitation. Having someone sit down and explain things to her and answer her questions without yelling was a novel experience.

And once she learned how important the mental aspects of training were to increase their chakra and control over their chakra, she had suddenly been _very _focused. She dove in to the reading and writing exercises with a will to master the subject matter. She suddenly _loved _learning art and music as a means to increase her mental energy and gain control over her chakra and become a better ninja.

Carl smiled and shook his head in amusement at the huge effect simple understanding had in the girl.

Thinking about the girl's prospects if he hadn't intervened in her life made him pleased with the changes he was making.

He could only assume that Naruko would have ended up with a similar development to the male Naruto in the story. They both lived in similar circumstances, and except for gender seemed to be very similar people at first.

Because of the change in circumstances, the two blondes were very different people now.

The original Naruto had lived in that unkind and hatred filled environment for six more years before he started getting any acknowledgement from his peers. He was never educated and taught how to act or how to be a ninja. He muddled through, lived behind a cheerful mask, and was shaped by his environment.

Because of his whole life goal of gaining recognition, he actually made a poor ninja. He craved attention and did things in a loud and flashy way, even if he wasn't sure of succeeding. Naruto would more often than not talk to his opponents and get their life stories and work his talk no jutsu to make them allies, rather than simply ambush them or fight them to the death.

Those kinds of traits made him an excellent hero protagonist, but it also made him a poor ninja.

And while Carl would never quite know what would have happened to Naruto if early on he had gotten some kind of intervention in his life like what Carl and his family was doing for Naruko, he could make some guesses based on the changes he was seeing in Naruko.

Finally gaining some acknowledgment and love, and training and attention, had done wonders for Naruko over the past year. She dove into their ninja studies and loved every minute of it as she proved she could be a very intelligent person given half a chance.

If she had lived for another six years without anyone to guide her, her habits and behaviors of muddling through would probably have become so ingrained, it would be hard to change at a later date.

Naruko still had her moments of nervousness and worry that it would all disappear one day, but those moments were growing further and further apart.

And under the guidance of Himari and Hinata at home, and the addition of Ino, Sakura, and Yakumo on their scheduled park days, Naruko was able to grow beyond her "gutter rat survival mode" and actually begin to be a young girl.

She was able to enjoy nice kimonos and colors other than orange. She was able to enjoy eating sweets. She was able to have fun gossip sessions with her girlfriends. She was able to spar with her adoptive family and friends, learn to read and write, and simply blossom into a vivacious little girl.

And she wasn't the only one to benefit from the arrangements. Hinata gained a sister her age that was just as cheerful as she was, even if she was a bit more exuberant in showing it. Poor Hinata and his mother were kind and cheerful individuals that were unlucky enough to find themselves in the midst of a very stoic clan. So it was nice for them to have another cheerful person to interact with.

It would have been stifling to a great degree for Carl's twin sister to live in the stoic Hyuga clan alone. But now that Hinata had a sister that she could show the ropes to, and who was just as cheerful as she liked being, the two girls got on like a house on fire. The clan of uncheerful people didn't feel as stifling with a partner in crime next to Hinata.

Once they finished breakfast, Carl shook off his introspective mood. He followed behind Hinata, Naruko, and Neji to the practice field.

While Neji did attend the academy, it didn't start until nine in the morning. The family usually woke at five-ish and spent at most a half hour on breakfast. So Neji had a solid three hours of workout time before he had to get ready and leave for the academy.

From what Neji told them, the Academy ran from 9:00 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. Each class was 45 minutes long with a 15 minute break in between classes and an hour long lunch.

The first class was Reading and Writing. The second was History. The third was spent out in the practice yard on physical fitness and taijutsu. They were introducing the basic academy style of martial arts in the taijutsu class.

After an hour long lunch they would return for a class on various Ninja skills, followed by Languages and Codes, and then the last class of the day was Maths and the Sciences.

It wasn't a bad schedule for an academy, per se. But it seemed to be focused more on book knowledge than practical training. Carl blamed the gold diggers who were after Sasuke's bank book for the changes that happened.

While the mental aspects of learning helped improve their chakra, the physical aspects were just as important, if not more so. But the Academy only had one 45 minute class that focused on the physical, while the rest was on the mental. That should really be the opposite. The young ninja hopefuls could train and practice under the guidance of an instructor at the Academy, then spend their off time studying the knowledge portion as homework.

But thanks to the desire of the gold diggers to have their useless fangirl daughters stay in the academy to pursue their precious Sasuke, the curriculum had been changed for the worse.

"Race you!" Naruko called out when they arrived in the practice yard and took off running.

"Hey! No fair!" Hinata yelled as she took off after the laughing blonde.

Carl exchanged small smiles with Neji before they too began sprinting after the two girls.

Neji was a year older than the rest of them and had more training time under his belt, but often found it hard to keep up with the speed of Naruko, and no one could keep up with her stamina.

Well, no one but Carl. But he kept it a secret that he could easily beat her. He usually kept pace just behind Naruko to encourage his sister and cousin to push themselves to catch up; and encourage Naruko to push herself not to be caught.

Carl really, really didn't want to get the reputation of a "genius". Nothing good ever came of that label. Pedo snake ninjas chased after a young boy's body for that label.

'Okay, I'm being a bit unfair here. Orochimaru never wanted to get in Sasuke's pants in that way, as far as I know. He just wanted to take over a body that gave him cheat codes in acquiring jutsu.' Carl snorted to himself when they were on their 23rd lap around the practice yard.

'Or maybe it was the upgraded version of the sharingan that Itachi showed off that made Orochimaru so obsessed with the Uchiha eyes.' Carl suddenly realized. 'Cause it's not like Orochimaru ever needed help learning even S-rank jutsu, or just inventing his own. But the mangekyo eyes and the amazing powers they had would definitely attract the snake summoner's attention.'

Another few laps were ran while Carl pondered about this new idea. Naruko was shouting taunts that she was beating them in their run, causing Neji to redouble his efforts to catch the blonde who was annoying about rubbing her speed and stamina advantage in their faces.

'Well, thankfully Orochimaru doesn't seem interested in the Byakugan.' Carl finally concluded. 'I'm sure I could take him out if it came to it; but there's just something wiggy about the idea of having him focused on me, or any of my friends.' Carl shuddered.

Eventually Neji had to take off for the Academy and the other three soon got involved in their taijutsu practice. It was really good practice for Naruko to have to fight the Hyuga twins because it forced her to pay attention a lot to avoid being poked by their painful fingers of steel. And it helped Hinata a lot to fight a style other than the Gentle Fist; it gave her plenty of experience in fighting.

With more of his memories being restored, Carl had lots and lots of combat and training experience to call on to help them. Over the years since he had gone to the SAO world, he had spent plenty of time in the virtual world fighting against the toughest opponents he could program in, both human and giant monster.

All that extra experience directly translated to Carl being able to master and use the Gentle Fist style in the most efficient way possible. So if he wanted to make his opponents, Hinata and Naruko in this case, aware of their openings and weaknesses, he could easily attack that way to show them the holes in their defenses.

He also allowed holes to open up in his defenses so they could attack and score hits. It was important that they were good at not just defense, but attack as well.

His time in the virtual worlds fighting against the toughest opponents he could program to fight certainly made him aware that only staying on defense would allow an opponent to plan and execute a series of attacks much easier, which would lead to eventual defeat. Especially when he fought against monsters that dwarfed him in size. This ninja world had giant summons beasts, so those kinds of fights would be present, no doubt.

And while he hadn't exactly gone to a world of giant Kaiju, like Godzilla, plenty of profound beasties could fill the role of a Kaiju if they so desired. So he had learned to fight against them.

'Hmm. Maybe I should create that as my next training program. Can't believe I haven't programmed a Godzilla world in the virtual reality.' Carl chuckled at the thought. He then sent an order to the Yamato VI to review the Godzilla tapes he had in the database and begin designing a virtual game based around it. He was busy with other things, so he would have the VI do it.

Carl would review the game and make some adjustments if needed at some point. And a fun alternative would be to have him be the giant rampaging through the city. That could be quite fun indeed.

The morning exercises eventually came to a close, and Carl, Hinata, and Naruko headed to the baths to clean up for lunch.

Life was good.

* * *

A dark haired boy of about seven years old was alone in an apartment in another part of Konoha. He stood at the window in the front of his apartment, which was covered by some curtains.

Moving the side of one of the curtains a fraction of an inch, he was able to see out of his window to view the front of his apartment.

He shuddered.

_They_ were out there, waiting for him.

Nothing really made sense, ever since his brother had killed their whole clan, their parents, and then tortured him. The world had gone mad in so many ways. All these random woman wouldn't stop ambushing him and telling him how much their daughter cared about him and wanted him because he was an elite Uchiha and was so cute.

He had no idea why they would want him. He hadn't even met their daughters, let alone knew what they looked like. He had no idea why they would want him, having never met them before.

But telling them that he hadn't even met their daughters had been his first huge mistake. Because after that they all began carrying pictures of their nearly naked daughters to shove in his face, telling him how beautiful they were and pressing him to agree to meet them.

_"Don't you agree, Lord Uchiha. My Risa would make the perfect wife for you."_

Lord Uchiha was his father. But that was before 'Tachi killed him. And mom. And everyone else.

A bolt of pain shot through his head.

'Damn you Itachi, you traitor! I'm going to chase you down and kill you like a dog!'

A voice echoed through his head. It didn't sound like his own voice, but he was in so much pain, he couldn't figure out who it belonged to.

'Why? Why did you do it?' Sasuke thought when the pain lessened, allowing him to sit up from where he had fallen before. "Why…why did you run without me, 'Tachi?'

'I hate you Itachi! YOU'RE DEAD!'

Sasuke grabbed his head as another bolt of pain shot through it. The voice that accompanied the pain that told him he hated his older brother 'Tachi – another bolt of pain ripped through his head.

'I won't stop until you're dead Itachi! I'll rage and hate and chase you until I can kill you!'

The pain continued rolling through his head.

After an interminable amount of time, the pain finally lessened. He dragged himself along the wall until he shakily sat up once more and took a deep breath.

The world didn't make any sense anymore. Random women threw their naked daughters at him while calling him 'Lord Uchiha', telling him that he was such a strong ninja. He knew he wasn't a strong ninja yet, not like 'Tachi –

A bolt of pain shot through his head.

"You're a damned traitor Itachi. I will kill you. Nothing will get in my way or stop me from ending your life!" Sasuke yelled out loud alongside the voice that echoed in his head.

The pain lessened a bit when Sasuke yelled out loud what the voice told him.

He finally recognized whose voice was echoing in his head whenever the bolts of pain would attack. He didn't know how that voice was echoing in his head, but he knew who it belonged to. That voice sounded like his older brother…Itachi.

Despite wincing and expecting the pain, nothing happened when he used his brother's full name. Sasuke shakily let out his breath. He had made the connection, finally.

When he thought of 'Ta – the nickname he had for his older brother, the pain would burst in his head and his brother's voice would tell him to rage and hate him. His brother was telling him to build up his rage and hate and kill him.

Sasuke curled up once more on the ground in front of the window, sobbing into his knees.

Eventually he stopped crying and got to his knees, and stood up shakily. He made his way to the kitchen of his new apartment that was far away from the Uchiha district where he had seen so many corpses of his clan.

He rinsed his face off, and then grabbed a cup and filled it with water.

The blood had run in the streets, splashing and staining his clothes as he ran frantically through the district until he arrived home and saw his brother, 'Ta – Itachi standing there.

Two swings of his sword, and their parents were dead. Falling over onto the ground. Their staring eyes unblinking.

Itachi had then poked him in the forehead, and brought him to the land of pain and hate.

And then he left him. He left him all alone.

And now the world didn't make any sense anymore.

Everyone was telling him what a powerful ninja he was. Because he was an elite Uchiha. He was the Lord Uchiha. They threw their daughters at him. They threw gift after gift at him, seeking his favor.

Anytime he thought of…the nickname, his brother's voice told him to gather his hate, grow powerful, and kill him.

Setting the empty cup down on the counter, Sasuke sucked in a lungful of air, held it. And then blew it out.

And made a decision.

"Since this is what the world has become, then so be it." Sasuke's hoarse voice almost grunted the words. "Since that is what you want, brother, then so be it."

"My name is Sasuke Uchiha. An elite Uchiha. I will hate a lot of things. And I will destroy…Itachi Uchiha."

The low level headache that never fully went away lightened up just a little bit at his declaration. He was on the right track.

He returned back to the living room of his apartment, and looked out of his window at the women that were waiting for him to emerge so they could sell their daughters to him.

Now that he thought about it, it was only right that they would act like that for an elite ninja that this world had become. The strong ninja always got the most attention, just like 'Ta – Itachi, the man he was going to kill.

"My name is Sasuke Uchiha, an elite ninja. I hate a lot of things. I will prepare to kill…Itachi Uchiha."

The pain lessened a bit more.

This world didn't make sense anymore. And this life was no good.

But at least he had a direction, a goal. His brother had told him what to do. Now, he just needed to do it.

"My name is Sasuke Uchiha, an elite Uchiha ninja. I hate a lot of things. Except my clan. I will one day restore my clan. Before that, though, I will kill Itachi Uchiha."

The head pain lessened a little bit more. Sasuke firmed his will. He knew what he had to do to make this life better. His brother had shown him the way. Gain power, kill Itachi, and build the clan up. Even more powerful than before so no one could ever destroy it again.

"My name is Sasuke Uchiha, an elite Uchiha ninja. I hate a lot of things. I don't like many things. One day I will restore my clan. But first, I will kill Itachi Uchiha." Sasuke repeated his mantra.

Maybe then life could be good again.

* * *

The day that Carl turned seven and a half years old he sported the equivalent of a massive Hyuga grin all day long. Carl really only played the stoic Hyuga when he felt like it, and today he was playing a happy stoic Hyuga to hide just how much his face wanted to stretch into a massive grin. With his cheerful sister Hinata and his overly energetic friend Naruko, he really didn't need to remain all stoic and unemotional.

Cause they would tease him relentlessly if he tried to act like a Hyuga for anything other than formal situations. So he shrugged and went along with it. It was more fun to enjoy his life and training than to have to role play as if he had a stick up his butt.

The thing that made him so happy all day was the return of his memories of the Dinosaur Gauntlet. He was the freaking Prankasaurus-Rex! He had an alternate T-Rex body! And it could even shift into a seven foot six inch tall beast of a man! So he wasn't stuck in a small kids body until he grew up, he could sneak out in the middle of the night and have some fun!

Now he just needed to look for something that was happening somewhere in the world for him to intervene in. Preferably something that would make the lives of those people he saved better off. Those were always the most personally satisfying things to meddle in. He could totally understand why the superheroes of the comic books were addicted to the feeling of saving the day. It made one feel great about themselves.

Later that evening, while the rest of the clan slept except for the guards, Carl put up the SEP field and teleported up to the Yamato. When he landed on the bridge, Carl shifted forms to his T-Rex humanoid form. His tall and muscular form could stand comfortably straight on the bridge, which had plenty of room.

A quick bit of magic repaired and resized his clothes. Oops.

Being back in an adult form, especially one that was so tall, really felt good. Even if his vision did feel like it had shrunk so much. He had grown very used to the 359 degree field of view over the past seven years, so that now it felt like he was half blind.

'Well, I'll have to see about adding the Hyuga bloodline to my T-Rex form when I'm finally finished with this jump.' Carl had found out many worlds ago that the terminal Spere 037 left him only operated in the time/space between jumps.

Seating himself in the captain's chair in his dino-human form, he began combing through his memories of the show and the characters that Naruto would have encountered or heard about that could really use an intervention about now. It would be fun to go around and disrupt the bad stuff from happening.

"Let's see." Carl muttered while connecting with the computer to look over reports. "First I'll start with the remaining Uzumaki that I know about. Karin and her mother Ali are currently being taken advantage of in the minor village of Kusa."

Ali Uzumaki had the very strong life force of the Uzumaki, which in her case manifested as a healing ability. Injured ninja could bite her, which allowed her to transfer her chakra/life force to heal them. He wasn't sure exactly what was happening there without getting some actual readings.

The ninja of Kusa village pretty much forced Ali to heal their injured, and in return they allowed her and her daughter refugee status in their village, but they were treated as the lowest class citizens. It was pretty cold hearted of the bastards. Even after she had healed up so many of their people, they still treated her like some worthless goods to be used up and thrown away.

Bringing up the scan report, Carl saw that there was a nine year old Karin in Kusa. Her mother was still alive at this point, although she had scars all over her arms from the multiple bites needed to heal up the ninja.

At some point in the near future there would be too many injured coming in at once, causing Ali to die from healing too many people at once for her life force to recover from. The ninja of Kusa would then force Karin to take the spot of her mother. Carl really didn't like how Kusa village ninja were using and abusing them. Especially because he had a soft spot in his heart for Uzumakis.

"Well, that will be a good place to start at any rate. I dunno if I'll be able to bring more Uzumaki back here to Konoha to be an extended family with Naruko. Even if I can, I don't want Naruko to think she has to live with Ali and Karin and that she's no longer welcome with us." Carl thought about it for a time. "Well, at least I can set up a new home and refuge for the strays I'll be picking up. They don't have to come to Konoha immediately. And when I've got some more people there they can take care of the Uchiha kids I rescued. At least then they can have a better example to live by then the power mad Uchiha clan."

With that idea in mind, Carl looked over the island where the Uzumaki clan once made their home, Uzushio. It was a total wreck at the moment. All the buildings were destroyed, the skeletons of the former inhabitants were still scattered around. And no one was currently present on the island.

"Perfect place to set up my village for refugees, then." Carl decided. "A least once it is cleaned up and rebuilt it will be. With some wards and technology protecting the island, there won't be a repeat of the massacre that killed off the Uzumaki clan in the first place."

With that decision, Carl teleported to the small island off the east coast of the Land of Fire. He landed on the tallest ruined building in the former village, immediately floating up in the air to survey the area visually. The half moon shone faintly down on the ruins. The night wind brushed through nearly silent remains.

Even after so many years, there were still scorch marks, upturned earth, flood damage, and other such battle damage. Carl could see how violent the death of Uzushio and the Uzumaki clan had been.

The sight of the destruction was somewhat depressing. Thinking of how this ruin was a prosperous village 20 some years ago made him shake his head. In the world of ninja, it was quite easy for death and destruction to come knocking without warning.

Carl spread out his senses, wondering if there were anything of interest left behind that the invading ninja didn't find and loot.

His mind and senses scanned his surroundings, skipping over and through the rubble as he looked for anything unusual. Most of what he saw was rubble, broken and strewn about. There were many piles of skeletons. The remnants of scrolls that were falling apart due to time and weather. And in a few cases, they had been used as a fuel source for a fire to cook food by the invading forces.

But there was one large manor nearby that had a…distortion, was the best word he could come up with. Carl couldn't get a better idea of just what the strange distortion was from where he stood. So he floated over to the area. He teleported in from the Yamato some specialty equipment designed to get highly detailed and accurate scans.

Over the next half hour Carl looked over the results of the scans. There was a dimensional bending where the disturbance was. It wasn't anything that could be seen by the naked eye, and only his magical and profound senses had been able to sense anything unusual in the first place.

If his "normal" eyes couldn't see anything, maybe his Byakugan eyes had a better chance?

He shifted back into his five foot tall human form, his tall frame shrinking into itself as he assumed his human Hyuga form. Sending some chakra to his eyes, Carl looked intently at the place the distortion was located.

Over the past few years he had been training his eyes diligently every day. He had made amazing progress in his use of the Byakugan. He far outstripped the elders of the Hyuga clan, let alone his peers, even if he did keep that fact hidden.

The more he looked at the distortion with his eyes active, the more he began to perceive what was and wasn't there, and how the space was bent to create the little pocket dimensional space. He also spotted the small flow of chakra linked to the distortion from a decoration on the curiously untouched wall.

"Huh." Carl muttered while looking at the decoration on the pristine wall that he had ignored until just that moment. "It looks like I've found some interesting seals here."

The complex seals just looked like decorations to Carl, but they obviously had very important functions. He still couldn't read any of the seals since he hadn't been able to study up on them yet. But he could assume that there was a seal to keep the wall in perfect condition so the seals weren't broken. There was also apparently a field that caused everyone to ignore the suspiciously pristine wall and seals.

He could also see a small amount of chakra forming up on several of the symbols that were then linked to more symbols and transferred the chakra over until the energy reached out from a set of seals and linked to the dimensional distortion that hovered in the air.

With all the clues, Carl would have to be dense indeed if he didn't figure out what the general job of the seals were.

He then focused his vision on the distortion, trying to _see_ inside the distortion. The bend in space seemed to crack open a little bit, revealing what was hidden inside. He caught a glimpse of stacks of scrolls on a scroll-shelf.

"Well, well, well." Carl chortled. "I knew the Uzumaki were renowned for their sealing arts, and that the reason some villages banded together against them was because of their fear of what the sealing arts could do to the balance of power. But to find a hidden cache of knowledge here is definitely lucky."

Carl frowned at the seals and dimensional pocket setup in thought for a moment.

"I'm going to have to be careful about how I go about this, though." Carl paced back and forth in front of the spatial distortion. "If I'm too reckless, I might accidentally destroy this pocket space and lose the library. Not to mention that this is good training for my Byakugan eyes, reading some scrolls inside a pocket dimension."

Carl was about to get started on reading the scrolls when a thought intruded in his mind.

"Damn, almost forgot why I came here in the first place." Carl chuckled as he left the ruins of the house the library was located with one last look back. "I'll be back." He cheesily intoned with a faint smile before departing.

Carl then spent the next hour surveying the site of the ruined village and its surroundings. He located a decent place in the nearby hills and started digging into the hillside to build a crypt where he would inter all the bones of the deceased people of Uzushio. He was able to use excavation charms from the Harry Potter world to expedite the job.

With liberal use of magic, space expansion runes and charms, and a bit of technology here and there, he soon had a very dignified looking crypt the size of a mansion on a hill that overlooked the village. It was much bigger on the inside.

He began tracking down all the human remains and transferring them to the crypt for their final resting place. Carl could have easily tasked the Yamato VI to do it for him, but he felt it was more significant and respectful to the dead to do it personally.

He wasn't even really sure just why he felt the need to do so. It wasn't like he was personally attached to the old village or their people. But it just somehow felt wrong not to treat them with dignity when he was going to plunder their library that was the accumulation of their life's study. And set up a village of his own in place of theirs.

Well, he still shortened the time needed to collect all the remains by using his magic. He still had things to do, after all.

Once all the old bones were placed in the crypt, Carl looked at the time and realized the night was nearly over. It was about time to go back home for the day.

Instead of leaving immediately, he ordered the Yamato to come to him, put it in his pocket dimension, and entered the Time Pearl. Now he would have plenty of time to design the new village that he would be bringing all his strays to.

Over the next several days inside time compressions, Carl and the Yamato VI designed the wards and defenses for the island, how the village would be set up, and how the basic plants and animals would be grown and harvested on the island to provide food for his new village.

Once the plan was determined, Carl exited the pearl and sent the Yamato back into orbit. He knew the VI would take care of implementing the plan with a horde of the spider-like construction bots he had called Petes. Having very advanced technology was just as convenient if not more so than having magic.

The Yamato VI also had orders to monitor the people he had designated as his strays that he would recruit later. If anything were to threaten their life, the VI would intervene and teleport them out.

With all that taken care of, Carl teleported back to his room just a few minutes before Nuo showed up to wake him up. Carl went through the daily training with a certain bounce in his step. He felt good with what he was accomplishing.

* * *

In the middle of the next day Carl got notice from the Yamato's VI that Ali and Karin Uzumaki had been teleported up into the medical bay.

Once he looked over the report, Carl whistled lowly at how close it had been. Ali had been allowing herself to be bitten to heal the large influx of injured ninja in Kusa. She had been on the verge of dying, which alerted the VI.

Without wasting any time, the VI had transported Ali and Karin up to the ship and replaced them with lifeless clones. The VI had started instituting medical procedures to save Ali's live and restore her to health. Karin and Ali were kept unconscious until Carl could break away to talk to them.

If Carl hadn't designated them as persons of interest, Ali would have died earlier that day and left her daughter alone in the midst of the cold and heartless Kusa ninja.

'Well, it's good to have a VI to watch over things when I'm busy.' Carl chuckled, pleased that the VI leaving the dead clone bodies of Ali and Karin in their place had worked so well. That way the ninja of Kusa village wouldn't go looking for their healing slaves. 'The bastards don't deserve to be healed if that's how they're going to act anyway.'

* * *

She woke up muddle headed and unsure of just where she was. Looking around, the room looked like it was made of metal and glass. There was a curtain to her left that blocked half the view of the room.

"Hello?" Karin called out, wondering who had brought her to this strange looking place.

"Karin?"

"Mom!" Karin got up from the bed she was laying on and pushed aside the curtain, seeing her mother just sitting up from her bed. She jumped up and hugged her mom.

"There, there. It's going to be alright." Ali whispered to her daughter.

"Where are we, mom?" Karin asked her mom, looking around nervously.

"You're on my vessel." A strange and deep voice answered.

Karin looked over to the voice, and saw the biggest man she had ever seen sitting calmly a short distance away. He was strangely colored, his skin was dark browns and hints of green. Even though he was huge, he gave her vibes that he didn't mean them harm.

"Who are you? Why did you kidnap my daughter and me?" Karin's mom demanded.

The huge man held up his hands in the calm down gesture.

"You were on the verge of death when I found you. Another few minutes of being forced to heal the ninja of Kusa, and you would have died." The man bluntly said.

Karin looked over in shock at her mother. Tears filled her eyes. If her mother died…She began crying while clutching her mother, not wanting her mother to die and leave her alone among all those cold and hateful Kusa villagers.

Ali worked to calm her daughter, murmuring that it would be okay.

"Your mother is right, Karin. She will be fine, now that I had her healed." The giant man said. Karin, for some reason, believed him. Especially after she looked at her mother's arms that no longer had all the bite mark scars that her mother always tried to hide from her. He really had healed her mother.

"What's your name, mister?" Karin asked after wiping away her tears.

"And what do you want for saving me." Ali asked, more cautious than her daughter. In her experience, men usually wanted only a few things. And she wasn't willing to give those up, just because he saved her.

"My name is Carl." The big man said with a chuckle. "I'm in a unique position to offer you a place of refuge. As to what I want? Hmm." He put his hand to his chin and looked off to the side in thought.

Karin wondered why he was thinking so much. It was easy to say what you wanted, like having an extra large serving of meat for dinner. Or being able to go play at the park. She couldn't usually get those kinds of things, because her and her mother were poor. But it was easy to know what you wanted.

"I don't really want anything from you, specifically." Carl said thoughtfully. "I've already gotten my reward by screwing over the plot by saving you, after all."

Karin thought she could hear the big man mutter "stupid world plot", but that made no sense to her, so she ignored it.

"But, I'm putting together a village where people who have nowhere else to go can find safety. Are you interested?" The big man, Carl, continued as he looked back at the mother daughter duo.

Karin looked hopefully at her mother, just barely keeping herself from begging to go. It had to be better than Kusa. Anything had to be better than Kusa!

"And if we decide not to settle in your village?" Ali warily asked Carl.

"Well, then you can name me a place you would like to go to. You're not my prisoners. And you certainly won't be used like those bastards of Kusa have been doing. You will be a full citizen of my village, with all the rights and responsibilities inherent with the position. Would you like to see my village before you make a decision?" Carl asked. "Perhaps take a tour of the place?"

Her mom looked down at her, and saw her begging expression. She sighed and nodded agreement to the big man.

"Yamato, three to beam down to New Uzushio." The big man said.

Karin then saw a large white flash in her vision. When she could see again, the three of them were standing on a hill overlooking a village that looked like it was half built. It was night time, but there were enough lights over the village that she could see it clearly.

Looking closer, she could see a bunch of little metal spiders walking around the village. They seemed to be building the houses! That was so cool!

"New Uzushio?" Ali faintly asked the big man Carl.

"Yes. I'm rebuilding the village. I've put in a lot more defenses, including some that will keep people from even knowing that the village is here. It's as safe as I can make it." Carl said while the three of them were looking down on the village.

At his gesture, Karin and Ali looked behind them.

"All those who died in the battle and were left lying in the streets, I've given a place to rest here." Carl said as he motioned to the crypt he had set up.

Karin followed her mother in, looking at the resting places of the dead villagers who once lived there. After a moment, she noticed her mother was crying.

"Mom, what's wrong?" She asked.

"Oh, honey. This used to be the village where I grew up. All the people that are interred here were Uzumaki, like us. They were our relatives. It's…good that they finally have a place to rest."

Karin hugged her mom. She didn't feel the attachment as much as her mother, because her mother had barely told her any stories of where she grew up. But it was good that they had come here, and no longer had to live in stupid Kusa.

"Yes, we'll stay here in your new village, if you can guarantee our safety." Ali finally told Carl.

"Well, that's good." The big man said with a smile. "Now that you're staying, there are some things you should know, so that there's less confusion. This isn't my normal face."

The big man then melted down, changing into a much smaller person. He stood there with black hair, white skin, and pearl white eyes with no pupils. Karin realized that he was a couple years younger than she was!

"My name is Carl Hyuga. I can't stay here much during the day time, since I'm living at my home in Konoha. And since I'm so young I can't exactly ensure your fair treatment there in Konoha. So I decided to rebuild Uzushio and make it a place of refuge for people that were being mistreated like you were."

Carl smiled at the two Uzumakis and began walking down the hill to the village.

"There is already a house ready for you to live in. It is stocked with food already, so you'll be fine. You two are the first I've brought here. But you won't be the last, so don't worry about how lonely it might feel right now. I'll also make sure to stock the library with books and scrolls so that the kids can be educated and trained in the ninja arts if they want to."

Karin was having a hard time getting over her shock. Here was a kid younger than her, but he was able to do so much. And he saved her mother from dying, so she already liked him. He was kind of cute, too, even if he was younger than her.

"Thanks Carl!" Karin gave him a hug in her excitement before she dashed into the house he showed them to.

The house was so big compared to where they stayed at in Kusa! It was amazing too! There was so much food on the shelves, the toilet worked, the shower water was hot, and the beds were so comfortable!

She loved it here at New Uzushio. It was much better than nasty Kusa!

* * *

The weeks passed by swiftly for Carl as he enjoyed his time training with his sister, Naruko, and the rest of the friends he had made in Konoha during the day.

He had even gotten Neji to invite Lee and Tenten to their house on the weekends for more training and to get to know them better. They were the two among all of Neji's class that showed the most dedication and talent towards becoming a ninja. All the rest seemed to be content to get by doing the bare minimum, and weren't particularly focused on becoming a ninja.

And in the evenings he had been picking up strays and depositing them in the new village he had the Petes build. After collecting them in his manly humanoid T-Rex form, he was sure to show them his normal human Hyuga face. He figured they should know his alternate forms so there would be less misunderstandings if they ran into each other suddenly while he was on missions with his genin team in the future.

Call Carl paranoid, but he was sure that accidents and "humorous" misunderstandings like that were more likely to happen in the world of Naruto. So he was absolutely convinced that if the people he rescued only knew one of his faces, then some embarrassing (to him) situation would develop. And he would prefer to avoid that if possible.

Because Carl had been busy running around grabbing people for his new village, he hadn't spent as much time reading the scrolls in the pocket dimension library as he should have.

Part of the renovations of the village included building his own house around that wall and dimensional pocket space so that it wasn't disturbed, so he had it secure and available for his own study at night. While he hadn't gotten far in his studies, he had managed to read through the basic scrolls of sealing that were in the hidden library.

With Hiashi's warning, Carl hadn't been practicing the seals he read about just yet. He was going to wait until he'd picked up the Shadow Clone technique before he started trying to draw seals that could potentially kill him.

Carl was tempted to have the Yamato teleport up the forbidden scroll from the Hokage's office so he could make a copy of it. But something always kept him back from doing so. He wasn't sure just why, but he felt like it was premature to grab the shadow clone technique and start spamming clones just yet.

Since he still had something like six years left in the world and nothing pressing to do, he decided to go ahead and wait for a bit. Maybe after he enrolled in the Academy so he could send a clone to attend the classes while he did other things.

And so, just like that, three months had passed. Carl regained his memories of his time spent in Azeroth.

He re-experienced all the questing, PvP, and raiding. The crafting, destroying the Cult of the Damned, and getting to know and build up his Flight.

So…

Carl looked around his room where he was sitting in the morning just before it was breakfast time. He went over his memories of Konoha and it was obvious something was missing from the village.

Where were his Dragons now?

* * *

[AN: Aww, poor Carl misses his cuddly Dragons, lol.

Okay. So. I've gone on a couple anti-Uchiha rants and anti-Sasuke rants before. It should be no real shock to anyone that I don't exactly like the Uchiha. So this sudden dipping into the place where Sasuke's head was at for a bit of a look-see was a little unexpected, even to myself. It almost made me feel for him. Almost.

I felt that it was a good place in the story to get a different POV for a moment to contrast Carl's good mood and how he was enjoying life. And who was enjoying life the least at the moment? Definitely Sasuke. Not only does he have to deal with fangirls and gold diggers, but his jerk of an older brother left _programming_ in his head to make absolutely sure he would go down the route he laid out for him.

So while I might, possibly, could be, actually experiencing the emotion of empathy for this particular version of Sasuke (cause let's face it, the seven year old kid got a raw deal) it doesn't change the fact that he is firmly on the path to turning traitor when he realizes he's not getting strong enough, fast enough, in Konoha.

And it's all because of his loving brother 'Tachi

*bzzzz*

"The pain!"

His brother **I-tachi**. Who was kind enough to brainwash program his brother like a Manchurian Candidate. Thanks 'Tachi!

*BZZZZ*

"Arrrggh!"

Anyway, thanks for reading!]


	93. Naruto 7

[AN Ughh. The next chapter after this has a training montage that I spent forever on. I just can't seem to get it right, and it feels so much like an info dump. I tried to make it more interesting, but every time I went back to it I felt like it was lacking. So that's one of the reasons I've delayed for a while. I finally just washed my hands of it and decided to throw it in as is.

And as usual, thanks for reading!]

* * *

Carl roused himself from meditation on the morning of his eighth birthday in a highly anticipatory mood. He was finally going to get his memories of the jump document for this Naruto/Naruko World.

He would finally remember what perks and drawback he chose. He might even figure out just where his Dragons were stashed, and why he hadn't seen them for the past several years.

While he was still sitting in his bed, he felt a sharp pain burst out on his left shoulder. It felt like hundreds of needles puncturing his skin all at once.

Carl clapped his hand onto his shoulder at the burst of pain. A moment later it faded away to nothing. Taking off his shirt, he saw an ANBU tattoo was now on his shoulder.

Before he could do more than gape at the magically appearing tattoo, Carl's head was filled with the last of his missing memories.

He remembered seeing his Dragons in suspended animation between jumps. He remembered filling out the jump document for the Naruto world, and what he selected. He remembered the warning that he would be put in some random fanfiction world.

As if he hadn't figured that out already by the presence of a female Naruko.

Time then seemed to become irrelevant as his consciousness separated from his body. His consciousness seemed to flow away from his body down a dark corridor. The sight of his body still sitting on the bed got smaller the further away he drifted.

He was hanging in a void where there was nothing to see or hear. Even his attempts to shout produced no sound.

The darkness of the void pressed in on him, making him feel so small and tiny. Like he was absolutely nothing compared to the infinite void.

Nothing he did mattered. None of the powers he gained from the Jump Chain responded to him. He had no strength. No magic. No ki. No profound cultivation. Nothing. All he had was…nothing.

He finally calmed himself down. If he couldn't do anything, then he had to keep calm and wait it out. He wasn't sure just where he had been cast out to, but he was sure the jump chain would be able to bring him back at the end of his time in the Naruto world. He only had to wait for 10 years in this void and he would be free of the void.

10 years of nothingness! The idea worried him, since it seemed like his perks weren't working properly.

It worried him since the perks were supposed to be powers that were an intrinsic part of him now.

And even though failing the scenarios of this world after waiting here in the void would not end his chain, he hated the idea of failing for such a reason. What about his new parents? His sisters? And friends?

With nothing else to do after a while, Carl began looking inward, towards his memories and knowledge. He began replaying his memories of his life, looking for anything to distract him from the Void.

He watched his lackluster original life. Compared to his jump chain adventures, it was quite boring. But at the same time, it was…comforting. It was a time of safety and ignorance. He lived a comfortable life in a rich country that wasn't wracked by war. He wasn't rich or anything. But life was comfortable.

There weren't demons and vampires running around killing people.

There weren't giant beasts that could throw out blasts of energy that could level a city.

There weren't evil Dark Wizards running around enslaving everyone.

There weren't alien parasites posing as gods.

But it was also boring. Mundane.

Watching from such a distance in the future as his memories of his past self went through life, Carl really began to appreciate and understand just how much he had changed over time, and how much had remained the same.

With nothing else to do while stuck in this void, Carl had been desperate for something to think about, which led to him reviewing his life. And seeing what he used to be like, he couldn't help but actually feel grateful for the happenstance that brought him into the Jump Chain and gave him the opportunities to see such amazing sights, and participate in the stories of heroes.

He watched through his memories of his time in the early worlds he jumped to. Everything was so new and exciting at that time. Even if he would have used the term "terrifying" instead of "exciting" back then.

His time spent in the BtVS world, desperately trying to find the knowledge needed to take out threats that would be happy to eat his loved ones, brought a smile of nostalgia to his mind. He had acted a lot more certain than he was on the inside because he knew a lot of the plot points and knew that he needed to be bold to survive.

Remembering the times he spent hanging out at their training house, or spending special times with his girls, was something that touched him deeply. He missed them. The friends you make in your youth are special, and that really did apply to everyone he knew from back then.

That's not to say that the rest of his girls and friends meant anything less to him. It was just a different feel for those who were there at the start of his journey.

In the Pokemon world, he found another set of parents that were so good to him. His relationship of mutual trust with his Pokemon friends was special. And his girl Serena was a joy to have at his side while they adventured.

Farmville was a decade of hard work to get all his farms profitable and working. He really put his heart into making sure all the people he hired did the best they could and enjoyed their lives and what they did. While he didn't find anyone to date in that world, there was a camaraderie among his workers that was touching in its own way.

While most of his Warehouse cp was earmarked specifically for returning to the worlds where his special girls were, he decided that he would one day make a trip back to the Farmville world when he could to recruit his people once more.

The time he spent in History's Stongest Disciple Kenichi training; striving and working hard to surpass his limits. To fight and to win. The amazing feeling he got when he was striving to fight an opponent and beat him or her in honorable combat. It was an amazing world full of camaraderie. A beautiful world of honor where the opponents could be reasoned with through a fight.

And while he never actually dated there, he was very interested in one girl in particular. He would be going back to see if they could make it work, even after all he had done that was against the philosophy of the Life Saving Fist that the masters of Ryozanpaku lived under.

The Sword Art Online world where he found some friends to hang out with and look after. He gained the World Seed, allowing him to craft worlds for training and fun. To gain experience at using his abilities to the max without worrying about accidentally killing anyone or himself.

He didn't have any special girls in that world, but he put it in the same category as the Farmville world. A place of friends that he would one day return to so he could see if his friends were interested in joining him.

The Monopoly Gauntlet where he gained valuable properties and learned of how…difficult it was to make decisions while inflamed by his emotions. Yeah. He wasn't going back to that gauntlet world.

The Harry Potter world. He learned so much about magic in that world. He had a magic education at a magic school. He found three amazing women, and spent his time with them. He learned to combined technology with magic and make it work.

Against the Gods world, he gained a wonderful wife that had control of an empire, some good friends that he knew had his back, and lastly an annoying frenemy who always annoyed the hell out of him, but was family to his friends that were the next best thing to family.

And then the Stargate universe, where his understanding of everything skyrocketed. He gained the technology of the Alterans. He studied Magic, Ki, and Profound Energy. He built his own empire with the help of his two wonderful women and his disciples.

Game of Thrones, that world that was chock full of cunts, politics, and ice zombies. He found a wonderful girl to spend his time with, exploring and learning blood magics. It was a good way for him to relax.

It was also the place he almost had an existential crisis about the nature of the worlds he was visiting through the jump chain. He had a lot of experience, having lived for over a thousand years by this point, with all the time compression. The people he interacted with were beginning to not feel completely real to him. He had just spent a lot of time totally dominating several galaxies and founding an empire.

So he began wondering deep in the back of his mind whether anyone he ran across was an actual person, or just a construct placed there for his enjoyment.

It certainly wasn't an idea that he was proud of. And he did his best to bury it deep in the recesses of his mind. But now that Carl was digging through all the memories of his past, he could see the idea being planted and slowly growing.

So his desperate plan to fling himself back into the past before his world insertion by the Jump Chain was not just a move to save his twin sister from a bit of heartache.

He desperately needed to see for himself that the people were real. That they existed before he arrived in the world and inherited all those memories. Because if they were really there before he came to the world, then he knew they deserved the same consideration he would want. He would continue treating them like real people.

Seeing that everyone was real solved the unconscious problem he was creating for himself. He put down the issue bubbling in his mind with relief.

And while he was in the past, he had looked in on himself, to find answers as to what was going on there. It seemed that there was a biological person puppet living the life, but it wasn't him. Carl was actually relieved that he wasn't being de-aged by the Jump Chain and having his memories suppressed. Because that would have meant that he was constantly being de-aged to the point of being an embryo and growing up once more in the womb, being born, and growing up.

The fact that it was a puppet of some kind, with all his personality traits programmed in as well as the use of some unconscious perks to make it more realistic, that was making those memories that were planted in his mind actually relieved him. It was better than being de-aged to the point of being an embryo that grew up over and over again.

After the Game of Thrones world, he had a damned Cooking Show world that wanted his death by canceling his show. But he quickly figured out that he didn't have to play by what he first thought the rules were. He could stretch and bend the rules. He could make of the opportunity what he wanted.

The Dinosaur Gauntlet, where he lived as an animal for a couple hundred years. Even while he was a magnificent T-Rex, he never lost his sense of self. He still had fun, intervening in the lives of those around him as he thought was right and appropriate. And he was so very relieved to be back in his human form.

And then the Azeroth world, where he found a broken group that was his. He built them up and he made them strong so they could join him in the jump.

Carl relived the satisfaction he felt when his Flight destroyed the Cult of the Damned. The triumph he felt when he created his Magic Cultivation technique. The joy his flight gave him as he watched them grow and learn and kick ass and dominate the World of Warcraft.

It still amused him to hear all the complaining from the player base in chat about his "guild". They were steamed that his people never lost in the arena and battlegrounds, always got first in Raids and in everything. Quite a few accusations of hacking had been thrown around, which had caused him and his Flight members to have good laughs. Sore losers.

And now here he was with the Hyuga Clan in the Naruto world. He was their heir, their future leader. And he would be leading them not just in this ninja world, but taking them on adventures between worlds.

But only if he could escape this void and return back to the Naruto world in order to finish those scenarios he had signed up for.

If he couldn't, then he would be leaving it all behind. All the ninja perks. His new ninja clan that would join him on the jumps. His sisters Hinata and Hanabi. His parents, Hiashi and Himari. His quiet cousin, Neji. His friends, Naruko, Yakumo, Karin, Ino, Sakura, Tenten, Lee, Kiba, Shino, Shikamaru, and Choji.

All of those people he rescued from their horrible circumstances and placed in the village of New Uzushio so they could have a better life would be left behind in the world, if he didn't succeed, especially Karin and her mother Ali.

He didn't want to lose all that he had! He didn't want to fail and lose everything!

But if he could exit this void that he was trapped in, then he could bring all those people he cared about into the umbrella of his Clan. He could finish the scenarios and bring them all with him. He could finish this world and the next and go back for all his loved ones that he still missed so much!

All he had to do was break out of the void, master the Sealing Arts, gain perfect control as a God of Shinobi, and gain the allegiance of a Divine Beast Clan.

He would do it. He didn't know how, but he would accomplish his goals.

He wouldn't give up on attaining everything he could from this world, because of what it gave him.

He wouldn't give up on all those he had grown to love.

He wouldn't give up!

He would be free of this void!

The power he gained gave him freedom. The freedom to live, the freedom to love, the freedom to do what he wanted and make the world around him a better place, even if he had to use harsh tactics.

His power let him protect his people. His power gave him the ability to have a life and love, even amidst the danger and enemies seeking to kill him. His power gave him the ability to really live!

Power was useful because it gave him freedom. Freedom was desirable because with it he could make his life worth living.

When all these thoughts, feelings, impulses, desires, and determination coalesced into a complete whole, Carl suddenly felt/heard/tasted/saw a name. A **_NAME_** that perfectly encapsulated what he was, who he was, who he desired to be. Everything about him, from what he was born as, to what he grew to be, to what he strove to become.

That **_NAME_** was the sum of everything Carl was.

Carl opened his eyes.

He was no longer in the Void. He was still sitting on his bed, in his room in the Hyuga clan compound.

Carl didn't know how long he was in the void. It felt like an eternity, but it also felt like no time had passed.

Checking the time, he saw that no time had passed out here. But it felt like he had spent a long, long time in the Void to find his **_NAME_**.

"Carl, it's time to wake up." Nuo called from outside his door.

Carl smiled at the old familiar routine.

"I'm up. I'll be out in a moment, Nuo." Carl called out.

Standing up, he quickly dressed in his morning workout clothes. As he was heading for the door, he saw a few items that weren't present in his room before.

There was a trapdoor on his floor. Lying on top of the trap door were two thigh pouches and one lower back pouch that were standard for holding the various tools that ninja use. On top of the pouches was an ANBU mask with a stylized dragon head painted on it.

Next to the pouches were two large scrolls. He could see from the writing on the outside that one of the scrolls was a summoner's contract for the Snake Clan. The other scroll had 'Shadow Clone Jutsu' written on the outside.

Carl looked longingly at the scrolls and the trap door on the floor that no doubt led to the Uchiha Jutsu Archive and DNA samples that he had purchased. A large part of him wanted to look over his new goodies now.

But he decided it could wait. He had a breakfast to get to, and some training to do. The items would still be there when he returned. For now it was time to spend time with his family and do his daily training.

Before leaving he cast several spells that would keep anyone from paying attention or getting close to his goodies while he was away from his room. He would take the time tonight to go over everything he had purchased, after the day's training was over.

As he was going about his daily training routine, one part of his mind was focused on the training, and the other part was pondering how he was going to accomplish his goals for the scenarios.

He wasn't sure of how much continuous time the beast clans would require him to be in their summons realm while they tested and taught him. So he wasn't sure if he could commute there through reverse summoning while sending a clone to the academy.

Sending only a shadow clone in his place to the academy wasn't exactly guaranteed to work either. If it took an accidental hit and popped, then the jig would be up, so to speak.

'Well, figuring that out can wait for later. I haven't even looked through what I bought with my cp yet.' Carl thought about the Uchiha Jutsu Archive that would likely have some really nice jutsu for him to learn. There was bound to be some things there for him to use to help him advance in completing the scenarios.

Carl threw the issues to the back of his mind and fully focused on the sparring session with Hinata, Naruko, and Neji. The Academy was going to start up again in a couple weeks. So he had some time to figure things out.

* * *

Sliding the door to his room closed at the end of the day, Carl let out a relieved sigh. It had been a bit of a struggle not to just forgo training and go grab his new toys. He felt like a kid on Christmas Eve; he could see all the toys under the tree just waiting for him to open them, but he had to wait for another day, it was so torturous!

Without preamble, Carl cast the spells that would keep attention away from his room for the evening. It wouldn't do to get sloppy and cause problems for himself.

He then moved on over to the new goodies. He picked up the three foot wide scroll that was the Snake Clan Summoning Contract, and opened it up. Looking down at the scroll paper that had no names, he smiled a bit. Apparently he got a fresh contract with no past summoner's names on it.

Nicking his thumb, he wrote down his name in blood. He didn't use his **_NAME_**, obviously. His regular name, Carl Hyuga, was sufficient. Once he finished his signature, Carl felt a pulse of chakra come off the scroll and enter his chakra coils.

"Interesting sensation to indicate that the contract is in effect." Carl muttered. He had a hard time describing just what the sensation felt like. Maybe like tasting the color of green grass on a day with no wind? A kind of refreshing and comforting feeling for him.

"Well, I'm certainly not going to do my first summons here." Carl had no desire to accidentally summon a large snake and destroy his home.

He put the scroll away in his pocket dimension before looking at the Shadow Clone scroll. This was something that he had been highly anticipating getting for some time. Granted, he thought that he was going to be stealing the forbidden scroll from the Hokage's office to get his hands on the technique, but either way he now had it.

Picking up the three foot wide scroll, he unrolled it and began reading.

The basic Shadow Clone Jutsu had a high chakra cost. It was the same amount of chakra as a mid ranged B-ranked elemental jutsu.

After taking the initial chakra cost, the technique would take 50% of the user's chakra capacity to form the clones, splitting the amount of chakra evenly between the clones. If someone was too low on chakra when attempting to create a shadow clone, then the technique would suck them dry of chakra, leaving them dead.

If he only made one clone, it would have half of his chakra. If he tried to make too many clones, such that his split up chakra couldn't empower the solid clone, then all that would happen is a big puff of chakra smoke and the clones would fail to form. The chakra would come back to the user, except for the initial cost of performing the jutsu.

Once the clone was destroyed, or chose to release itself, the remaining chakra would travel back to the user, along with everything the clone experienced. Which is why the Shadow Clone Jutsu was so good for certain types of training and scouting in enemy territory.

The technique was as he expected.

Carl's smile grew even bigger when he saw there were several variations of the original Shadow Clone Jutsu written down.

There was a Blood Clone version that would create a stable and permanent blood clone that would remain linked to the user, passing experience back and forth like computer information packet downloads, and be capable of regenerating chakra. It could take a lot more punishment than the standard Shadow Clone, not quite as much damage as the original user could, before being destroyed.

"Oh, I like this version of the shadow clone." Carl chuckled. He was very happy that he had spent the cp for the scroll. Even if something was available in the world for him to obtain, it didn't mean the cp was wasted from the purchase. He was pretty sure the scroll in the Hokage's office didn't have half as many variants on the Shadow Clone as this one did.

There was a Bubble Clone variant. The original Shadow Clone Jutsu would create a clone that was a chakra construct like a balloon. One hit, and pop goes the clone. But the Bubble Clone made a clone with thousands of little partitions inside, instead of just one. A single stab would only pop the clone partitions that were directly hit by the kunai, leaving the vast majority just fine and capable of remaking those partitions.

Then there were the elemental transformation Shadow Clone variants. An air Shadow Clone could float around, barely visible, and was very good for spying.

An earth Shadow Clone that could move freely under the ground and come up for an ambush.

A lightning Shadow Clone could travel long distances very fast, perfect for sending messages to allied ninja forces far away.

A water Shadow Clone that could act similar to the earth clone, but in water environments, as well as swim very fast, and had no need to breathe air.

A fire Shadow Clone, while very hard to make, could run through an inferno, saving people or treasures before they were consumed by the fire. Very good for fighting forest fires. Smokey the Bear would approve.

Once Carl had finished reading the scroll and had it in his memory, he chucked it into his dimensional pocket for safe keeping. If old man Hokage didn't give Naruko her signature jutsu, Carl would do so at some point in the next four years. In Carl's mind that jutsu was basically owed to his golden haired friend.

He put his ANBU mask into his storage space, where he could pull it out whenever he needed it. Thinking about how he was now a member of ANBU, Carl did a quick search of his memories and found all the rules, regulations, and security protocols of ANBU.

"Well, that's handy. I don't have to go through company training now." Carl chuckled to himself. There were so many things he could do now that he was officially a member of ANBU. Even though he had already had his VI go through their records, he could now interact with the elite troops. And with his blood clones, he could have one doing things with ANBU while another one was stuck at the academy for him.

There was no way he was going to be stuck personally at the academy while it was still pretty crappy due to the gold digging whores.

"Huh. I should really do something to fix the academy at some point." Carl noted to himself.

The next thing Carl looked over was the thigh and back pouches that contained all his ninja tools and weapons. He placed them on a nearby cabinet, near his school gear. His blood clone that took his place at the academy would be wearing those pouches from now on in his training so he could get used to their presence so they wouldn't be a distraction when he wore them for missions.

The last thing to look over was the trap door on his floor that hadn't been there before. He was positive that it was from the Jump Chain, but he still scanned the door with his senses and ran some spell checks on it. Never hurt to reinforce safety habits.

Once it showed clean, Carl opened the trapdoor and found a ladder that led down. He climbed down nearly 50 feet and found a large room lit up by glowing orbs of light. There were many rows of shelves with scrolls stacked up on them. Much further back he saw shelves stocked with medical samples.

He found a tablet by the ladder. When he first unlocked the tablet he found a note that said his **Uchiha Jutsu Archive **and the **Sample Collection** would become a room that was attached to the Warehouse after this jump.

After closing out the note, he saw that there was an inventory and map of the archive and DNA storage.

Carl mentally connected to the Yamato and had it teleport up the DNA samples and Jutsu Archives to be scanned into the ship's database. It was a better idea to simply put the DNA samples and jutsu records up on his ship where no one should be able to get to, rather than leaving it down in his room.

And afterwards he would stuff the archive into his pocket dimension once it got scanned so he could have it available for his studies.

He might try cloning some of those DNA samples in the near future. While the clones wouldn't have any of the memories or skills of those they were cloned from, it shouldn't be outside his skills to train them up until they got decent at whatever bloodline skills they came with. Not to mention he had all those jutsu available from the Uchiha thieves that probably had information on all the bloodlines and the techniques they had created to go along with their bloodline.

Thinking about the village of New Uzushio he had started before he regained all of his memories of this jump world, Carl thought about putting New Uzushio under the aegis of the Hyuga clan before the jump ended. That way his numbers and the amount of people that would travel with him would be higher than just the Hyuga clan alone.

He was already thinking about "adopting" Naruko into their clan so she won't be left behind when they left the world. He was still only 8 years old, he still had 10 years before he left the world, so he had some time to figure out how to set it all up.

Now that the room that the Jump Chain installed under his room was empty, Carl started putting up some wards to make sure the Hyuga just 50 feet above it didn't turn their attention down and spot it by accident. He then climbed up and sat on his bedding, looking out the window. He was thinking about what he was going to do for the next 10 years.

Letting himself fall onto his back with his hands behind his head, Carl let himself relax a bit. The night was nice. Things quieted down during the night. It felt peaceful.

"Well, the first thing I should do is make a blood clone to take my place at the Academy." Carl mused aloud; with the wards up no one would hear him. "And I am so very, very grateful I didn't take that fangirls drawback." Carl was specifically thinking of the crazies that Sasuke had to deal with over the past year. He shuddered at the idea of having to deal with that madness.

At least the drawback that he picked that started him as a toddler with no powers, but that had temporarily suppressed his memories had worked out so he could save his mother from dying and redeem his father from being the jerk that he could have become. He wasn't even bothered by the way he had to slowly regained his memories over the years. It had actually been quite refreshing to live as a young boy once more, without the years and years of memories.

"Hmm. I've already got two blood clones in mind for the Academy and ANBU. Another one to stay in New Uzushio would be good. I wonder if my blood clones get access to my alternate bodies and perks too?"

Carl pulled out a kunai and cut his hand, allowing the blood to flow into a large bowl. When he had enough blood, Carl activated the Blood Clone technique. The blood in the bowl started moving, growing and shaping itself into a second Carl.

He could feel the link to the blood clone. Carl knew he was the original. He knew through the link that the clone knew he was a clone. And since they knew everything the other knew, the blood clone immediately tried to shift to the T-Rex humanoid form.

"No go, boss." The blood clone said a moment later. "In fact, it looks like I only have access to Chakra. I can't feel any ki, magic, or profound cultivation."

"That's strange." Apparently there were limits and quirks to the cheat that Spere 037 sold him. He didn't pretend to understand all the ins and outs. "Do you have any profound veins or entrances?" Carl asked.

"No, boss. Care to try?" The clone answered after inspecting himself.

"Sure." Carl held the clone's wrist and sent his profound energy through the clone's body to inspect it. Everything seemed like a normal human for the Naruto world when he looked, in that it had chakra coils, but it felt a little bit transitory, if that was the right word. Carl tried inducing profound veins in the blood clone. A short time later, profound veins started growing in the blood clone.

Once the veins were formed, Carl opened all 54 profound entrances. He then double checked his work, and it seemed to have worked properly. The veins were still there and the blood clone didn't explode. Everything seemed stable.

"Looks like you'll be able to cultivate, at least." Carl let go of the blood clone's wrist. "It does make me wonder if you'll become a real boy when you hit the sovereign profound realm."

"Yeah, what happened to Feng Ra might happen to me, breaking the connection." The clone agreed. "You think I'll start developing a magic core after a certain amount of time?"

"Well, you could try the-" Carl began explaining only to be cut off.

"Right! Good call, boss! I'll try the magic cultivation technique you came up with."

Carl chuckled a bit on the inside. He couldn't really get upset with the clone for cutting him off in his excitement. It was kind of funny.

"Wait." Carl interrupted the clone who was about to start cultivating immediately. "Let's take this to the Time Pearl. There are too many readings we need to get while we're doing this."

"Good call, boss. We probably should have been hooked up to the monitors while creating me and inducing the profound veins too, but oh well."

"Yup, next time." Carl agreed with himself.

The two of them teleported outside Konoha; Carl packed up the Yamato and the two of them entered time compression.

Over the next couple of hours, Carl had deep scans done on the blood clone. A blood clone would be created with access to only chakra and chakra coils at first, due to the nature of the technique. Maybe he could alter the technique to take into account the rest of his physiology?

Magic, Ki, and Profound Cultivation could be started after the necessary steps were taken to induce their ability to access the various energies.

Carl chuckled while the clone sighed in depression. The clone was a bit upset that he would have to restart training yet again.

Well, the clones had it worse than him; Carl didn't have to actually do the re-training once more. He would just get the clone's memories of cultivating from the start. Again.

With the sensors and scanners from his technology taking readings, Carl made two more blood clones. When he felt his chakra reserves, and looked at the data, he found that some of his chakra reserves were actually permanently taken, or tied up, in the process of making the blood clones. They were used for constant the link to the clones. He could build his available chakra reserves back up again through hard work, but it did limit the number of clones he could have and how quickly he could make them.

And he wasn't even sure at this point what would happen when the clones reached the sovereign profound realm. Would his efforts to make these permanent blood clones be all for naught as they broke away from him once they attained the Sovereign Profound Realm?

Carl decided he would stick to just the three blood clones for now until he was sure what would happen with them once they reached the Sovereign Profound Realm.

Even if they did break away from him and became their own people, they would still have a place with him. And if they didn't, then one would attend the academy for him and continue training with Hinata, Naruko, and the rest of their friends.

Another would have fun in ANBU.

And the final one would go on over to New Uzushio and work with them to save more strays and build up their forces. With the people of New Uzushio owing him fealty, they should probably count as being part of his **Clan Jumper**.

So while the three blood clones began their training sessions, egging each other on to greater heights, Carl began studying the **Uchiha Jutsu Archives**. His clones shared his knowledge and memories, so they could learn the materials he was studying while they were training. It was a pretty good division of labor, actually. And he had the regular Shadow Clone Jutsu so his own training wasn't impacted at all since he could have his regular shadow clones do the studying for him.

Seeing him using the shadow clone technique prompted his three blood clones to also begin using Shadow Clones to add to their training, which sped up their progress.

Carl found the basic primer of what was known about Seals in this alternate Naruto world among the Uchiha Archive. And the Jump Document had been right. There was not a whole lot known about the Sealing Arts in this world by the majority of ninja.

Compared to the basic primers he had read in the pocket dimension in Uzushio, the basics of Seals that the Uchiha had was crude. Reading the Uchiha's knowledge of Seals was like reading a physics paper from the 1700s back on his own earth. Painfully wrong.

Carl could easily see now why so many people felt threatened by the presence of Uzushio if word of their prowess at the sealing arts got around too much. Comparing between the Uchiha's Sealing knowledge (which is what the rest of the world knew about seals) and the Uzumaki's was like night and day.

Thinking about how the bastards that attacked Uzushio never found the archives and knowledge of the Sealing Arts that they were probably hoping for made Carl grin in schadenfreude. It was the very least they deserved for what they did.

"In fact, I think I'll track them down and give them the rest of what they deserve." Carl muttered. He had a soft spot for the Uzumakis in his life, and he wasn't happy that someone killed off their clan.

He would have Clone C start looking into who was behind the Uzumaki Massacre when he went to New Uzushio. Clone A was for the ANBU, and Clone B was for the Academy.

Carl prime was going to be working towards completing the scenarios.

"Well, now that I know I need to get started on Seals and that the Uchiha Jutsu Archive is useless for that, it's past time to retrieve the scrolls from the dimensional pocket library."

Carl didn't waste any more time and popped out of Time Compression. He left his blood clones inside, and found that he was getting memory packets quite quickly. It was a little distracting, but he would be fine. His memory perk was automatically sorting and archiving the new memories as they came in.

He teleported to his house in New Uzushio and made his way down to the dimensional pocket library.

Carl's head was tilted to the left as he considered the issue of getting the scrolls out of the pocket dimension safely. He was sending his chakra to his Byakugan so he could easily see inside the pocket dimension.

Thinking on his time in Azeroth, Carl had an idea. He wasn't sure if it would work, but it couldn't hurt. Concentrating on the spell, he began casting, softly chanting under his breath as he concentrated.

A few second later, a portal appeared in front of him. The other side of the portal appeared inside the pocket dimension. Stepping into the portal, he found himself inside the pocket dimension library.

"Success!" Carl laughed.

He quickly gathered all the scrolls about the sealing arts that the Uzumaki had left behind into his own pocket dimension. He then traveled through the portal back to his house in New Uzushio.

With a thought he closed the portals down before making his way out to meet with some of his people from New Uzushio. Because he could only come at night, he usually spent a few hours with them before they went to bed. Karin and her mother were on a different schedule from normal, staying up very late and waking up late because of him.

So he left his clones in the time pearl while he spent his time in New Uzushio. Near the morning his clones were all trained up and ready to come out and spend time in the world.

On a positive note, his clones did not become their own person on reaching the Sovereign Profound Realm. So that was good. He figured it was because his clones were still counted as a part of him, while Rover had just been a familiar, so the bond had broken when he became his own humanoid person.

With the assurance that the Blood Clones would continue to remain a part of him permanently, Carl thought about making a few more. There was so much he could do with permanent extensions of himself to watch over things.

* * *

"Carl, it's time to wake up."

"I'm up, Nuo." Carl called out while smiling faintly. No matter the fact that Nuo could easily use his eyes to look through the door to see if Carl was awake or not, he never did. He only continued the same routine every morning.

Carl arrived at the breakfast table, and smiled on seeing Hinata and Naruko leaning against each other tiredly. Today was an exciting day, but it meant the two girls had a hard time going to sleep last night.

A few moments later his parents and Hanabi arrived at the table. Hanabi was now three years old, and she was already coming along great in her guided play that was disguised training.

"Good morning, sleepy heads." Himari called out to Hinata and Naruko, causing the two to groan in annoyance.

"Yeah, morning sleepy heads." Hanabi echoed Himari, earning her a smile from their mother and Carl.

"Too early." Hinata mumbled.

The food was placed and Naruko mostly woke up immediately. Her stomach was still the best alarm clock to wake the girl up.

Carl ate his food, enjoying the meal time with his family.

Soon enough they were out in the practice yard, running laps. This served to finally wake the girls up fully. Hinata had improved greatly over the past year, but she still couldn't keep up with Naruko's full speed. Carl continued to pace himself to be in between Naruko and Neji and Hinata, trying to serve as motivation and encouragement for them to continue pushing themselves hard.

Meanwhile Hanabi was running her own laps at her own pace. Their mother was running with Hanabi to push and encourage her, while their father began with his own work out doing various katas of the Gentle Fist style.

Once they finished their laps, they began their martial arts training, sparring with each other and practicing their katas. All too soon, it was time to bathe and prepare for their first day at the academy.

The whole family made the trip in the morning, since it was the opening ceremony. The Hokage would give a speech at the opening ceremony that the parents attended. It wasn't just for first years, either. All the class years would attend each opening and closing ceremony, so Neji would be there too. Hanabi came along because she would throw a fit if she was left behind. Little brat.

The classes and rooms would then be assigned, and their first day of the academy would start.

"This is going to be so fun!" Naruko almost sang in her excitement.

"Hmm." Carl agreed, while privately thinking the academy wouldn't be fun, but it could be made enjoyable.

"Are you even listening to me?" Naruko demanded, while Hinata smirked from the side. It was amusing to see her best friend badger her brother.

"Hmm." It was amusing to rile up Naruko. She got so excitable sometimes. The glare he was receiving was definitely on the pouty side. Very intimidating for an eight year old…

"Grrr. I know you're doing it on purpose!" Naruko growled before jumping on Carl's back and trying to get him in a head lock. Carl put his hands between his neck and her arms to prevent her from locking in the hold. "Come on! Admit it! You're excited too! Stop trying to act all cool and calm!"

Carl couldn't help it, he started chuckling a bit at her demands before dropping back into stoic Hyuga mode.

"Yes, fine. I admit it. I, too, am 'excited'." Carl deadpanned. He got his ears twisted for his joke. "Ow! Fine, you win! Stop it, Naruko! Of course I'm looking forward to the Academy."

Naruko hopped off his back with a proud harrumph.

"Come on, Hinata, let's go on ahead of this dummy." Naruko grabbed Hinata's hand and pulled her along in her wake. Hinata giggled, looking back and waving at the family as the two sped off ahead.

"You're with me, right Hanabi?" Carl asked, giving his youngest sister the puppy dog eyes.

"You gave 'Ruko a piggy back ride, but you didn't give me one, brother jerk." Hanabi humphed while looking away.

"Why would you even call your big brother that?" Carl sighed in mock sadness. "Well, my bad. I've failed in my brotherly duties. If I gave you piggyback ride, would you forgive me?" Carl kept his face serious so Hanabi didn't think he was laughing at her, even though he was.

"Okay." Hanabi generously allowed.

Carl crouched down, allowing her to hop on his back.

"Father, Mother, Neji. I'll be going on ahead now." And Carl ran off in the direction the two girls had gone in with a whooping Hanabi on his back.

"He takes after you, Hiashi. I hope you know that." Himari said while giving him the side eye.

"I was never that…rambunctious." Hiashi denied, only to see Himari's look of disbelief. "Was I?"

Himari hummed while walking a bit faster, pulling Neji along with her while ignoring her husband's pleading question.

"Dear? Wait up!" Hiashi looked at the form of his wife and nephew speeding up. "Don't go on ahead without me." Hiashi muttered to himself with feeling while speeding up his steps to catch up to her, his eyes on her swaying figure. Sometimes he wished he could cast away the stiff Hyuga way of acting in public, she fired him up so much. He so wanted to scoop up his sexy wife and carry her away for a day alone. He would just have to settle for waiting until they were out of the public eye a bit later…

* * *

At the same time one of Carl's blood clones was running to the Academy with his little sister on his back, another blood clone was on an island off the east cost of the Land of Fire.

"Good! That's the way to kick!" Carl called out to the black haired young girl that was kicking one of the posts in front of her.

"Hey, you're getting pretty good at this! You've only been here a few weeks and already got the hang of it." Karin called out to the black haired girl who Carl had been showing how to do some low kicks properly.

"Thanks." Hanako shyly accepted the praise.

"Good, now do another one hundred repetitions just like that for each leg." Carl instructed, turning to the red haired girl. "How's your kata coming, Karin? Any issues?"

"No, I got it down pretty good." She proudly announced. "Wanna see, Carl?"

"Sure, let's see how good you're doing." Carl agreed, and stood back to watch as Karin started running through the kata of the Whirlpool style while Carl kept watch to evaluate her performance.

The Yamato VI never really stopped tracking down orphans that were starving and desperately in need of help. He brought them back to New Uzushio and also ended up hiring dozens of adults to take care of the basic schooling and food preparations.

All of them were naturally vetted carefully, and Carl would do a scan of their minds to make sure they weren't some ninja spy who would take advantage of his hospitality and betray him. There may have also been magical contracts to ensure compliance. He wanted his village safe while they slowly gained more loyalty to New Uzushio and him.

The VI had even been able to track down the member of the Yuki clan who he thought would be a boy named Haku, only to find out that, like Naruto being Naruko, in this world Haku was a girl named Hanako. She had been wandering around the countryside of the islands of the Land of Water, starving as she tried to survive.

In the canon story, Haku had been apprenticed to Zabuza Momochi, who saved Haku while he was starving in the snow. In this world, Carl wasn't sure if Zabuza simply hadn't found Hanako, or if he hadn't taken her in when he saw her. He wasn't sure if in the original Haku had really been the girl Hanako and only pretended to be a boy named Haku, or if he had really been a boy that dressed like a girl.

There were so many what-ifs and random variables that Carl quickly decided it wasn't worth worrying about. Whatever was true for the story that he had seen in his original world, here she was Hanako Yuki, she had the bloodline that could control ice, and she was a starving orphan all alone.

So Carl took her into his village and begun teaching her the fighting style of her clan.

That was another thing the **Uchiha Jutsu Archive **was good for. It had the fighting styles of most every clan recorded, so Carl could easily learn them and pass them on to the orphans of devastated clans. Like Hanako's Yuki clan's Blizzard style, or Karin's Uzumaki clan's Whirlpool style.

"That was great Karin!" Carl praised the girl once she finished up. "You've improved a lot on the circular movements of redirecting force that the Whirlpool style calls for. Let's spar a bit so you get used to what it feels like to redirect the attacks and continue on to overwhelm the enemy."

"Let's do it!" Karin boldly called out, settling into her stance, waiting for Carl to attack.

"What are you waiting for, Karin?" Carl called out. "The Whirlpool style isn't only for defense. I want you to initiate."

No sooner had the words been spoken, but Karin followed through. She closed quickly with footwork that had her drifting slightly off center; and when they began exchanging blows, Carl could feel himself being redirected off center by her strikes, leaving him unbalanced.

Naturally he was holding back a great deal; he was fighting her at her skill level and slightly above her strength so that she could actually properly practice her moves. And she was doing everything correctly. Her moves were keeping him off balance, and her attacks flowed like the tide. And her final attack landed, knocking him to the ground.

Carl popped back up immediately with a big smile on his face.

"That was excellent Karin!" Carl praised. "Keep working at it, building up your strength, speed, and flexibility, and you'll be genin level in no time."

"Ah, what do you mean I'm not yet genin level?" The nine year old redhead pouted at him.

"Uh, Karin, I think, while you're doing good, you still have a bit to improve before you get to that level." Hanako interjected timidly. "But don't worry, I'm sure you'll get there!" She hurriedly finished when she saw Karin's pouting look.

"Well, I guess you're right, Hanako." Karin finally admitted. "Well, back to work then! I'm gonna be high genin level by the end of the year, for sure!"

The two girls then walked away from Carl and continued their exercises. Carl shook his head in amusement. Those two were thick as thieves, having befriended each other almost on sight. Karin was bold and excitable, while Hanako was shy and gentle, but eager to train all the same.

'Huh, they kind of remind me of Naruko and Hinata's personalities, now that I think of it.' Carl thought. 'Now that Hanako feels safe, her cheerful yet gentle side is shining through, just like Hinata. And Karin is just so outgoing like Naruko, it makes me wonder if that was a general Uzumaki personality trait. Maybe a result of their high vitality?'

Carl had a smile on his face as he made to go check on how the other foundlings of New Uzushio were doing in their training, but diverted his path over to talk to Ali when he saw her hovering at the edge of the training grounds.

"Hey, there, Ali!" Carl cheerfully called out. "Care to try some training now? You're more than welcome to."

"Ah, well." Ali seemed a bit unsure of herself. "I only got a little bit of training when I was a kid, before the disaster happened here. I don't know if I'd be any good at it, after all these years."

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure we can bring those old skills back. And that way, you can do a much better job of looking after your daughter if you're able to keep up with her."

Ali looked down at Carl from her half a foot height advantage for a moment before smiling warmly at him.

"Because you look like a normal young boy, I sometimes forget how unusual you are." Ali stated as she moved on over to the practice ground.

"Hey, that was a compliment, right?" Carl asked as he followed her over. The only answer he got was a light giggle from the woman. "Women." Carl muttered, hopefully too low for her to hear.

Snapping out of his feigned disgruntlement, he began going over the basics with Ali. It was good that she was taking an interest in learning some martial skills. Maybe the rest of the adults that he had recruited would become interested too. If so, he would have to figure out some method to get more trainers in here.

Well, there was always the shadow clone technique. As a blood clone he could make quite a few, especially after the time compression training he and his brother clones went through. They had quite a large chakra reservoir now, as well as high magic, ki, and profound cultivation.

They weren't nearly as tough as Carl Prime, but they were damned powerful all the same.

While instructing Ali, Carl was looking with pride on the dozen or so kids that were exercising and practicing their martial skills. Things were coming along quite well in his new village.

* * *

ANBU member Dragon strode down the hallway on his way to the mission office. He was on officially on detached duty while attending the academy, but no one would bother him if he came to headquarters occasionally.

Arriving at his location, he nodded greeting to the manager before he began thumbing through the available missions. For those ANBU who didn't have a specific long term mission assigned, they could come and take a short term mission that required their expertise to accomplish.

'Let's see. Assassination. Guard duty. Infiltration. Threat assessment. Wall inspection. Hmm. Checking the wall for any breaches due to enemy infiltration. That will be easy and will let me get eyes on the places the VI has already mapped out. I'll take it.'

Dragon then took the mission scroll to log it with the mission manager. He was soon out of the office and making his way to the edge of Konoha where the wall was. He already knew where quite a few breaches were thanks to the VI and the spybots. But now he could do something about it in his role as ANBU.

The mission might normally be a bit on the boring side, but Carl's blood clone no longer got bored. Apparently having a link to Carl Prime's mind helped him benefit from that specific perk, as well as the genius perks, even if most of the physical perks didn't transfer over to the blood clones.

It was a pretty good perk to have access to as a ninja, since a bored ninja was not an alert ninja. And that kind of ninja was likely to soon become a dead ninja.

* * *

The Land of Wind was a very large country that was mostly desert. The southern part of the country especially was filled with large sand dunes as far as the eye could see. At the same time that one of Carl's blood clones was running to the academy with a loudly laughing Hanabi, the second blood clone was sparring with Karin in New Uzushio, and the final one was picking up a mission from ANBU headquarters, Carl prime had just landed in the desert from a teleport.

Standing at the top of one very tall sand dune on the western edge of the Land of Wind, Carl felt around him with his senses. He trusted that the Yamato VI would have warned him of any sign of human life, but he was just keeping in practice.

He saw the mountains on the horizon to the west, which was where the border with the Desert Kingdom was. Feeling his magic for a bit, Carl triggered his transformation to his Silver Dragon alt-form. The small five foot Hyuga began stretching out, growing into a mighty Dragon.

His Dragon God Bloodline had ensured that he was larger than the average Silver Dragon his age. And he would continue to grow in size and power as he aged.

He stretched out his wings and leaped into the air. With a few powerful flaps of his wings, he attained gliding velocity. Skimming the dunes, he made his way west.

Carl was enjoying the early morning sun and heat on his scales. Even though the heat didn't bother him while he was in his human form, it always just felt so much better while he was in his dragon form.

After a short 15 minute flight, Carl spotted his location. It was a large formidable looking fortified structure built into the mountains. He swooped down on the hold and landed just outside the entrance. The massive doors automatically opened for him.

Inside waited several dozen dragons and dragonspawn, roaring in welcome to Carl. He roared back his own welcome and joy that everyone was well.

"It's good to see everyone doing good!" Carl called out. "We've arrived in a new world, as I imagine you've noticed over the past couple of weeks. Let's go to one of the conference rooms and I'll tell you all about the world we are now in, and the tale of the Utterly Gusty Shinobi!"

Carl laughed joyously as the small whelpings bounced around him, calling out to Lord Carl to tell them the story, it sounded so exciting!


	94. Naruto 8

The halls of the Dragon Hold echoed with the sounds of merry making late into the evening. The dragon roars, the burning fires, and the smell of mouth watering cooking meat; the sounds of utensils eagerly forking up delicious foods to mouths. It was a wonderful atmosphere in the Silver Dragon Hold to celebrate the success of the Flight arriving in a new world and their reunion with their leader.

Even though he had only regained his memories of Azeroth and the Dragon Flight a bit more than three months previously, Carl was very happy to have them back in his life. Because of his insertion method into this world, he had actually been without them for several years.

Before he did anything else in this world, he wanted to enjoy a party with his favorite dragons. While they ate and drank he told them about his new life and body in this world, about Konoha and the people there, New Uzushio, the village that he had built, and about the ninja and their work.

"What?! A whole world full of Rogues?" Jeff exclaimed, aghast that there was so much competition for him as a Rogue, causing several of those nearby to laugh at him.

Most of the Flight had turned into their elven forms for the party, since it was easier to gather closer than as dragons, so Carl too had turned into his Night Elf form. Being a four and a half foot tall Hyuga among 7 foot tall elves would give his neck an awful crick.

"Well, not really." Carl chuckled at Jeff as he answered, sitting back at his seat at the head of the table. "Most of the ninja don't fight like Rogues from Azeroth. Only some of them focus on being stealthy assassins. The majority of them seem to favor stand up flashy fights, but their techniques are incredibly varied."

"Woo! Flashy spells are the best!" Chromalie yelled out in excitement as she blew a huge plume of fire straight up into the air. Carl joined everyone in laughing at her enthusiasm. Everyone knew she had a predilection for explosions and the "fun stuff".

"Everyone is born with at least one elemental affinity, which will make it easier for them to learn techniques with that element…" Carl continued to explain about the ninja's various jutsu, elemental manipulation, illusions, martial arts, and bloodlines for some while.

"I'd like to examine the DNA of these bloodlines, Lord Carl." Mortic said with a look of curiosity on his face. "Not to mention learning how they use chakra to heal has me very intrigued."

Mortic was a priest class back in Azeroth, and he had taken to learning all he could about healing from the database that Carl had. He loved delving into the field, especially when he found he could use the Harry Potter spells and magic with his own. Carl's own medical knowledge from the ATG world had also excited him after he started his own cultivation path.

"I purchased an item that holds the DNA of pretty much all the ninja." Carl admitted, and was amused to see the almost greedy look that flitted across Mortic's face. "I'll have copies of the samples sent to you to have fun experimenting with, Mortic." Carl chuckled along with the other dragons nearby.

"And what do you wish for the rest of us to be doing, Lord Carl?" Goram asked intently.

Over their time in Azeroth Goram had gone from a dragonspawn servant to one of the most respected elders among the Flight. He had proven to be quite capable in organizing the Flight's outside activities and business in the Capital Cities. He was also very good at working the auction house.

"I want to spend time learning about everything I can about nature in this world." June chimed in as she threw her arms around Carl's shoulders and leaned in, giving him the puppy dog eyes from up close. "Please, Lord Carl?" She asked pleadingly.

"That's fine." Carl chuckled and picked up the elven looking girl and set her in his lap and began tickling her in punishment. She squirmed for a while, laughter pealing out as those around him grinned amusedly.

"Fine! Fine! I give! Uncle!" June cried out, causing Carl to stop and set her back down on her bench.

It's not like June was a little girl anymore, to try to use the puppy dog eyes on him. Only among the Night Elf bodies of the Flight would her six foot five inch height be considered dainty and short.

"I don't have a problem with everyone following their passions and learning what they love to do. June, you'll coordinate with Goram and Hilda about your collections of the various plants and animals of this world. Goram, I'd like for you to start a Trade Consortium. The Silver Flight Trade Consortium sounds like a decent name to me. We'll start doing business around the Elemental Nations mostly, and eventually around the world too."

"Hmm. Judging by the number of countries in this world, we'll have to focus on strategic locations, since we're not exactly great in numbers yet." Goram said as he rubbed his blue stubbled chin in thought. "Hubs of commerce that are already in place should be our target."

"Sounds good for our personally run satellite locations." Carl agreed. "But I'd like to get fully saturated in this continent first before spreading out too much. You should also think about setting up locations that are fully operated by the humans of this world so that they become our employees." Carl saw that Goram was looking fine with the idea, so he continued on.

"At the very least the Hyuga Clan will be following me through worlds like our Silver Dragon Flight is. And if I can make it happen, then New Uzushio and most or all of Konoha will join us too. That will bring our numbers up significantly. It may also be possible that the various properties we own and build will join us as well."

Goram already knew about his various Monopoly properties around the world, since he had given Goram access back in Azeroth so he could coordinate his various business ventures outside the Flight.

"I hesitate to bring it up, since you seem so certain about it." Mortic began hesitantly. "But will our integration with the humans go as smoothly as you seem to hope, Lord Carl?"

Mortic had become the dragon that was mostly in charge of internal matters of the Flight, while Goram dealt with the outside matters. Those two older dragons worked quite well together as they organized the influx and distribution of goods, as well as the supplies needed for various expeditions.

"If Lord Carl says it'll happen, it'll happen." Hilda spoke up almost angrily from where she was sitting nearby, glaring at Mortic for questioning Carl.

"Its okay, Hilda. Mortic isn't questioning my judgment so much as he is simply worried about the logistics and how well the various groups will integrate together." Carl said in a reassuring tone of voice to calm down Hilda.

"What you say is my concern, Lord Carl. I'm simply not sure about these humans, and how well everything will work. From what I've seen, everything is quite different here." Mortic said.

Hilda simply harrumphed at Mortic and turned back to her meal, while still keeping an ear on the talk. Carl had assigned security of the Flight to Hilda. She was one of the dragons rescued from the Cult, and she had taken on a very battle oriented attitude ever since. She was excellent at coordinating security to make sure the dragons were safe as they ranged for materials, questing, or trading in the cities. And she also made sure the Hold's defenses and security patrols were tight and kept them protected.

Because of what Carl had done for her in saving her from the Cult, she had a great deal of faith in him, and hated to hear anyone question his judgment.

"Mortic, the humans of this world come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, due to chakra and their bloodlines. There is one man I know of who looks like a cross between a human and a blue murloc, and people just don't care. They may stare a bit at his coloring and sharp teeth, but that's it. So our Night Elf looks won't occasion much comment or problems. We'll just pose as a clan that they haven't met yet. It's true enough."

Carl saw that quite a few of the partiers were a bit on the quiet side as they listened in on the impromptu meeting, and continued talking about the world they were in.

"There's another clan full of people who can freely manipulate their bones and even pull them out of their bodies to make weapons out of them, and it's just considered a very useful skill. So our appearance shouldn't put the humans off, and I have faith in the Flight to do what is needed while we integrate the humans into our organization. Besides, the people we seek to do business with will be happy as long as we're all making money. Naturally there are still bandits and thieves in this world, but we're more than capable of protecting ourselves and our goods in this world."

"And there are certain blessings I have that will smooth out many rough spots in our interactions together." Carl added on, thinking of the loyalty perks he had that would make any employee of his stores one of his followers, and so under the aegis of loyalty perks.

"Aside from crafting, trade, and gathering resources, I'd like us to have a small group assigned to New Uzushio as security and help in training the people I've recruited there. One of my blood clones in my Hyuga form will be there permanently, and since I can always communicate with them, you can always speak to them as if you were talking to me."

A few more details were hammered out, like the first locations of the Silver Flight Trade Consortium stores, the various goods and services they would provide, and other such things.

Eventually the party/meeting ended early in the morning, and Carl made his way to his room. He was happy that the blood clones could now replace him at home so he got the best of everything. He could spend time with his new family and friends, while also taking care of various issues.

The memory packets he and his blood clones were sending each other let him know what was going on in Konoha and New Uzushio while he wasn't there. He could sense throughout the party that his blood clones were a bit jealous that they didn't have alt-forms of their own, which meant they couldn't be a T-Rex or Dragon. And since they knew exactly how awesome it was, it was that much more torturous that they didn't have the ability.

'Really strange that a part of me is jealous of the other part of me.' Carl chuckled. He really wasn't truly jealous of himself, just a bit sad that some parts of himself couldn't have fun too.

When Carl arrived at his chambers he saw something out of place. A new tablet was hanging on the wall. Raising an eyebrow, Carl picked up the tablet.

_[Congratulations on having your own Dragon Flight follow you from world to world, jumper! Because you were not able to pick a location prior to starting in this world, the Dragon Hold was placed in the landmass near your starting location. If you would like to move your Hold to a more advantageous location, you have a one-time use option. In future worlds you will have to pick a location prior to world entry or have the randomizer function pick for you._

_\- Jump-chan]_

"I wondered why the option to pick a location wasn't available in the jump document." Carl muttered to himself grumpily. Well, at least he got the option to move the Dragon Hold now. Better late than never. Because now he could bring the Hold over to New Uzushio and put his new village together with his Flight.

He saw a map option on the tablet and clicked and zoomed in until he found the island New Uzushio was located on. He selected a mountainous hill overlooking the village to move his Dragon Hold to. Having the Hold on the island where he was setting up a village would make it easier for his forces to interact and be united. And now the people of New Uzushio could probably join him under the Aegis of the Silver Dragon Flight, rather than the Hyuga clan.

Once Carl selected the finalize option on the map, he felt the entire Dragon Hold shudder for a moment, the wards hiccupped while the backup power kicked in, until the wards grabbed the nearby ley lines and smoothed out once more. Everything settled back down to normal, once more calm.

Carl teleported outside the Hold, flew up in the air, and saw that their new location was exactly where he wanted it to be. Spot on.

Carl suddenly sensed the slightly panicked scrambling of his dragons, and guiltily sent a high priority message to his Flight through their comms, explaining that he had just moved them to New Uzushio and that they shouldn't worry.

He saw that Hilda still took a party out to patrol the new area and inspect everything, and was pleased she was on the job and making sure everyone was safe.

'Whew. I really should have sent the message first before moving us, but I didn't expect that the wards would hiccup like that and cause them to think of the Raid…'

Carl teleported back to his room, where he spent the rest of the night in planning. The Flight had settled down after they saw his message that it was only something their Lord had done, reassured that they weren't being attacked.

* * *

In the morning, Carl gathered together his Dragon Flight and pulled them all into the time pearl. In order to prepare the Flight for the various activities they would get up to in the Naruto world, they needed to learn about chakra and the various skills and abilities they would likely encounter and need to overcome, as well as review the VIs intelligence intake.

And while he had his people there to assist with research amidst their studies, Carl figured it was a perfect time to work on two of his scenarios.

**God of Shinobi**

**You need to master every scrap of martial technique possessed by your village, by hook or crook. And 'master' does not mean being able to repeat the hand signs. It does not even mean being able to _perform_ the jutsu.**

**No, it means being able to achieve the effect of the jutsu without making any signs at all. You must master the way of manipulating your chakra by will alone, achieving the near-miraculous effect Shinobi perform with naked will.**

Over the past year and a few months since Carl had regained his memories and control of his technology he had been having the spybots and VI gather all that he could about the world, politics, and the ninja arts.

At the time he naturally had no memories of the scenarios he had decided on, or the fact that his 10 years in the world would only start when he was eight years old. But he had easily figured out from his records in the computer just how many worlds he had already been to. And he figured that by the time he was eight he would regain all his memories, based on the three month intervals his memories were returning at.

So with the unknown jump document hanging over his head, he had decided to wait until his memory was fully restored before making big changes. He wasn't sure just what would be revealed, so simply doing maintenance to keep things smooth seemed like the best idea.

Little things like convincing his parents to take in Naruko hadn't been hard. Some people had to be beaten up severely before his Decency Inducing perk from the ATG world would work. Some people just had to be given a questioning look from their son to help them decide to do the right thing. And Hiashi and Himari had risen to the occasion in magnificent fashion, only needing a small pleading look from him and Hinata to do right by Naruko.

Doing little things to help his friends were also not something he thought would be a big deal to act on that would be negatively affected by the revealed jump document.

Freeing Yakumo from the demon and poison, encouraging his female friends to avoid the path to the dark…er, fangirl side, encouraging his lazy or timid friends to take their training seriously. Those were all things he thought were a necessary part of helping smoothing out his life in Konoha.

Saving the Uchiha clan from the results of their own actions? Not his problem. After discovering the traitorous and underhanded actions they were involved in, he would have taken action against them eventually anyway. From how they were already plotting against and targeting his Hyuga clan, he was already being merciful by saving the kids of the clan.

Saving Sasuke, who wasn't his friend, and who was most always central to the world plot of Naruto worlds? Not his problem.

He had already stretched his charity enough to save the kids of the Uchiha clan and set them up at New Uzushio. A bit of applied magic and they couldn't betray his people and could maybe grow up without the power madness of the Uchiha clan. Researching alternative methods for them to activate their eyes was on the docket, as well as making strict rules about how to use their special eyes and under what circumstances.

Just like the Hyuga had rules about when and how they should use their x-ray eyes, otherwise no one would ever have privacy among their clan.

Since Sasuke wasn't his friend, despite his friendly overtures, and could be used as an easy means of exposing a lot of the corruption and nastiness of Konoha for future action and clean up, Carl left Sasuke to his own devices. Unlike the other Uchiha brats, Carl knew that Sasuke hadn't been in danger of being killed. If Sasuke ultimately chose to walk the dark path to being a traitor, then Carl would take care of him at that time.

But that was all getting away from the point. During the past 15 months Carl had been amassing a lot of intelligence in preparation for when he would have his memories fully restored and wouldn't have to worry about hidden dangers inherent in any drawbacks he may have picked.

And part of that information hoarding included copies of various ninja, samurai, and monastery libraries that dealt with chakra and the application thereof. Not to mention the addition of the Uchiha Jutsu Archive and the Uzumaki hidden library only recently.

With all that information grabbed and input into the databases, the first thing his Flight did upon entering time compression once more was to split up to their various rooms and beginning a course of study on the state of the world and just how chakra worked.

Carl also made a few more blood clones that would help him in his studies to complete the **God of Shinobi **and **Sealmaster** scenarios. They would also be very useful outside of time compression to work on the Silver Flight Trading Consortium's work, or in the bounty hunting, spying, and Setting-Things-to-Rights trades.

Carl found that due to the nature of the **Chakra Coils** perk, he couldn't induce chakra coils into any of his Dragons until after the jump. So they were stuck without chakra to play with, which basically turned Carl or his blood clones into their guinea pigs for seeing how chakra worked.

They were generally respectful about it, but their enthusiasm sometimes overrode any decorum they had since Carl was the only one available to test out their theories, to see if they would work.

During this time of training there was one perk that he purchased in the Sword Art Online world that proved its worth.

**Like Riding a Bike: Your skills never deteriorate. Ever. Not for any reason, but especially not disuse. Further, you can easily adapt them to new circumstances: recreate your favorite spell in a different Jump's magic system, translate your sword style to hand to hand, etc.**

While he was working through all the various jutsu that ninja of the Naruto world used, he found it wasn't too incredibly difficult to figure out how to alter the chakra techniques to be used in a magic, ki, or profound energy system. The various techniques were more easily translated to different systems based on their origins.

Anything to do with enhancing the body and taijutsu or martial arts, were especially well suited to ki based energy systems.

Anything to do with genjutsu, or illusions, was more easily translated to the magic system.

Any kind of ninjutsu, especially elemental transformation, was easily converted to a profound energy technique.

Throughout his studies of the ninja techniques, there were four dragons that were especially caught up in their excitement and loved being there for every session.

Joyce, one of the six young dragons in the Flight when Carl first arrived at the hold in Azeroth, was a Rogue class who was an absolute crafting nut. She loved anything to do with crafting items of power: engineering, blacksmithing, jewelcrafting, inscribing, leatherworking, etc. She loved the idea of chakra conducting metals and the items she could make with it.

Rubiana was one of the rescued dragons who had chosen the Priest profession. And she was an absolute techie. Anything to do with technology held the greatest interest to her. And her idea of technology wasn't just what could be made with science. Any kind of "technology" that was based in the profound energies and magic also greatly interested her. If she couldn't figure out how to make a magic based computer, she worked on it until she could. And the chakra conducting metal gave her all kinds of possibilities to improve her grasp on technology, and what she could make it do for her, since it was a metal that naturally channeled a mix of mind/body energies, or magic/ki.

Chromalie was another rescued dragon. She had chosen to be a Mage, and she loved anything that had to do with spells, especially big effect spells. Whether those spells were based in profound energy, magic, ki, or chakra, she had a burning desire to explore them and learn the secrets behind how they all worked. So naturally with Carl being the only one who could demonstrate chakra for her, she was frustrated by her inability to experiment on her own and bugged him extensively.

And Ryvnoa was one of the dragonspawn who had chosen the Druid class. She loved all things nature, and she was amazing at growing things. So when she heard about the senjutsu skills that would mix nature energy with chakra, she was very intrigued in learning all she could about said nature energy. Even when Carl explained to her that until he met up with the summons clans and learned from them, he wasn't going to chance turning into a stone statue from messing with nature energy without supervision, she just kept coming back to hang around him and learn where he was in his training. Carl just shrugged and let her be, since she was so interested. He would eventually get around to that bit of training and Ryvnoa would get her wish to learn about senjutsu.

In the practice rooms with all manner of recording equipment, Carl began his training for the **God of Shinobi** scenario. He started with an accelerated version of the basic ninja training.

Every ninja started off with basic shape transformation of chakra. Manipulating the shape, flow, volume, etc. of chakra was how most of the basic foundation of all jutsu using chakra was accomplished.

The very first chakra control / building up exercise for Konoha academy students was the leaf concentration exercise. The student would float a leaf over their forehead with chakra, concentrating on holding it in place. After some practice of holding it steady, they would begin spinning the leaf one way or another.

So Carl started off with a single leaf on his forehead, idly spinning it first one way then another while his dragons recorded his chakra flow and usage. After several minutes of recording, he began moving the leaf to other parts of his body. He was making sure he had complete control over all of his chakra system and where he applied his chakra.

He was able to advance far faster than a normal academy student because of his various perks that sped up his learning, intelligence, and ability to master techniques. So he only spent a short half hour on demonstrating the exercise for the records.

The next chakra control exercise that helped a ninja learn to manipulate their chakra was tree climbing. The ninja would modulate the chakra they released from the soles of their feet so that their feet stuck to walls or trees, allowing them to vertically walk on surfaces or walk upside down.

Too little chakra applied and they wouldn't stick to the surface. Too much and they blew themselves away from the surface and damaged the wall or tree in the process.

So Carl walked up and down the walls for a while to make sure that the process was recorded. They changed up the surface he had to stick to, to see what kind of change it had in his chakra usage. And except for one amazingly slick surface, it mostly didn't matter. As long as the surface was strong enough to handle the weight, then the substance it was made from mostly didn't matter.

After that they moved on to water surface walking. Carl had to spread out and modulate the chakra he emitted from his feet to create a solid surface tension of the water to allow him to stand on it steadily.

The type of liquid didn't really matter, for the most part, but the calmness of the substance did. Walking across white water rapids would be vastly more difficult than walking on a calm pond surface. And walking up a waterfall was more difficult than walking on white water rapids.

After he finished running through the basic chakra control versions of chakra shape transformation, Carl began working on the various jutsu that branched off from shape transformation. Once more he started at the beginning, with the academy E-rank jutsu.

There were three E-rank that were required to learn to pass the academy, at least while it was under the civilian oversight. The Clone jutsu, the Transformation jutsu, and the Replacement jutsu.

The Clone jutsu was a visual genjutsu, or illusion. The jutsu created illusory clones of the ninja and was used to confuse enemies. If they could create even a minute hesitation or confusion, they stood a chance to come out on top in a fight.

The Transformation jutsu was also a visual genjutsu. The jutsu overlaid a visual illusion of someone other than the ninja, allowing them to disguise themselves and infiltrate into many locations, or fool an enemy in combat.

The Replacement jutsu did exactly what it said it did. It switched out the user for a different object, usually a log of wood among the Konoha ninja. This allowed them to avoid a potentially fatal hit, as well as gaining that brief moment of initiative when the enemy believed they had scored a hit, only to find the thing they hit was a log instead of their enemy.

For a bit of fun, Carl had his dragons set up an "obstacle" course with logs in various positions that he had to replace himself with.

Standing on the first platform, he could see the trail of platforms that meandered around the field they had set up. Molding the chakra he reached and with an application of will and a small puff of smoke, Carl found himself on the platform that was previously occupied by the thick log.

Without wasting any more time, his attention was focused on the next log on the platform several meters away. A small puff of smoke, and Carl was once more replaced with a log. As he continued to follow the circuitous route back to the beginning, Carl focused on tightening up the amount of chakra he used, so none of his chakra would be wasted and turn into smoke when he executed the technique.

After a dozen times, he had gotten rid of the wastage of chakra, so he began focusing on molding and executing the jutsu faster.

Focus on log, replace. Focus on log, replace.

Focusonlogreplace. Focusonlogreplace.

Focusreplace. Focusreplace.

Replace. Replace.

Pop. Pop.

P. P. P. P. P. P.

He moved fast, following the circle of platforms so fast he was a blur.

And eventually he stopped, back on the platform he started at. He hadn't bothered to count how many laps he had done. He was quite pleased by the speed, precision, and control he had gained in training that fun obstacle course.

* * *

After running through the various lower ranked jutsu that were only chakra shape manipulation, next on the list was the D-rank jutsu that were usually taught to academy students in their last year to prepare them for genin rank.

Down at the bottom of the power hierarchy was the F-rank civilians, followed by the E-rank academy students, D-rank genin, C-rank chuunin, B-rank special jonin, A-rank jonin, and S-rank Kage.

The set of D-rank jutsu, that was planned to be cut from the curriculum by the civilian council in order so their untalented and unmotivated fangirl children could make it through the course, was known as the Travelling Ten.

It was also the first jutsu that introduced aspiring ninja students to chakra elemental transformation. There were two jutsu in each of the five elements, and they made being out on mission away from the village survivable, which is why they were called the Travelling Ten.

Earth Element: Earthen Mat allowed for a bit of adjustment to the hard ground to make a comfortable bed. Staying rested so the ninja could remain alert was very important for a ninja when a moment of inattention could lead to death.

Earth Element: Waste Dispersal was a jutsu to hide any waste and to rearrange a campsite to appear as if it had never been used. A ninja that left behind evidence of their presence was soon tracked down and killed.

Wind Element: Erase Tracks was a jutsu specifically designed to, as the name implied, erase signs that could lead to being tracked by enemy ninja.

Wind Element: Erase Scents was a jutsu that allowed a ninja to be able to cook their food while keeping the scent from spreading. A ninja in the field was always looking to forage to stretch their supplies, so being able to cook without spreading the scent downwind was vital. Not to mention the fact that the Inuzuka clan of Konoha wasn't the only ninja that learned to track by scent, so keeping their body scent from spreading was an essential skill.

Fire Element: Fire Starter allowed a ninja to be able to make a fire so they could cook their foraged or hunted food.

Fire Element: Heat Self was a priceless technique in cold climates or when a ninja was on night watch, able to keep themselves limber and battle ready, and to keep from suffering from exposure.

Lightning Element: Reading Light allowed a ninja to have a light handy to read important documents without the need for a match or bulky flashlight.

Lightning Element: Electrical Recharge allowed a ninja to recharge the battery on their communication equipment, among other applications.

Water Element: Condensation allowed a ninja to gather water from the air so they could avoid the need to find a spring or stream. Especially in enemy territory where those springs and streams were known and possibly guarded, the Condensation technique was a life saver.

Water Element: Evaporation was a very needed skill for quickly drying a ninja off so they didn't leave obvious splotches of water everywhere as evidence of their presence after swimming through canals, rivers, and other such methods of infiltration.

While the Travelling Ten weren't very flashy or especially useful in combat, a ninja in the field would be hard pressed to survive without them. They were also an easy building block to train the ninja in elemental transformation that led to some of the big and flashy ninjutsu that so many ninja loved.

Aside from the Travelling Ten, there were a plethora of other low level D-rank jutsu that Carl went through, mastering them as he performed them. Erasing ink from paper, using wind to clean a blackboard, shaping chakra to control paint to paint a fence, enhancing the body and senses with chakra, and various low level genjutsu to fool the senses.

"Now that those boring low level techniques are out of the way, can we finally move on to something fun!?" Chromalie pouted from where she was draped over a nearby desk. Her pale vaguely purple tinted face was pouting, her solid bluish green eyes were conveying the utter pain of boredom she had been experiencing, and her green hair was pulled up in a bun with a pencil holding it together.

Rubiana poked her in the stomach, causing her to expel her breath suddenly.

"Don't complain. I'm sure Lord Carl is also just as bored of the low level spells as we are." Rubiana brushed her bluish-white hair back behind her ears. "Besides, don't tell me that you won't be doing the exact same thing when you finally get access to chakra."

"Yeah, but it's completely different when I'm doing it compared to when I'm just watching it being done." Chromalie whined.

"Yes, I'm sure a lot of people enjoy 'doing it' much more than just watching it." Carl commented with a smirk and wagging eyebrows. "And I'm not just talking about spells."

"See!? Lord Carl gets it!" Chromalie yelled, completely missing the joke, which caused Rubiana to groan and Carl's smile to get wider in amusement.

So, Carl moved on to the next jutsu. Besides the Shadow Clone technique, it was the other signature move of the Naruto world. The Rasengan.

The Rasengan in three easy steps.

1: Rotation. Learn to emit and spin chakra in the hand in multiple directions at once. Naruto used a water balloon for step one. Once Carl was able to burst the water balloon with the rotation, step one was complete.

2: Power. Increase the volume and density of chakra output. For this step of the training, use a rubber ball. Once the rubber ball burst apart, step two complete.

3: Containment. Combine the first two steps and contain the resultant swirling ball of drilling chakra inside a balloon without moving or popping it. Once this is complete, the jutsu has been learned.

It was a jutsu that was pure shape manipulation. Further mastery of the jutsu included infusing elemental transformation chakra into the spinning chakra ball of death to make it even deadlier.

"So, who wants to learn the Dentist Drill of Death Technique first?" Carl asked once he had mastered the Rasengan and converted it to a profound energy technique.

"Ooh! Me! Pick me!" Chromalie yelled, bouncing up and down with her hand in the air. Carl laughed and began teaching her how to make a Rasengan.

* * *

After Carl had finished with all the lower level jutsu, he moved on to the higher leveled fun stuff. Which almost all involved elemental transformation.

Ninja usually only used fire release jutsu in a mostly offensive manner, blowing out fireballs, great gouts of flame, or shaping big honking dragons of fire that attacked. With his great affinity for fire, he soon mastered the various forms of pure fire attacks that ninja used.

Combat style water release jutsu was mostly used as water whips, water balls, and water dragons. There were plenty of alternate methods that weren't a direct attack, though. Like dispersing mist in the air to block an enemy's sight, or using a wall of water to block attacks.

Earth release jutsu had a multitude of useful abilities, like earth spikes, tunneling through the ground, earthquakes, rearranging the terrain so an enemy ninja was off balance, making pits or domes, shields, and other various things.

Wind release jutsu created great battering gusts of wind, cutting slashes of wind, or blowing up sand to obscure a battlefield. The more esoteric usages of wind was to sense nearby enemies through the movement of wind. And there were a lot more uses available, like smothering enemy combatants, knocking them off balance, or bending the wind so that sound travelled great distances, making communications among allies work better.

Lighting release could be used to create a cutting electrical blade, a medium for genjutsu, an armor form of lighting, various lightning bolt attacks, and other such uses.

And those were just the regular elements. After mastering the jutsu for each element in the **Uchiha Jutsu Archive**, Carl began experimenting with the combination elements he found recorded, which could be even more fun than the basics. The archive had a list of various combinations of the elements and many techniques for them.

Fire + Wind = Scorch.

Fire + Lightning = Explosion.

Fire + Earth = Lava.

Fire + Water = Boil.

Fire + Water = Steam.

Fire + Wind + Earth = Dust.

Fire + Wind = Poison.

Fire + Lightning = Plasma.

Fire + Earth = Magma.

Wind + Lightning = Light.

Wind + Lightning = Swift.

Wind + Earth = Sand.

Wind + Earth = Phasing.

Wind + Water = Ice.

Wind + Water = Shadow.

Wind + Fire = Flight.

Wind + Wind = Sound.

Lightning + Earth = Magnet.

Lightning + Earth = Gravity.

Lightning + Water = Storm.

Lightning + Fire = Radiation.

Lightning + Wind = Static Shock.

Earth + Water = Wood.

Earth + Water = Plantlife.

Earth + Fire = Glass.

Earth + Lightning = Explosion.

Water + Water = Liquids.

Water + Fire = Mist.

Water + Lightning = Acid.

Water + Earth = Diamond.

There were a host of combination elements, based on the composition and amount of each of the single elements used in the combination. Some of the jutsu he was learning from the **Uchiha Jutsu Archive** were things he had already figured out how to do with magic, ki, and profound energy. But there were many abilities that he had never touched before.

The ability to shape Diamonds or Crystals, for example, had simply been unneeded and unexplored when he could simply have the VIs and his technology accomplish the task of forming crystals very quickly and with greater precision for the shapes needed for crafting. But with the jutsu available, he could form crystal swords, diamond spikes that shot up from the ground to impale enemies, tough armor, and solid construction material, etc.

Having the jutsu techniques allowed for time expedient uses of the skills for combat, even if he would still us the AIs and farms to build the crystals and precious stones needed for crafting.

It took some time and practice to get through everything in the Archives, but Carl found it a fun pastime to learn everything that the ninja of this world could do.

Carl felt it the moment he finished mastering every jutsu Konoha had available. His completion of the **God of Shinobi **scenario was accompanied by a sensation of increased control. It was a palpable upgrade in his ability to control the various energies inside him. His precision, power, and skill with magic, ki, profound energy, and chakra was all dependant on his willpower. He could _feel _the difference.

So he did what anyone would do. Threw a party with his Dragon Flight to celebrate a goal accomplished.

* * *

Once Carl finished learning and practicing with those combination element release jutsu, he began heavily experimenting with his own bloodline eyes that he had purchased, the Tenseigan.

Ever since he had regained memories of the ATG world and his profound cultivation, he had been experimenting with his eyes and learning about them. His various senses from cultivation in many ways made even his 359 degree vision from the Byakugan obsolete.

His profound energy was able to easily inspect the area around him and tell him pretty much everything he needed to know, and his Ki senses were far superior for keeping up with high speed movements that his simple vision did.

But there were still some benefits to having the Byakugan bloodline of the Hyuga clan. While relying on simple vision was much less effective in higher level combat, his bloodline did work to enhance his profound, Ki, and magical senses. They were sharper and more penetrating than they were before he gained the Byakugan and Tenseigan.

So overall Carl was still pleased that he had spent the cp on the bloodline.

He had been able to sense a mental switch that was connected to both the Byakugan and the Tenseigan. It was the equivalent of a mental gear shift that allowed him to go from one to the other. Once he shifted into the higher gear of the Tenseigan, his eyes changed. His pupil turned from the same pearl white as his cornea used to be to a dark blue. His cornea also changed to a slightly lighter blue and there was a pearly white lotus flower imprinted on his cornea that surrounded his blue pupil.

He could immediately feel the new abilities available while his eyes were in the Tenseigan mode. It was simplicity itself to control the local gravity field to lift up the large boulders in the training area and have them fly circles around him. He easily flung the boulders at great speed and shattered them onto the targets across the field.

Carl grinned at the control over gravity he had. Lightning and Earth nature combination gave him some small control over gravity, but it was nothing as easy and natural to control as the abilities his eyes had.

He then played with the local gravity around himself, negating it and allowing himself to drift up into the air, until he created a balance and simply floated in a zero-g field. Directing the gravity field in one direction, he was able to "fly" through the sky by directing how gravity affected him to fall upwards and sideways, and do loop de loops. It was like riding an intangible roller coaster.

Settling back down on the fields, he found another stone and began increasing the gravity field directly around the stone. A few seconds later, the stone was crushed into a very dense pebble that was almost diamond-like.

Once he was done playing with gravity for the time being, he began experimenting with his eye's other abilities: he played with dolls. Er…rather he animated statues. Cause that was a thing it could do, for some reason.

That's not to say he hadn't already experiment with the ninjutsu of puppetry, using chakra threads to animate dolls, er…battle puppets. He had to be able to emulate _everything _with seals, so of course he played with dolls. Puppets. Battle puppets.

While he had his Tenseigan eyes active, he could sense another mental gear to go up to the Tenseigan Chakra Mode. Flipping the switch, he entered Chakra Mode and was filled up with chakra; it surrounded him with bluish-silver colored chakra that radiated off him. Seven Truth Seeking Balls appeared behind him.

Once he was able to use his eyes to access the Truth Seeking Balls, he also gained access to the Yin and Yang elements through those balls. Yin and Yang were elements outside of the basic five elements, which allowed for more esoteric jutsu to be used.

Yin release used spiritual energy to control imagination, creating form out of nothingness. A lot of the sharingan genjutsu abilities were centered around yin release. The Nara clan's shadow manipulation was also a yin release jutsu.

Yang release used physical energy to control vitality, granting life to forms that have none. The Senju and Uzumaki clan's increased vitality and fast health regeneration was an example of a Yang release based bloodline, as well as the Akimichi's ability to increase the size of their own bodies.

Then there was the combined Yin-Yang release, which used the Yin release ability to create out of nothingness and combined with the Yang release to give the form life. Hagoromo Otsutsuki used Yin-Yang release to create the nine Tailed Beasts after tearing apart the Ten-Tailed beast.

Carl idly grabbed a couple of the black Truth Seeking Balls and played with them like they were play-dough, reshaping them into various weapons. The Truth Seeking Balls and their affinities were leaking information into his head, letting him know just what they could do.

Apparently the Yin-Yang affinity of the Tenseigan is what allowed him to animate statues, giving them a semblance of life as he directed them to do as he wished.

So Carl created two different statues. One statue was a two legged dinosaur like creature the size of a building with spines running down its back. It stepped up out of the depths of the pond and roared fiercely.

Across from it a giant winged dinosaur flapped its wings and took to the air. Its angry red scales quite a contrast from its dark colored opponent.

The Rodan statue swooped down and circled around Godzilla, looking for an opening to attack. Godzilla kept light on its feet, facing Rodan and not giving it any opening.

Rodan finally committed to an attack, realizing he needed to do something or they would remain in a stalemate. He swooped down, digging his claws into Godzilla's shoulder, sinking in deep. But Godzilla was ready for it and sunk his jaws into Rodan's shoulder, right at the point where his neck bet his shoulder.

Carl chuckled at seeing his statues fighting each other. It was pretty fun. But since Godzilla always won, he allowed his Rodan statue's head to be torn off. A moment later, he had them sink back into the ground from what he created them from.

Moving on, Carl examined the last ability he gained from his eyes. Yin-Yang release could also be used to nullify the effects of all ninjutsu in an area.

Carl smirked at that little bit of knowledge that he gained through the Truth Seeking Balls that he gained control of through his Tenseigan eyes. Once he figured out how to manipulate Yin-Yang release through seals, then no ninjas would be able to use any jutsu to infiltrate or attack his territory.

His people and land would be that much more secure, especially if he could create a null field around his land that would cut off any ninja's ability to use chakra; and only give the proper key seal tattoo to his forces so only they could use chakra inside the areas he controlled.

* * *

Through his study of the Uzumaki's own history books he found in the hidden library, Carl learned that the Uzumaki Clan actually had a fantastical origin, even for the Naruto world.

The Uzumaki clan was the descendents of a number of families that had originally lived on a far away planet. Their society had been a highly technological and scientifically minded people. But some kind of disaster had befallen their home planet.

The books that detailed the Uzumaki clan's origins never described what the disaster had been beyond mention of a Great Enemy. They didn't speak of what the disaster had been because of the fear that it would be able to follow them if they did.

In his original life Carl would have questioned that attitude, believing it was simply folklore and superstition. Even with the plethora of science fiction and fantasy stories he had read or watched, he wouldn't have taken those refugees at their word. Those fictional stories were just entertaining imaginings, not real life.

But now Carl was very well aware of various spells, inscriptions, and even technological means that would be able to replicate those kinds of tracking methods.

So the many families that would come to be the Uzumaki clan had drifted for many thousands of years in stasis, seeking a new home. They had arrived on this planet a few generations before Kaguya had eaten the fruit from the God Tree, which was the genesis of Chakra on this planet.

Their frantic fleeing from their home had left them without all the technology resources they were used to having. They didn't have the equipment and infrastructure to rebuild what they once had, and they feared that to do so would entice a similar destruction to fall upon them once more.

So they muddled along as best as they could in hiding as they learned to live in the primitive conditions they found themselves in.

Eventually a son of the Family met the granddaughter of the Sage of Six Paths. She was the daughter of Asura Otsutsuki. From their union two sons were born that had the ability to use chakra.

When the two boys grew up, they found that many girls would be willing to do almost anything to have their children due to the high possibility of them having the possibility of using chakra. The first "fangirls" were born. The origins of the fangirl was actually desperation to add survival traits to their family, which is why they would do nearly anything to attain their goals.

The modern day fangirls would be an enormous shame on their ancestors because they only cared about being enamored by the idea of a luxurious life, not survival. The bitches.

The older son would eventually lead what would be known as the Uzumaki clan.

The younger son would eventually lead the Senju clan.

The families experimented and learned as much as they could learn about chakra as the bloodline to use chakra spread among them. They figured out a lot about how to use chakra, including a written version of code that they called the Sealing Arts.

The Uzumaki clan especially figured out how to use seals to enhance their own physiques and clan bloodline, which led to both the Uzumaki and Senju clans being exceptional among the chakra users of the world. It was due to their uses of seals and their multi-family origin that the varied bloodline skills of the Uzumaki clan came into being.

The Uzumaki had the legacy from beyond the stars of a thorough scientific study, which led to them experimenting and becoming masters of the Sealing arts as they studied and learned the variations of chakra.

Which knowledge, sadly, led to their downfall due to the jealous nature of the nearby villages that couldn't stand seeing an organization grow beyond their own power.

Thankfully the ninja villages that instigated the attack against the Uzumaki in order to steal their knowledge came away with nothing. In the midst of tragedy, it was truly a triumph of the Uzumaki to deny their enemies any benefits from their deaths.

And Carl, who had the remnants of the Otsutsuki clan's eye based bloodline of the Byakugan, which had been passed down from Kaguya Otsutsuki herself, had managed to figure out how to find the Uzumaki clan's records of their history and achievements.

When the refugee families that eventually became the Uzumaki clan had been introduced to chakra, they had been on the planet for a few generations and had lost all their superior technology. So while they had applied the scientific means of studying chakra, they didn't have the computational capability to truly plumb its depths.

Along with the large Archive, and added in the Sealing Arts of the Uzumaki clan that Carl had for studies, he figured he, his computers, and his Flight could master the Sealing arts in a relatively short time.

It was really only with his advantage of time compression and the VIs that Carl felt comfortable in being able to add in the **Sealmaster** scenario on top of the others. Without those advantages, it would have been very difficult to master Seals along with everything else in the time required.

**You must design hundreds, if not thousands of seals, enough that can cover _everything_ Ninjas typically do. From releasing fireballs to having a scroll perform every step of the Impure World Summoning on its own. Only once you have utterly perfected the art may you truly be called Sealmaster, and this is when this scenario stands fulfilled.**

Carl knew that this scenario would take a lot of work. But saying it like that was something of an understatement.

If Carl didn't have the Time Pearl, Archive, and Shadow Clones available to help with the experimentation, he wouldn't have picked that particular scenario. Because even for a hardworking ninja with nothing but time on his hands, it was a _lot _of work, maybe more than 10 years worth, under normal circumstances.

It was dangerous to experiment with the seals, so without the shadow clones to be his test dummies, Carl would have been forced to go even slowing in his studying.

Thankfully, in addition to time compression and shadow clones, Carl also had highly advanced technology and the Yamato VI to help him systematize the study of Seals and the language or symbols used for the art.

So Carl and his dragons took the information he had gathered from his earlier jutsu training, sat down with the basics of what they knew of sealing from the various scrolls they had, and compared that to all the readings he got from his use of all the jutsu.

And that is when Carl really started experiencing the many deaths of his shadow clones. There was no way he was practicing the seals they came up with without using shadow clones to do so. He had no desire to be turned inside-out by a space-time seal that could maybe kill him.

And while they mostly got everything correct by evaluating the basics of seals and comparing it to the reading he had from the various jutsu he had performed for the sensors, there were mistakes here and there that got corrected as he practiced the sealing arts and gained practical experience.

So by the time that Carl and four blood clones exited the time compression with his Dragon Flight less than a day of real time later, Carl had become a Master of Seals. His Flight was as expert in chakra and the various things one could do with it without having chakra coils of their own. And he had completed two of his scenarios, and gained the titles **Sealmaster** and **God of Shinobi**.

The moment he accomplished the **Sealmaster** scenario was accompanied by a complex multidimensional seal symbol appearing in front of Carl, shrinking down, and entering his mind. It was suitably accompanied by the lights of heaven shining down on him. When he entered his mind palace, Carl found a new building that held all the knowledge of seals, ancient runes from the Harry Potter world, inscriptions from the Against the Gods world, and inscription and enchantments from the Azeroth world, as well as various written forms of magic from Westeros.

Looking at the new building that felt semi-alive in his mind, Carl shook his head and began personalizing the Intellectus palace according to his preferences. He never expected it to be semi-alive inside his head, but if it was going to be here providing a link for him to learn about all the written forms of magic, then it was going to do it on his terms. He was going to make it a part of him, not let it live a semi-independent life without paying rent in his head.

* * *

Carl stumbled on his way to ninja academy.

The stumble came at the exact right moment so that he subsequently tripped on that totally invisible 1/4 inch higher cobblestone.

Strangely enough, the lack of coordination on Carl's part came at the exact right moment so that he dodged a paint filled water balloon thrown by Naruko, who was "attacking" him for an off-color joke he had just told. The paint filled water balloon smacked straight into the face of a 50 year old man that was sitting at his vegetable stall, minding his own business.

The fact that everything just coincidentally happened to allow Naruko to freely and openly approach said man and easily throw the balloon directly into the face of one of the most anti-Naruko merchants in the district that had just the previous day thrown a tomato at Naruko was a total coincidence.

It didn't even matter that she had dodged and the tomato didn't hit her face. Retaliation must be had.

Carl miraculously regained his balance perfectly in time to see the landing splat of the orange paint filled water balloon. The old man's neon orange paint drenched face was a sight to see, and Naruko's laughter accompanied by Hinata's giggles put a smile on his face.

Success!

The three eight year olds made their escape, completely ignoring the stern headshakes of Ko and Nuo who watched over them. Ever since Carl's talking to, Ko had adjusted his attitude properly, and now he was even somewhat fond of the blond Uzumaki.

"You two are so bad!" Hinata giggled out when the trio was far enough away from the market. Their stride never broke as they continued jogging on their way to the Academy for classes.

"Hey, he was the jerk who started it!" Naruko mock pouted at her best friend while dodging the turtle slow civilian pedestrians.

"Besides, dear sister, your giggles told us just how much you enjoyed it, too." Carl added in just as they arrived at their destination.

"Ooh! Next time we've got to get Hinata involved in the prank! She can't be just a spectator." Naruko excitedly began talking about pranks. "We can't do the paint filled balloon again so soon. We haven't done itching powder for a while. Or we could do the pop-up scare-crows. Maybe have the squirrel flash mob show up again. Seeing the crowd's faces on that one was hilarious. Which one do you want to do, Hinata?"

"I don't know. I think the pranks you do is funny, but…" Hinata hedged as she opened the door to their class.

Shino was already seated in the far back of the room, next to the window. Shikamaru was slumped over on the desk, and Yakumo was sitting in their usual place.

"How about you think of it as ninja training, Hinata?" Carl offered a different perspective on the pranks to try to get Hinata to go along with it while the trio took their normal seats.

"What kind of ninja training?" Yakumo asked, curious because her biggest dream was to be a great ninja and restore her clan. Any extra training that she could get in, she was excited for. And she loved hanging out with Carl, Hinata, and Naruko ever since he exorcized the demon from her, making her dream possible.

"Oh, we're trying to get Hinata to join us in doing a prank on the nasty shopkeepers. It'll be like a ninja mission." Naruko airily explained.

"They're still being horrible to you, Naruko? Jeez, what's their problem?" Yakumo frowned. Over the past several weeks as she spent time with them it was obvious to everyone that some of the civilians just really hated Naruko.

"It's not logical for the civilians to harass a ninja trainee. Why? Because you are learning to become a ninja, which is a protector of the village. It makes no sense to instill negative emotions in someone who is part of the hive." Shino piped up from his corner of the room while he had most of his attention focused on some of the bugs he was watching crawl on his hands.

"See? Shino gets it! The civilians are doing wrong by me and need to be taught a little lesson!" Naruko folded her arms, having won a great debate in her mind. "So, you're going to join in on the next prank, right Hinata? Come on! Say you will" Naruko gave the puppy eye jutsu for all she was worth, while pleadingly grabbing her arm.

"Yeah, I'll go along too, Hinata. Let's do it." Yakumo said with a big grin on her face, excited to have some fun after classes.

"Okay, fine. I'll do it." Hinata finally agreed due to everyone's excitement to get in on the "training", blushing a little at the thought of doing something so mischievous. "I like fireworks."

"Excellent!" Carl smiled at his sister and two friends. "I picked up some small fireworks that make a bit of noise and smoke. With your eyes you can totally lob them over the walls and onto the target without even exposing yourself, Hinata. And Yakumo can make that reflective genjutsu so her and Naruko can watch."

Carl smirked at the smiles that brightened up the three girls faces.

"You're more than welcome to come to, Shino." Carl offered the boy who had also spoken up for them.

"While the use of explosives to train my hives to get used to concussive forces would be welcome, I have an appointment this afternoon with my father." Shino regretfully declined.

"Maybe next time, then, Shino." Carl offered.

"Yeah, you gotta come next time!" Naruko chimed in, taking Shino's inclined head as his assent to joining them.

More of the class began filtering in at that point, so they put their talk of pranks on hold for the time being. Ino and Sakura were the next group who showed up, sitting in their seats in the row in front of Carl, Hinata, Naruko, and Yakumo before turning around to chat with Naruko, Yakumo, and Hinata.

Kiba showed up next, which was still a sight that Carl had to get used to, since his future canine partner, Akamaru, wasn't born yet. It was just one of those things that the show had gotten him to expect to see, but wasn't there.

A short time later Choji and Sasuke showed up just before their teacher did. Choji settled in next to the sleeping Shikamaru while Sasuke took his seat at the front of the class next to the window. The class settled down and they pulled out their books and began their reading and writing classes. Since they were training to be ninjas, one of the necessary skills was to be able to make proper reports in clear language. Or so they said.

While they were busy with their lessons, Carl thought back to his first weeks at the Academy and getting used to the various kids. Their class consisted of 28 student ninjas at the moment. In addition to the clan kids, there were plenty of civilian kids that were trying to make it as a ninja. For a given value of "trying".

It was interesting to see the social dynamics at play in the classroom. There were already a few cliques formed based on background and interests.

There were the clan kids that had been trained from a young age and who took their future career as ninja seriously. The clan kids consisted of Carl and Hinata Hyuga, Kiba Inuzuka, Shino Aburame, Ino Yamanaka, Shikamaru Nara, Choji Akimichi, and Yakumo Kurama.

And while Naruko Uzumaki and Sakura Haruno didn't technically belong to the already established ninja clans, because of their friendship with clan kids they fell solidly into the clan kid's clique.

Sasuke Uchiha would normally have been one of them, but he was already trying to blaze his own path, apparently. Because Carl was fully aware that in four years Sasuke would be on a team with some of his friends, he wanted to make sure the kid was a competent teammate. So the first couple of weeks he had invited Sasuke to join the rest of them in their afternoon training sessions so he could get some extra practice time; get to know them, and learn how to work with them.

But the little brat had declined every time. And sometimes Sasuke had been quite arrogant and rude in his methods of declining.

Some days Carl couldn't even get a full "Hn." Out of the arrogant little prick.

After more than a few invites to train had been so rudely turned down, Carl could only shake his head and give up on the brat. He may not have liked the kid when he was simply a character on the screen, but he also found he didn't like the kid in real life, either. Go figure.

The little blighter seemed bound and determined to fill himself with hate and isolate himself from possible friends and future teammates.

If Sasuke didn't want to put in the effort to train with his future team mates, Carl wasn't going to hold his hand and wipe his butt. He could just go get himself a cursed seal hickey bite from Orochimaru in their first chuunin exam. It was no skin off his nose.

The largest group in the class was all the civilian kids whose parents had instructed them to get close to Sasuke to try to benefit from associating with him. The fangirls. And despite the name, they weren't all girls. They were all, however, a bunch of suck-ups to the Uchiha brat, inflating his ego beyond all reason.

Carl wondered if he could file a complaint with someone about having to share class space with them.

Maybe if the object of their obsession wasn't there every day, they may not be as annoying and could have actually focused on their ninja training. Maybe if their parents would lay off the enforced and brainwashed sycophancy. Maybe then the kids could get their heads on straight and actually try to become ninja.

Carl didn't hold out much hope for any of those scenarios.

And beyond the large group of fangirls, there was a small group of serious civilian hopefuls that were actually trying to become ninja. Carl made sure to invite Nobodon, Junirio, and Yamiko to join them for training. He was hoping those three could keep themselves motivated and become strong genin in four years.

At the very least maybe with some additional training resources and encouragement they could stay free of the trap of becoming fangirls.

So all together in his class there was a group of 14 fangirls, 10 clan kids, 3 serious civilians, and 1 arrogant Uchiha.

The second class of the day was History. They had been covering the history of Konoha and its place in the Land of Fire.

"During the Warring States Period, war was everywhere in the Elemental Nations. There were no hidden villages at first." The teacher read from his text book. "The ninja in the countries were organized into mercenary clans that knew nothing but battle. The two strongest of these clans were the Senju and the Uchiha, who had warred against each other for their entire histories…"

Carl rolled his eyes at the starry eyed looks the fangirls were giving Sasuke at the mention of his clan in the official history. With what their parents told them about how "prestigious" the Uchiha were, and now the official stories painting them in the best light possible, now that they are dead and gone, the fangirls didn't really have any chance to break their conditioning.

It obviously made sense for the Konoha higher ups to slant the histories a certain way to engender pride and loyalty in their ninja forces. Can't have disorder in the military rank and file, or else it would be a recipe for the death of their village. Especially given the bloody history of ninja wars among the elemental nations.

There were hidden ninja villages out there that would love to see Konoha destroyed. So making sure the new generation was properly inducted as Konoha loyal forces was a necessity for survival.

But the blood clone technique that Carl was using had information packets traveling back and forth from the original to his blood clones. So the blood clone that was sitting through the history lectures in Konoha was also seeing plenty of history from the other country's point of view over the past few weeks as one of the Carl's was studying up.

Add in that he knew exactly how big the world was, and Carl wasn't going to make the mistake of thinking that the Konoha histories tell the whole story of the world he was currently in.

But it was a history record that he needed to remember so he wouldn't get poor grades on his report card. It would be pretty embarrassing to have a poor showing with his memory perks. Since he couldn't forget anything, not getting a decent grade would be falling to Nara levels of laziness. And as a Hyuga, that would be an embarrassing day indeed.

Carl settled in to wait out the day. He wasn't _bored_, per se. He had a perk for that. But he was acutely aware that instead of listening to a teacher read to him the history book, he could easily speed read the book himself in a tenth of the time and be off doing nearly anything else.

Like watching paint dry.

Perks would make that interesting, so it was a valid activity.

'Huh, I could be training my eyes. Brilliant idea!' Carl cheered up immensely at the possibility to further train his amazing X-Ray eyes. 'Or we could be passing messages in a ninja-esque manner, keeping from being noticed by the teachers. Maybe do some extra chakra control exercises. So many little things to do.'

And so he passed a note to Hinata to suggest she train her eyes while paying attention to the lecture. Hinata then passed a note to Naruko to do her chakra control exercises while listening to the lecture. And Naruko passed a note to Yakumo to play with her genjutsu while the teacher droned on.

Similar notes were passed back and forth in a sneaky way so that those who were serious in their ninja career were all having conversations and planning sessions with each other right under the eyes of the teacher. The exercise even got Shikamaru interested despite himself.

The fangirls were too busy mooning over Sasuke to notice the notes that made it to every other member of class.

The Uchiha was too far above it all to deign to wonder why everyone was passing each other notes. He didn't even realize that passing notes in class could be a form of ninja training. Intelligence gathering and passing of information.

Due to Carl's instigation, even the lazy Nara of their class, Shikamaru, got some training in by communing with his shadows to increase his yin-shadow affinity and ability to manipulate shadows.

Or at least, that was his excuse for napping. Which is what it totally looked like he was doing, the lazy Nara that he was.

* * *

That afternoon found Hinata surrounded by her encouraging friends and brother as she held a bundle of fireworks in her hand.

She activated her Byakugan and peered at the horrible man who was nasty to her best friend. She lit and tossed the fireworks and watched as it sailed over the stall wall and landed at the man's feet, creating a series of loud explosions that made him jump like a cat on a hot tin roof.

Several more exploded at his feet a moment later as Carl, Naruko, and Yakumo threw several more just after Hinata. The group fell to giggling a little too loudly about the sight, since they were heard by the people nearby.

They swiftly ran, making their escape before they were seen, leaving behind a huge and noisy mess.

Carl was feeling pretty light hearted about the small adventure. Sure, they were training to be child soldiers, ninjas and assassins. But they could still have some fun while they were young.


	95. Naruto 9

Carl stood in the hot desert sands, no one around him. He bit his thumb to draw some blood and mentally shaped his chakra to perform the summoning jutsu. A regular ninja would have to form the hand signs in order to mold their chakra properly to complete the jutsu.

He then slammed his right hand down to the ground. Lines of black seal like script radiated out from under his hand in eight directions, with a circle of script surrounding his hand at about a two foot radius. The summoning jutsu was a success.

A huge puff of chakra smoke billowed out, obscuring the surroundings where Carl stood.

The smoke slowly cleared out, showing that Carl now stood on top of the head of a dark purple snake that was about 150 meters long. The back of his head had four straight horns sticking out, angled back towards his tail. He had jagged black stripes banded around his body from his neck to his tail. And most of all he emitted a sense of danger, disdain, and pride.

"Orochimaru! You know I don't like being summoned." The big snake growled immediately upon the chakra smoke clearing up. "You will have to provide me with one hundred human sacrifices to make up for it."

Carl flew up and away from the snake's head that he was standing on. Hovering in front of the huge snake, Carl steadily looked into his emerald green eyes with his own pale Hyuga eyes.

"It wasn't Orochimaru that summoned you today, Manda." Carl called out, his eight year old Hyuga body was dwarfed by the enormous snake.

Even his Dragon form would be dwarfed by this huge snake for a number of decades more. His Dragon form would continue to grow as he aged, but he didn't know just how big he would get, since the normal Azeroth dragon had a limit to their size. Well, there were exceptions like Deathwing that grew enormous. And he did have Dragon God blood in him from the ATG world. So he would find out as he lived longer.

"The Snake clan has a new summoner, Manda. My name is Carl Hyuga." Carl announced, staring down Manda.

"Bah! Who let such a puny and weak whelp like you sign the contract?" Manda snarled in disdain. His eyes shifted around, seeing no one else around in the desert. "And you were stupid enough to summon _me_ without any sacrifices to feed me. I suppose you'll have to do as an appetizer until I can find something more to fill my belly."

With those words, Manda, the boss summons for the snake contract, immediately attacked.

The huge head of the snake summons darted forward, faster than one would expect for such a huge creature. His fangs glistened with poison nearly dripping from them as his cavernous mouth opened wide to swallow Carl whole.

Even though he somewhat expected the big snake's churlish behavior based on what he'd seen from the show, he hadn't expected the talking portion to be so short. Nevertheless, he was still prepared for battle. He swiftly entered into the Tenseiga Chakra mode to boost his abilities for the fight.

His small body was awash with a silvery blue energy that gave him an ethereal glowing appearance. Ten black fist sized Truth Seeking Orbs appeared hovering behind him. His practice with the Tenseigan Chakra Mode had improved his mastery over it, so he was able to manifest three more balls than he had upon the first time he used it.

With a thought, two of the black orbs morphed into giants black pillars, as thick around as Manda's fangs, and extended so that they propped open Manda's mouth, keeping him from biting down.

Meanwhile, Carl flew up and punched against Manda's nose, employing his own physical strength and control over gravity to cause Manda's strike to come to a halt while also giving him the equivalent of a newspaper smacking on the nose for bad behavior.

The enormous snake summons awkwardly crossed his eyes in an attempt to look at Carl while his mouth was propped open with the Truth Seeking Balls, and he was held in position with intensely heavy gravity, unable to even withdraw.

"Wah aa uu?" Manda called out unintelligibly since his mouth was currently propped open. Carl figured the big boss summons was asking him what he was.

"Like I said, my name is Carl Hyuga. I'm the heir to the Hyuga clan, and a ninja of some skills, and the owner of the Tenseigan eyes. And I'm the new summoner for the Snake clan. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Now, if I let you go, can we have a reasonable discussion?"

The big snake didn't reply for some time as he thought it over. He was in a very poor bargaining position, and he knew it. But his pride was at war with his practicality. Finally, Carl felt the big snake minutely nod in his gravity powered grip.

Carl then released the enormous snake, morphing his truth seeking balls from the pillars he had shaped them into back into the balls that hovered behind him; he flew back to his previous distance from the snake's face, staring at the giant snake that was disturbed to have been so easily overcome.

Manda closed his mouth with an enormous snapping sound and looked searchingly at Carl for some time, seeing his glowing form lit up with enormous amounts of energy while Carl was still in the Tenseigan chakra mode.

"When I am summoned, I require at least 50 human sacrifices. Doing work for summoners is energy intensive, so I need the meat and chakra they produce to do anything for you." Manda finally announced.

Carl had simply waited out the time, a method of negotiation to gain the upper hand. Manda felt his position was somewhat weak, considering how easily Carl had stopped his attack, so Manda had broken the silence first.

"No, I don't think so." Carl said.

"As a summoner bound by the contract you have to-" Manda began before being interrupted by Carl.

"No." He said more firmly. "I carefully read the contract before I signed it. And it laid out the duties, responsibilities, and privileges of the summoner. Nowhere does it say I must feed you, let alone feed you human sacrifices." Carl rejected outright the ridiculous demands of Manda. Just because Orochimaru was a monster who thought nothing of sacrificing hundreds of humans to gain Manda's help, didn't mean that Carl would.

"Now, I'm a reasonable being." Carl continued. "I realize that even though I don't owe you any food when summoning you or other snakes, you would work harder towards my goals if I were to feed you something nice. So I'm willing to feed you some prey animals to get your best efforts. But I will not be taken advantage of by the snake clan, and I will certainly not encourage any snakes of the clan to treat humans as livestock, to be slaughtered to assuage your greedy gut."

"Fine, little human." Manda almost pouted at not getting his way.

Carl could see that the big snake was used to having the upper hand in negotiations, even with Orochimaru. Apparenly he was perceptive enough to realize that Carl wasn't going to bow down to his whims like Orochimaru would. Which was smart of him, since Carl didn't need the big snake for anything, really.

The only reason he summoned Manda was to introduce himself to the boss snake summons before Carl reverse summoned himself to Ryuchi cave, where the Snake clan lived in the summons realm.

And even if he had need of some of the summoned Snakes for ninja activities, he would prefer to make friends and partners with a younger snake that wasn't as set in his or her ways to interact with and teach.

The Snake contract was clear in how he would have to pick at least one snake to be his personal summons, who he would work extensively with. That close contact would give the snake plenty of experience and power as they grew. The Snake clan would then have a powerful member of their clan, able to contest with the surrounding animal clans to keep or advance their position in the power hierarchy.

And Manda was certainly not Carl's pick of a snake he would work with regularly. Not after he had worked with Orochimaru for so long. But there was no reason to tell the big pouty carnivore snake baby that to his face.

"To show my good will to the Snake clan as their new summoner, have a taste of this ox I've been raising for some time." Carl finally said, when it seemed that Manda realized that he wasn't the push over that Orochimaru was. He already showed his stick by stopping his attack and bopping him on the nose; now it was time to feed Manda a carrot.

With that Carl pulled out a 15 meter tall dark blue ox that had been growing on the farm. The strangely colored ox was from the ATG world. Ever since he got his hands on one in the ATG world he had kept a population of them growing on one of the ranches on the Farm.

But now, with his Hunting Grounds that he got from the Dinosaur Gauntlet, Carl was looking for ways to get rid of the enormous animals from his Farms to make room for more valuable animals to raise. He had already tasted all the animals he captured from the ATG world, which meant there was a population of them present in the Hunting Grounds if he ever needed them, so Carl was looking to get rid of the less valuable ones he had been raising on the Farm, thus freeing up space for more valuable and new animals and plants.

And feeding them to the summoned animal clans to get on their good side to speed up the process of him being taught the Sage arts was a worthy use of the excess animals.

Judging by how Manda's pupils dilated when he flicked his tongue out to taste the ox, it smelled quite delicious to him. The big snake wasn't polite, he immediately struck at the ox, wrapping it up and squeezing it lightly to death.

Carl chuckled at that. Manda didn't want to squish his prey, and he was a 150 meter long snake, so even his light squeezes was enough to kill the 15 meter tall ox.

A short time later, Manda had swallowed the ox whole, and disappeared back to the realm of the summoned creatures with a puff of smoke after Carl told him he had nothing else for the big boss snake summons.

It was only when the big snake had reappeared back in the summoning realm that he realized that Carl had been speaking in Snake all the time. He felt some regret that he didn't make a better impression on the impressive little human, but soon threw that thought from his mind as he curled up in his personal cave to digest the meal he had gotten without having to do anything.

"That seemed to go well." Carl muttered. "I wonder how much time I should give Manda to tell them about me before I send myself there?"

Carl had no idea that the lazy Manda had simply curled up and gone to sleep, not telling anyone about him.

While waiting, Carl checked up on what his blood clones were doing. At this point he had made six of them. One was taking his place in Konoha, making ties with the various kids there while going through the Academy, and making sure that his friend's training was going well.

'Things seem to be well in hand there.' Carl thought with a smirk when he saw his friends were encouraging Hinata to join them in their pranks under the guise of "ninja training". 'Probably a good idea to give them the gravity and resistance seals in the next day or so.'

Carl felt the acknowledgment from his blood clone on the thought. While in time compression he had come up with a number of training aids for his fellow ninja hopefuls that would help their development greatly.

One of his pride and joys was an absolute masterpiece of seals inscribed into a simple belt. It combined gravity, wind, medical, and yang release all into something designed to increase a young person's comprehensive body strength, endurance, speed, and flexibility.

The extra gravity made it so even simply walking around could give a good workout to the wearer. The gravity that weighed down on the user was countered just under the user's feet so they weren't incredibly heavy and breaking the roofs that they ran across. Going through a normal workout with extra gravity upped the impact of the workout greatly.

The wind part of the seals had two parts that it fulfilled. The first part created a certain amount of wind resistance against the young ninja's movements. It would feel like every motion they made was through resistance that worked every single muscle.

The other part of the wind centered seal work ensured that the user would always have enough air to breath while heavily working out. The increased oxygen would keep them energized through their workout.

The medical aspects of the seal work had all the diagnostics needed to monitor the user's body to ensure their growth wasn't stunted from too much gravity or exercise. The diagnostics would determine how much gravity and resistance was added to the ninja's body to maximize the workout parameters, which could be changed.

If they wished to focus on building strength, then the belt would adjust for heavier gravity to focus on strength building. If they wished to focus on endurance, then it would lighten the gravity just enough to focus on that aspect of their fitness. And if they wished to focus on speed, then the wind resistance would be calibrated accordingly.

The diagnostic seals would continually monitor the ninja's health and energy levels to make sure they had enough oxygen flow by regulating how much of the wind seals provided them.

And finally the diagnostic seals were linked with yang release seals that could be used to stimulate the body's stamina and health. His belts basically created an artificial downplayed version of the Senju and Uzumaki stamina bloodline for other ninja to benefit from while training.

And of course he had security and privacy seals in place so that no one could steal his work or tamper with it to cause damage to the wearer.

Carl's blood clone in Konoha would be distributing the belts to certain trustworthy friends and individuals in the next week. Unfortunately for fangirls and Uchihas, they wouldn't be benefiting from the devices.

The blood clone that Carl left in New Uzushio also reported back good things about his people there. The Silver Dragon Flight members were popular among the people he had recruited, especially as they were proving to be good tutors for the young ninjas in training.

Karin, Hanako, and Carl seemed to be getting along very well. They seemed nicely focused on training with their new trainers at the moment.

The third blood clone was making use of their ANBU identity to act as a Hunter ninja, focusing on looking for any ninjas that ran from their villages, evaluated why they ran, and determining what to do with them. He determined if they were trustworthy or not, and either went after them for the bounty, or invited them to join New Uzushio.

Another blood clone was solely focused on tracking down all those responsible for the massacre of Uzushio, as well as evaluating the threats to the Hyuga clan, like Orochimaru who wanted to destroy Konoha. It was good to be proactive in fighting off threats.

The next was looking into people to recruit, mostly orphans. But he also had some plans to go talk to Tsunade and her apprentice Shizune to see if they wanted to visit New Uzushio. Carl chuckled at that. If he could help get the legendary medic ninja Tsunade past her traumatic past and hemophobia, then she could be a huge asset to him.

The final blood clone was looking for more summoning contracts out among the ninja world. While doing so, he was also checking up on any ninja libraries they could glean more information from. Carl didn't know if he could get a recommendation from the Snake clan to go talk to any other clans, so he was looking for more summons contracts to hedge his bets.

While he was satisfied with what his clones were doing, he felt like there were some slack areas he needed to keep track of.

"Hmm. I should also make a clone to keep track of the politics of the different nations. And one to focus on trade would be good." Carl muttered.

Looking at his chakra reserves that would take a small hit from making a couple more permanent blood clones, he debated the wisdom of doing so right before he left for the summons realm to begin training in Senjutsu, or the sage arts.

"Eh, I'm sure it'll be fine." Carl finally decided. "Might as well use my cheat-like Time Pearl to make a couple more blood clones and train them up before going to the Ryuchi Cave. Even if they are only dealing with politics and trade, having the strength to back up their words and protect trade goods is still essential."

Carl disappeared from the desert for a few hours.

After a few hours, three figures reappeared in the desert.

"We're off boss. Have fun with the snakes!" Two of them saluted the third before disappearing once more, having teleported to New Uzushio.

"Well, it's time to go be a sage." Carl muttered before reverse summoning himself to the Land of Summons.

* * *

Carl landed on the side of a mountain in a clearing surrounding by trees that dwarfed even the trees that were prevalent around Konoha. The clearing was filled with tall grass and bushes, but he could see that under the trees with wide foliage there wasn't much underbrush.

The other thing he noticed about the forest of huge trees was that even Manda, as big as he was, could easily pass between the broad trunks without touching the trunks.

"Huh, that would make tree hopping very difficult, except up high in the foliage." Carl muttered as he looked around. The space between trees made it difficult for the average ninja to make the jump. "And a fall would be quite devastating for the average shinobi."

While looking around, Carl was quite pleased to find that his connection with his blood clones wasn't interrupted by his trip to the summons realm. That was a bonus that he hadn't expected, considering that he didn't know exactly where the summons realm was in relation to the main world.

He knew they weren't anywhere present in the regular world, but he wasn't sure how the dimensional shenanigans lined up. At least, not yet.

He could smell the strong scent of snakes in the area. He recognized Manda's scent nearby, like the old snake had passed by recently. There were dozens of others that he didn't recognize.

Up above in the gap of the trees he could see the blue sky, but the sun was hidden by the forests. Looking around the mountain forest landscape, he could spot several caves here and there, and he spotted plenty of snake trails, but he didn't see any snakes moving around at the moment.

'Huh, I thought the contract said something about how the snake sage lived in the Ryuchi Cave. It kinda made it sound like there was only one cave, but I'm seeing quite a few here.' Carl had spotted half a dozen caves visible from where he stood.

From what he remembered of the show, Naruto went to learn Senjutsu from the toads of Mt. Myoboku, and the one who taught him was the old toad Fukasaku. It wasn't the boss toad, Gamabunta, who taught him. So he was reasonably certain that the one who would teach him the sage arts of Senjutsu among the Snakes wasn't Manda.

With a shrug, Carl started making his way slowly to the cave closest to him. He didn't follow the scent trail for Manda because he felt like he could get answers just as easily from any snake around as he could get from the grumpy boss snake.

"Hello, the cave! Anyone home?" Carl called out once he arrived outside the cave. It would be rude to just enter someone's home, after all.

"So weird! Someone's at the door!" An immature voice called out from inside the cave.

"What? Someone's at the door? That's weird!" Another immature voice echoed the first.

"Do you two idiots always have to repeat each other, I'm so sick of it!" A third voice called out, followed by the sound of a bonk echoed twice.

"Ow! Why'd you do that, sis? That hurt!"

"That hurt, sis! Why'd you do that? Ow…"

Carl shook his head with a smirk on his face when he heard the sound of the bonk, which was probably a smack to the head, repeated twice more.

"Cause you keep saying the same thing over, just backwards! Stop it, it's irritating! Just because you're twins doesn't mean you have to repeat each other's sentences!"

"Well, at least they're speaking in complete sentences. Just imagine how irritating it would be if they kept switching back and forth mid-sentence." Carl called out, thinking of the year the twins spoke in their "twin-speak".

"Nooo! Don't give them ideas!" The voice that was the sister yelled out in despair.

"Thanks for the idea…"

"Mister, we'll give it a try…"

"It could be fun…"

"Though we don't know why."

"And now they're rhyming! What have you done? That's it, I'm out of here!" The sounds of slithering came closer and soon a snake appeared at the entrance of the cave. "What? You're a human!"

"A human at the door…"

"Wonder what he wants…"

"What's even more…"

"Uh…I think we need to practice it more…"

"Yeah, we need some more practice…uh…"

"Yeah, I'm Carl Hyuga, the new Snake summoner. Pleasure to meet you." Carl chuckled as he greeted the emerald green pit viper that had reared up in front of him. He stared into her shocked red eyes, red and white stripes of color that contrasted the predominant green running back from her head.

Two more green pit vipers that looked identical to each other soon appeared behind the first one. The first snake that appeared was about 5 meters long, while the twins were only about 3 meters.

"Hi, I am Mikor!" One of the twin snakes cheerfully called out.

"Rokim am I, Hi!" The other twin followed.

Their sister glanced at them in exasperation for a moment, before turning back to Carl and nodding a greeting.

"And I'm these two idiot's older sister, Dakir."

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you three." Carl smiled at the three, but got down to business. "I've just signed the Snake Contract, met a grumpy Manda, and came here to see if there was someone that could teach me Senjutsu. I was wondering if you knew the way and could direct me?" Carl ignored how the twins hissed in amusement at Manda being described as 'grumpy'.

"Well, it's strange that no one was there to greet you upon arrival." Dakir muttered to herself. She turned to the twins and gave them a stern look. "You two stay here while I take Carl Hyuga to the Ryuchi cave to talk to the White Snake Sage. You hear me? Don't leave and study your lessons!"

"Aww…" The twin snakes hissed in frustration in concert but reluctantly nodded. "Fine, sis. We'll stay here."

"Good." She nodded, then turned to slither away from the cave. "Come, follow me, Carl Hyuga. I'll take you to talk to the Elder."

Carl ran alongside Dakir as she moved very quickly towards a rocky outcropping that he hadn't paid much attention to. When they got closer, they made their way around the concealment of the rocks that blocked sight of a large cave.

Following along behind Dakir, Carl entered the large cave. Normally the transition from daylight to dark cave would blind someone, but his vision transitioned smoothly and immediately to the dark.

The cave was simply cavernous. He wasn't sure how the physics of a chakra laden world worked. Yet. Something to look into. But there had to be something there that prevented the cave from collapsing, because it looked like nearly the entire mountainside was hollow. He wondered what was holding it together, or if there was space jutsu happening.

He only quickly glanced around the enormous chambers that looked to have carvings on the wall, pictures and writing. Most of his attention was taken up by what was directly in front of him.

There was an enormous raised dais that held a pure white snake curled up on it. Carl couldn't be positive because the snake was all curled up, but judging by the snake's head it looked like it was even larger than Manda.

And it was smoking from a Huka.

Carl had flashes of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland floating in his head at the sight, but carefully didn't grin. Wouldn't do to leave a poor first impression.

"White Snake Sage, this here is Carl Hyuga. He says he's the new summoner for our Snake clan. He just showed up, so I brought him here." Dakir respectfully introduced him to the snake.

"Yes, little Mandy was just complaining about you, Carl." The enormous snake had a surprisingly pleasant female voice. "He was quite surprised you speak our tongue. Didn't even notice until after he returned. But he's off pouting about the fact you wouldn't feed him humans."

Carl chuckled a bit over the "Mandy" nickname she gave Manda. He could just imagine that the Big Bad Boss Summon Snake was pouting from the nickname, which wasn't fitting with his image.

"Yeah. I'm willing to provide a little meal of farm raised animals to encourage those snakes that work with me to give it their best effort. A reward and bribe for their efforts. But I'm not in the habit of feeding random members of my species to lazy snakes."

"Grabbing a bunch of random civilians who haven't done anything wrong would be despicable and a betrayal of my responsibilities. And going to the effort to procure 50 to 100 criminals would mean that summoning him to help would be more trouble than it's worth. I'm not going to accommodate Manda's peculiarities like that. I'd rather find some other Snakes who would actually be interested in working with me."

The White Snake Sage took a long draw on her huka while appearing to be in thought. Carl stood still, completely at ease with the silence while waiting on her response. He was amused that she seemed to manipulate chakra to control the huka without hands. Meanwhile, next to him Dakir quivered a bit in what seemed to be silent laughter. No love lost between her and Manda, maybe?

"It speaks well of you that you hold to your duties and obligations so well. I've told Mandy many times that he should drop Orochimaru, traitor to his own people, but he refuses to listen. Mandy feels he gets too many benefits out of the relationship to cut things off. As long as he never betrays the Snake clan, we won't do anything about it, but few among us will actually respond to Orochimaru's summons. It is, what it is."

And it was understandable to Carl. The Snake clan held no loyalty to Konoha or any other human group, aside from a beneficial relationship with their contracted summoners. So while they may think that Orochimaru has little honor, as long as he never attacked or betrayed the Contract, then they wouldn't do anything to him.

"Understandable." Carl nodded agreement with the White Snake Sage. "I came here today to build a relationship with the Snake clan towards the opportunity to learn Senjutsu and anything else you'd care to teach your new summoner. I realize we haven't known each other long, less than a day, but I'm willing to prove myself to you, if needed."

Carl was certainly not worried about doing some hard work to prove himself to the Snake clan in order to get the required teaching necessary to accomplish the scenario. And he had a good feeling about this White Snake Sage. Certainly a much better feeling than Manda had given him.

"Well, now. I think you'll be staying here for some time to learn our martial arts and Senjutsu. When I think you're ready, at any rate." The White Snake Sage spoke casually, as if to an acquaintance of many years. "For now, how about staying with young Dakir here and helping her with her chores and training with her?"

Carl turned to Dakir, to see what she thought of the idea. He didn't even need to ask the question. The look in her red eyes and the eager body language easily told the tale that she was excited about the opportunity. He turned back to the White Snake Sage to see a satisfied look in the White Snake Sage's eyes.

'She seems pleased that I took a moment to confirm with Dakir that she too wanted the proposed partnership, and didn't just jump on the offer like a person who was greedy for power would.' Carl thought in amusement. It was nice to work with smart beings.

"That sounds like a fine idea. So, what's on the agenda for today, Dakir?" Carl smiled at his new personal Snake summons partner.

"Ooh, we can have some fun, Carl. Come on, first I want to introduce you to my friends, then we can go back home and this afternoon mom and dad will be back…"

And Carl followed the happily chatting Dakir out of the cave to meet her friends, leaving behind a smiling giant white snake that seemed quite pleased with how things were going.

* * *

Jario was pretty bored today working gate duty. He was set up in the shade under an awning just inside the massive wooden double doors that was the entrance to Konoha. It was nearly lunch time, and no one had come or gone for hours.

There had been more traffic earlier in the morning. A genin team leaving on a C-rank mission that was escorting a trade caravan on their way to the Land of Rivers. A few groups of jonin on their way to fulfill A-rank missions, and a couple orphan refuges trying to get entrance to the ninja academy.

There were always a few orphans every month, showing up in the hopes they could gain some strength to change their destiny by joining the ninja force of a major village. They usually didn't get too far with that, since most of the time they only made their way over when they were already 12 or older.

Their academy graduates were already 12 when they started on the path of genin, and by that time they had been training most of their life already, having been started on their path by their families. Whether one was from an established ninja clan or civilian family, if they wanted to walk the path of the shinobi, they had to start young. Starting at the age of 12 was already 10 years too late. They would never catch up.

And it was hard to trust that the 12 year olds showing up at their gates weren't spies being planted by other villages attempting to infiltrate Konoha. Even if their background check was impeccable. Hell, most of the time having an impeccable background check was itself a red flag.

Jario scratched his cheek, boredly watching a beetle walking towards the table leg on the ground. Despite his indolent and uncaring body language, he still had his chakra senses occasionally stretching out to see if anyone was approaching the gate.

Which was why Jario was quite surprised to sense five signatures appear out of nowhere 150 hundred meters away on the road, just out of sight of the gate around a bend in the forest.

His sudden stiffening alerted the other gate guard, who also straightened up. They were about to have visitors.

A group of five figures walking along the road appeared. They were walking at civilian pace, but Jario could tell they weren't civilian weak. Not to mention that they were all around seven feet tall.

"Halt. What business do you have in Konoha?"

Jario watched as Sazan questioned the group.

"Greetings. My name is Goram. We are from a newly established trading group and wish to set up trade relations, perhaps a storefront, here in Konoha." The large male with long pointy ears and the slightly purple skin in front answered.

While Sazan was looking at their papers, Jario carefully inspected the group, especially noting the large bow on the back of their leader, and the various swords, halberds, and staves that the group was equipped with.

"Ah, yes. The world is a dangerous place, so we feel it is better to be armed to protect our trading interests." One of the females of the group, seeing Jario's inspections, explained.

"Makes sense." Jario nodded, a bit embarrassed that he had been so open in his information gathering.

"Well, everything seems in order. The recommendation of the Hyuga clan will go far in ensuring your success, I'm sure. But you'll still have to go through the procedures of meeting with the Hokage before you can purchase property and begin business here." Sazan carefully instructed.

"That's perfectly understandable." The large leader of the group smiled at the two guards while Jario sent the signal for an on duty chuunin to come and escort the group to the Hokage tower. It would also alert a team of jonin to shadow the group to stop them if they were up to something.

"So, what you think of them? All pretty big, right?" Once they had departed, Sazan easily sat back on his chair and asked Jario his opinion.

"Yeah, they were. But it's not like we haven't seen stranger ninja clans before." Jario said. "It's just strange, though." The sensor ninja carefully thought out his words. "They felt like they had plenty of energy, but it felt off, somehow. Like it was but wasn't chakra at the same time."

"Huh. Well, who knows what some ninja or samurai ancestor did in the past to make them that way. But as long as they aren't an enemy, it should be fine." Sazan didn't care one way or another, he was too busy thinking of the date he had later with the hot new chuunin, and wondering if he would get lucky.

"Yeah, guess you're right." Jario went back to watching the occasional beetle as it crawled across the ground in front of his awning while extending his senses out from the gate to pickup visitors, infiltrators, or attackers.

* * *

"…and everything looks in order. We here at Konoha look forward to doing business with your Silver Flight Trading Consortium." The third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, smiled as he finished signing the permits for the new trading partners that were recommended by the Hyuga clan. It looked like there would soon be a nice economic boost in Konoha with all the goods they would bring.

"Thank you, Hokage. We appreciate the expedited manner in which this was accomplished." Goram said with a smile as he took the papers.

A few minutes later, after the pleasantries were exchanged, the group of five draconic beings in their Night Elf forms were escorted by another chuunin to the office dealing with real estate. A few hours and tours of properties later, and they were exchanging the local currency for a nicely situated estate they would build a housing complex on, a warehouse, and a storefront property where they would start doing business in Konoha.

It would take some time to have everything ready, so for the time being they made their way to a high class inn that was Lord Carl's property.

"Man, that was boring!" June explosively shouted when they were in their room with silencing wards up. She threw herself onto the couch nearby, sprawled out without a care.

"I gotta say, I'm amazing you didn't explode before that, sis." Jeff chuckled as he seated himself more sedately nearby. "I've never seen you so still."

June stuck here tongue out at her hatching brother in response.

Goram, the one in charge of the mission chuckled at the typical interaction as he made his way over to the nearby table. He pulled out his tablet and began typing up a report for Lord Carl on the success of their mission.

He knew Lord Carl was in the summons realm at the moment, working on gaining the loyalty of the Snakes. But his blood clones were linked to him and knew everything he knew, so it was sufficient to pass on orders.

"I think that ninja at the gates was a sensor ninja." Hilda said from where she was set up, performing maintenance on her swords. Not that they really needed it, but it was a habit that always seemed to calm her when she was feeling antsy.

"Oh? What makes you say that?" Mortic, the final member of their group asked. Aside from Jeff as a Rogue replacing Carl's spot for the mission to begin making themselves an economic powerhouse in Konoha, it was the same five man team that Carl had dominated the PvP circuit in Azeroth.

"The way he was twitchy when he was looking us over tipped me off. We don't have the chakra coils yet that naturally mix up the mental and physical energies needed for chakra, even if we do have large amounts of both those kinds of energies present in our bodies. He must have felt that difference, which made him wonder." Hilda reported.

"Oh, I can't wait for this world to be over!" June moaned. "I can't believe that a simple wording error can make it so we don't automatically get chakra coils when we join Lord Carl in this world! You'd think that so called Jump-chan that set everything up was a lawyer or something, being overly concerned with rules and words!"

"You just want chakra so you can get ahold of that shadow clone technique, don't you?" Jeff teased his sister. "What are you going to do with it? Something naughty?"

June jumped up angrily and shot a weak spark of lighting at her brother.

"Like you're one to talk. I swear, if-"

"Stop!" Goram barked, causing the two shape shifted Dragons to pause mid word. "Remember why we're here. We can't afford for you two to break everything in your fight on Lord Carl's property and give us, give Lord Carl's Silver Flight Trading Consortium, a bad name with Konoha. So Jeff, stop provoking your sister. June, stop flying off the handle at his poor jokes. Got it?"

Two subdued Dragons muttered "yes" to his question.

"Goram?" A moment later Jeff got the attention of the older Dragonspawn.

"Yes?"

"I know I don't get paid per joke, but there was no reason to call my humor poor. I get subsidized from other work, after all." Jeff said.

A chorus of groans and a cushion being thrown at his head was his only response. Which was more than enough for Jeff, as he smirked at the lot of them in triumph, the reward of truly atrocious humor echoing in his ears.

* * *

The clanging of alarms gained Carl's immediately attention. Opening his eyes from his meditation, he glanced over at the suddenly restless form of Dakir.

Over the past few weeks he and his snake partner had been doing training and various chores, similar to D-rank missions from Konoha. Generally speaking, when Dakir wasn't being driven up a wall by her twin brothers, she was good at focusing on the tasks in front of her with enthusiasm and patience.

"What are those alarms?" Carl asked, having not heard the like so far.

"It indicates an enemy raid on the clan." Dakir spoke with a shiver.

"Is there anything we should be doing?" Carl activated his eyes and looked out over the landscape outside the cave for clues as to what was going on.

"No. We're not part of the defense force. We would just get in the way. Let's gather Mikor and Rokim, and hole up on the shelter." Dakir slithered off to gather her twin brothers.

The sibling's parents were out on patrol at the moment, so it was just the four of them. He had met the pair of parents briefly a couple weeks ago. They were both snakes about 70 meters long, and they were generally decent snakes. Unlike Manda, they weren't arrogant and selfish tosspots.

Carl followed along behind Dakir while keeping an eye on his surroundings, ignoring the chatter of the excitable twins. Just when they were about to go into the shelter further underground, he saw what the enemy was that was attacking.

A 45 meter long mongoose appeared in his sight, darting through the shadows as it made its way toward the cave systems that was home of the Snake clan.

Carl momentarily debated with himself what he should do. Technically, he was on the lowest rung of the totem pole in the Snake Clan. He wasn't expected to do much of anything. But he knew he had to gain their trust, and to do that he needed to show he was trustworthy.

His decision was made for him when he watched the mongoose digging its head into one of the caves. He could see the young snake inside cowering back, trying to avoid the sharp teeth and claws of the mongoose. The snake wasn't any older than Dakir. Carl narrowed his eyes in anger.

"Dakir, keep your brothers safe. I'll be back in a bit." Carl said before disappearing from the cave.

"Carl?" Dakir looked around, shocked that her partner Carl had disappeared just like that. "Just what kind of special abilities do you have?"

Carl reappeared in the air just above the mongoose. He activated his Tenseigan Chakra mode, and manipulated gravity to pull the enormous animal away from the cave his head was stuck in, and floated it up in front of him.

"Human!" The mongoose chittered angrily upon setting eyes on him. "Let me go this instant, or I will hunt you down! I will hunt down your family and make them pay!"

Carl could see that the mongoose in front of him really and truly meant it. His senses were telling him that the mongoose in front of him was a bitter and vindictive creature that liked to cause terror in his prey while he played with them.

"In that case, I have no reason to let you go."

Carl grabbed his hand in the air, and his sword Blue Orchid appeared in his hand. Shaping wind chakra into a vibrating blade that extended out from his sword, he slashed once, twice, and a third time.

Using his control of water to shape the blood that spurted out from the butchered mongoose so that it wouldn't land on him, Carl sent a mental command to his ship so that the blood and carcass that he had dismembered was teleported up. He was interested to see if he could create a summons clan in his Dinosaur land by eating it, or if it would simply create giant mongoose that weren't intelligent.

Spreading out his senses, and looking around with his eyes, Carl found a half dozen other mongoose that were running around on a raid, using hit and run tactics to avoid being ganged up on and overcome.

Carl frowned at the figures who were jumping around crazily. The rest of the attacking group didn't feel as nasty as the one he had killed, who took pleasure in other's pain. But they were still attacking his Snakes. So he would have to do something about it.

He apparated over to the nearest attacker and pointed his sword down. Lightning arced down faster than the mongoose could react. It struck the mongoose in the head, shorting out his ability to dodge the attacking snakes for just a moment.

A moment was all they needed; the surrounding snakes latched onto the mongoose with their mouths and tore him apart in several different directions. Carl lifted an eyebrow at the bloody and brutal scene. He then shrugged and teleported to the next attacker. It didn't really matter how they killed the attackers.

The third attacker was a bit bigger than the first two at 55 meters long. It didn't make any difference. Carl tilted himself down, accelerating at mach speeds as he slashed several times in the second it took to fly past him.

The mongoose's head fell off his body, spurting blood everywhere. His limbs then fell apart, dropping his body to the ground. The surrounding snakes hissed a cheer at the sight of the dead enemy.

Carl turned his attention to the next attacker, who was already retreating. Its bloody mouth and claws told the tale that it had already managed to kill some snakes, or at least seriously wound them. He wasn't going to let it get away to brag about its deeds.

Concentrating on the jutsu he wanted, Carl shaped his chakra and released the jutsu in a fraction of a second. The illusion he formed found its target, causing the mongoose to begin running around in circles instead of escaping like it wanted.

He watched as the snakes were now about to intercept it and gang up on it. They bit into the mongoose, wrapping up or twisting hard to tear it apart.

Looking around for any other attackers, Carl was surprised at how quickly they had escaped. He thought about tracking them down to finish them off, but put that thought aside for the moment. He wanted to learn about just what was going on before he plunged into hunting down the attackers.

He flew back over to the defenders that were celebrating a triumphant win.

Looking over the group, he didn't see any snakes that needed healing, so he made his way back to Dakir's cave, where he reunited with his snake partner.

"Carl? What did you do?" Dakir asked when he appeared.

"Yeah, Carl! What did you do?" Mikor piped up.

"Quiet!" Dakir hissed furiously at her siblings, getting them to shut up for a moment.

"I saw some attacking Mongoose and took care of them." Carl replied with a smile before tapping Dakir's head, sending a short memory of the attack to her.

Dakir's eyes grew wide as she saw what Carl was capable of.

"Ooh. You're going to have to teach me some of those techniques, Carl!" She enthusiastically bobbed her head up and down, staring at Carl like he had just become her idol.

"Sure. We'll get you trained up good and proper." Carl agreed.

With the attack over, the group of snakes and Carl wound down once more, returning to their rooms to sleep the rest of the night away.

In the morning, before he and Dakir left to resume their chores and activities, a snake showed up to pass on a message. He was a relatively short one, at only 20 meters long and a deep red color.

"Carl, it's good to meet you. I've heard good things. I'm Monordo. The White Snake Sage had me come by to request your presence this morning. You and Dakir, that is."

"Thanks for passing the message, Monordo." Carl replied.

He and Dakir arrived at the White Snake Sage's cave a short time later.

"Hello, White Snake Sage. I received your message that you wanted to see me?" Carl politely greeted her.

"Thank you for your efforts last night in protecting the Clan." The White Snake Sage began. "It reassures me that you are our summoner, since you are fierce in our defense. As such, I wish to begin your training in our martial arts and, when you prove ready, the Sage Arts of Senjutsu."

"I would be honored." Carl replied with a smile. It looks like things were on track for him with the Snakes.


	96. Naruto 10

Deep underground in certain, out of the way, parts of Konoha, one could find networks of tunnels that hid a great deal of ninja activity. The only shinobi that actively knew about and used the tunnels were the ROOT forces of Danzo Shimura.

The third Hokage probably had a decent suspicion that the ROOT forces were still active and taking on missions. But he trusted his old fellow apprentice and rival enough to not stick his nose in the clandestine business of Danzo, trusting that he would do what was right for Konoha.

That decision, to Carl who was looking at the situation as an outsider, made him think of Hiruzen as something of a naïve idiot.

But it was hard to judge Hiruzen too harshly over his failings in the matter. He had known Danzo for decades and he would have to see hard evidence of Danzo's betrayal of Konoha before he lost that trust. Simply seeing evidence that Danzo was doing unethical things wouldn't really cut it. Assassinations were unethical, but were a normal part of the trade that ninjas engaged in.

No, it would have to be some hard evidence that Danzo was actually a traitor to Konoha that would finally turn Hiruzen against Danzo. That attitude and mindset was part of the camaraderie and trust in their fellow Konoha shinobi that was instilled in them from a young age. The Will of Fire.

So it wasn't any wonder that even the Hokage never knew about all the tunnels that Danzo's ROOT forces had built. The weapons caches, the training grounds, the kidnapped children, some of them from Konoha's own clans, forced into being ROOT recruits. The inhuman training that was designed to kill their emotions and turn the recruits into emotionless killing machines.

No, the Hokage knew nothing about any of these things, ignoring it because of his trust in his "friend". And as a result of the Hokage turning a blind eye, Danzo had carte blanche to do what he wanted and use the methods he liked, no matter how despicable they were.

Deep in the maze of tunnels under Konoha, there was one chamber that was the center of the spider's web. For this week, at least. The needs of operational security had Danzo moving from site to site on a semi-regular basis. The codes and passwords were changed regularly to prevent any enemy from being able to gather intel and penetrate the ROOT organization.

In that chamber at the center of ROOT was an old man whose forehead and right eye was covered in bandages, with black and grey peppered hair sticking spilling out the top. His face was set in a stern expression, and his chin was marred by an X shaped scar. His right arm was kept tucked away in his robe, as if it was a sling for a limb that no longer worked. He sat at a desk piled with reports, a wooden walking stick propped against the desk.

There were two ROOT guards posted in the back of the room. They were dressed in the ANBU gear of black pants, shirt, and ninja sandals, a white vest with a short straight Chokuto sword over their right shoulder, and a white porcelain mask with animal face markings on it.

Danzo's ROOT members dressed the same as the village's ANBU forces because it let ROOT ninja act more openly in and around Konoha. If the Konoha ninja thought they were ANBU special forces, they could operate easily in the open when sneaking around would contrarily gain them unwanted attention.

Danzo was reading through some reports when something pinged on his awareness. Without letting on that he was aware of something wrong, he scanned the room while continuing to appear to be reading reports.

'The two guards are in their positions and alert. The air flow from the vents is normal; nothing is creeping through them. There are no unusual scents present indicating any gasses are being pumped in. The chakra reactive paper above the unimportant door isn't indicating anyone present using a stealth jutsu. The brazier in the corner…'

'Wait, the unimportant door?' Danzo's attention snapped back to the door in time to hear the guards outside the door collapse, unconscious.

Behind the cover of the desk, Danzo dropped a kunai from his left sleeve. Imbuing it with wind chakra to increase the sharpness and cutting area, he felt for the wind currents in the room. Roughly judging where the intruder was, he smoothly stood and threw the kunai at the same time.

Danzo's sudden attack brought the ROOT guards inside the room to full alert. While the kunai was flying towards its target, the guards unsheathed their Chokutos, only to stare in disbelief as the kunai froze in air.

A moment later, the stealth that Carl had been employing faded away, showing him as a five foot eight man with short brown hair, brown eyes, and dressed in standard black ninja gear, holding the kunai by its handle. Carl had employed a chakra based shape shifting technique to appear other than the heir of the Hyuga that he was, even if he was only a blood clone.

"Well, I'm impressed with your paranoia, there, Danzo." Carl chuckled.

A moment later two flashes of light behind the two ROOT guards heralded the appearance of two more blood clones shape shifted to look like a triplet of the first Carl's shape shifted form. Before the guards could react, the clones had placed seals on them that shut down their consciousness and blocked their chakra.

All three Carl's faced Danzo, who took a ready stance. He radiated supreme confidence that he would turn the tables on his three attackers.

Without warning, black seal script radiated from the feet of the three clones across the floor. Danzo started making hand signs while sucking in a great deal of air, intending to launch some piercing wind attacks at the three.

Before he could finish, the seal script from each of the three met up and surrounded Danzo, creating a blue silver barrier. A moment later, Danzo breathed out a shotgun of piercing wind attacks which impacted harmlessly on the barrier.

"Who…are…you…?" Danzo asked as he began staggering woozily. "Why…?"

"You're in no position to ask questions, now are you, Danzo?" The Carl that first appeared to Danzo asked in an amused tone of voice as Danzo collapsed to his knees, struggling to remain conscious. "Well. That's that."

Danzo passed out a moment later.

"B, see if he's really passed out, or if he's just faking." The first clone said.

"Yeah, sure, lazy A." B told the clone that was designated as A for the mission as he made a shadow clone that appeared inside the barrier. The clone that was labeled as C just sat back, amused at himself. They were all Carl, after all.

A few moments with a diagnostic jutsu confirmed that Danzo was passed out. The shadow clone dispelled a moment later.

A, B, and C dropped the barrier and swiftly moved to secure Danzo. First, they stripped the man who reminded Carl of Senator Kinsey in how he was determined to make more enemies for his homeland than he did allies.

"Well, gotta give the old man credit, he's not leaving home without being armed." C stated with humor as they found the numerous storage seals hidden in his clothes that were packed with various ninja tools.

"Even the old ninja of the village are pretty fit." A joked after they stripped the old man and saw that he was still packed with corded muscle.

"Yeah, old ninjas don't get that way by being pushovers." B agreed. "Look at that disgusting arm. The cartoon didn't do justice for just how disgusting and monstrous Orochimaru's experiments were."

The arm in question was the hidden right arm of Danzo. It was corpse white and nightmare fuel because of the face on his shoulder and the twisted flesh/wood texture. Orochimaru had dug up the corpse of Hashimaru Senju, the first Hokage, who had the wood release bloodline. They had injected and grown those cells in Danzo's arm, in the hopes of implanting Sharingan eyes from the Uchihas so Danzo could use them for a technique called Izanagi.

Izanagi was basically an extra life at the cost of one of the Sharingan eyes. It was based on the Creation of All Things Technique used by the Sage of Six Paths to turn imagination into reality. When Izanagi was used, they basically used the Yin release to cast a genjutsu on reality. Their body that suffered a killing blow would fade away, and their undamaged body would appear in a nearby location.

In the original show, Sasuke killed Danzo a dozen times over due to all the Sharingan eyes Danzo had implanted in his arm. Carl had preempted the old war hawk's ability to use Izanagi by destroying all the Sharingan eyes Danzo and his ROOT ninja took from the massacred clan, so this fight was a lot less annoying than it could have been.

And now all those Uchiha children that he saved were being raised in New Uzushio by the Silver Dragon Flight. Some of the older children, those that were almost eight, had to undergo some rigorous deprogramming. They had spent too much time with their clan, learning about a lust for power and holding on to their hate.

They were being watched and taught how to be decent human beings without being arrogant. Some of the kids were too far gone, and had required obliviations and de-aging so they could be raised again from scratch without the hater-ade the Uchiha clan had them constantly drinking.

"Well, let's get this guy situated." A stated as he placed Danzo face down on the ground.

B pulled out some inscription materials and began inking the slave inscription on Danzo's back. A secured the door and then kept watch over Danzo, while C made sure the ROOT guards were out for the count.

Just like with Senator Kinsey in the Stargate world, Carl felt it was appropriate to enslave Danzo and use him to attempt to undo all the evils he had done. It always seemed to be the most torturous part of their punishment for control freak evil people like them: not being in control and being forced to do things the not-evil way.

Kinsey, for example, had almost had a stroke when they shared out information about the Stargate and started working with the other nations. He was especially incensed when they opened up the technology they had found so far for everyone to share and innovate with.

He totally didn't care that with those actions the Stargate Program had access to so many more scientists, materials, and extra budget from the other nations than they could dream of sneaking through the black ops budgets. For him, the idea of sharing his toys and profiting even more along with making friends and allies seemed to be anathema to his very being.

Kinsey's soul seemed to yearn for power, for control, for profit. And it only made him happy if those things were his exclusively. He wasn't winning unless someone else was losing.

Danzo seemed to be cut from a similar mold. Rather than making allies, or growing stronger with the allies they have, he constantly sought to undermine all the enemies of Konoha. And by enemies, Danzo meant everyone who wasn't Konoha. So even Konoha's allies were negatively affected by Danzo's actions.

After digging through Danzo's records through the probes Carl sent, he discovered quite a few of Danzo's despicable actions. For example, the ninja village of Suna, over in the Land of Wind, was allies with Konoha. But despite them being allies, Danzo had been running operations in the Land of Wind, carefully assassinating various nobles and politicians in the court of the Wind Daimyo. He was then able to influence the replacements in the government so that a lot of business contracts the Court had with Suna was taken from Suna and given to Konoha.

These actions led to a huge cut in the ninja budget of Suna. Which created a great amount of resentment in Suna for Konoha. Which left Suna open to the manipulations of Orochimaru, which, in the future, would lead to the invasion of Konoha by the joint forces of Suna and Sound during the Chuunin finals when Naruto was a genin.

And all that was enabled by Danzo's short sighted and traitorous actions. It didn't matter that he thought he was doing right by Konoha by securing that extra funding. He was betraying an ally of Konoha, which was a betrayal of Konoha. Not to mention his actions directly led to an ally attacking Konoha because they were at the end of their rope.

B finished inscribing the slave seals onto Danzo. With a flash of light, they sunk into his bare back, continuing to glow slightly for a short time before fading to nothing, leaving his back once more bare.

"Okay, it's done." B said as he flipped Danzo onto his back.

"C, how are the ROOT guards?" A asked.

"I've Obliviated their memory of the attack and put a mild Confundus Charm on them so they won't notice they were unconscious for a time." C reported.

"Good." A stated. "Let's wake up Danzo here and give him his marching orders. Go ahead and get the station for processing the ROOT members set up, B and C."

"Roger that blue leader." B saluted as he began pulling out the needed equipment from their dimensional storage.

"Roger, roger." C joined B in setting up their ROOT deprogramming station.

They would have to do this job carefully over the next few weeks. Ninjas were squirrely and paranoid at the best of times. And if Danzo suddenly called in all of his ROOT agents at one time, they would be highly suspicious that he was compromised and might flee like rabbits.

So they would have to do it a bit at a time as the various ROOT agents came in to report on their missions. They would remove the seal that was on the ninja's tongues that would ensure their silence by exploding if they tried to betray Danzo.

Then they would get in their heads and deconstruct the conditioning that made them loyal and emotionless killing drones of Danzo.

Once the Carl's had caught all the ROOT agents, they may have to do the same for them that they did for some of the Uchiha kids, namely full Obliviations and de-aging so they could grow up to not be a hotbed of psychological issues, believing themselves to simply be Tools, or monsters, or whatever kind of emotionless killing machines that Danzo turned them into.

It was a good thing he had brought in plenty of caretakers and babysitters to New Uzushio. He would likely have a large influx of babies in the next couple of months.

A cast an Ennervate on Danzo, waking him up. He smiled a bit at seeing Danzo greatly desiring to do _something_, but he was held motionless by the slave seal.

"Good to see you awake Danzo. I'm sure you have a lot of questions. Well, unfortunately you won't be getting answers anytime soon, if ever. But you are now our good little soldier boy. Your first order is that you will inform no one of us or what we have done to you. Not by word, gesture, intimation, writing, or any other means of communication. Even if a Yamanaka were to enter your mind, you would hide these memories from them. Your second order is…"

They spent some time with Danzo, setting up how he would bring in the ROOT members for deprogramming and what he would be allowed to do for his village in the future. Needless to say, Danzo thought he was already in Hell.

* * *

Hiruzen sat back in his chair in the Hokage's tower as he stuffed tobacco into his pipe. His paperwork wasn't done, but he was taking a break for a moment. Igniting a small flame on his index finger to light his pipe, he was sorely tempted to just use the jutsu to burn the never depleting piles of paperwork instead.

Momentarily mastering his impulse, he was quite used to the temptation after all these years of battle with the paperwork monster, he moved the flame to his pipe while gently puffing on the stem, letting out small puffs of smoke as he got a good ember going.

While relaxing on his break, he looked out one of the windows of his office. The Hokage's tower was a round multi story tower where each level was slightly smaller in radius than the one below it. He was on the fourth floor, each floor being at least 14 feet tall. His office, being on the top floor, had three windows he could look out.

The window he was currently looking out had a view of the mountain where the faces of the Hokage were carved. Hiruzen idly thought back on the many years of his life. When he was a genin his jonin instructor was Tobirama Senju, back before he became the second Hokage. His teammates Homura Mitokado and Koharu Utatane were now his advisors. They had all gotten old. Time had marched on, unrelenting.

It really was amazing that all three of them were still alive. The odds of a single ninja living to their age were already high, much less having an entire genin team survive to their age. But his teammates had been growing more and more distant, more willing to go against his decisions in support of Danzo. He still felt a faint sense of outrage and betrayal over that. That they seemed to be abandoning him for his "rival".

The rift from his friend Danzo started years ago, back when he showed he was quite skilled in the ninja arts, which gained him additional tutelage from the first Hokage, Hashirama Senju. Ever since Danzo let jealousy of his opportunity move him, they became distanced, with Danzo always trying to beat him at everything.

Before he could finish his pipe in peace, the sounds of angry civilians stomping up the stairs leading to the reception outside his office drifted into his ears. They were loudly complaining about the "brat", and how horrible she was.

Hiruzen sighed. He was getting too old for this shit.

The door opened and his secretary poked her head in.

"Hokage, your next appointment, the Mikong Merchant Association is here a bit early. They are very agitated and demand to see you now, even though their appointment is in 10 minutes. What would you like to do?" Ruriho tentatively asked.

Hiruzen sighed again. He would have to rotate her out of the secretary position, if she couldn't even handle telling a bunch of angry civilians to wait until their appointment.

"Have them wait until the appointed time." He calmly stated, only for the Mikong Merchant Association members to push his secretary aside and slam the doors to his office open belligerently. Apparently they believed they had enough clout and economic power in Konoha to act unruly in front of him. That just wouldn't do at all.

Hiruzen made a hand gesture to his secretary to retreat, definitely have to replace her if she couldn't even keep a bunch of civilians out. He calmly puffed on his pipe while the five appointed representatives for the Association stomped in and stood arrogantly glaring down at him where he was still seated at his desk. They correctly assumed that his not standing to greet them was a slight on their importance and standing.

The leader of the group angrily opened their mouth, but before he could get a word out, Hiruzen radiated Killing Intent, causing the group to freeze in place and shiver in fear. Their anger disappeared like a fart in the wind, sweat sprung out on their foreheads and backs as they came to the abrupt realization that they stood before a man who could kill all five of them in a second and that he was perilously close to doing so.

Satisfied that he had put them in their place, Hiruzen retracted his KI a bit, letting them actually breathe again. He kept it up to a low level though, to keep them uneasy so they wouldn't become complacent.

"So, what does the Mikong Merchant Association have for the office of the Hokage at this time?" Hiruzen coldly asked.

The group of merchants gulped in fright. The encounter with the Hokage hadn't gone at all like they had planned. They had thought that by showing up early and forcing their way in, using their economic power, that they would be able to dominate the meeting, forcing the Hokage to see things their way and do as they wished. But that old man was scary, and they suddenly realized he was a ninja that could easily kill them all. It made them a lot more nervous and tentative than they wanted.

"Lord Hokage, we…we brought a petition to you to punish the demo – er…the Uzumaki brat that is disrupting the marketplace, and ruining the economic livelihood of Konoha. It – er.. she…" the spokesman changed the way he described Naruko based on the glare he was getting from the Hokage. "She has been constantly making a mess of the marketplace, leading to less trade being done, which is hurting the economic lifeblood of Konoha. If the disruptions aren't stopped and she be punished, then the Mikong Merchant Association will have no choice but to raise the cost of goods, as a result of the lost revenue."

The spokesperson finished, gulping nervously as he was stared at by the Hokage like he was a bug. Hiruzen took his time staring at the man, unnerving him. He finally placed his pipe down on the pipe stand on his desk. He folded his hand on the desk in front of him and contemplated how he would cut this man off at the knees, verbally. Even though he was tempted to do so literally, he had plenty of practice in withstanding the temptation.

"Do you take me, the Hokage, for a fool, Mohei?" Hiruzen asked in a deadly but quiet voice.

"Lord Hokage…?" The leader of the Association, Mohei, gulped even more nervously.

"You must take me for a fool if you think you can get away with your pitiful scheme." Hiruzen continued as if he wasn't even listening to the man's words. "My ninja have investigated the matter, and I find it very interesting that those merchants who are targeted by these pranks are the same ones who either overcharged Naruko Uzumaki, or who have assaulted her in one way or another.

"Take, for example, Aragoro, the produce seller. He is constantly throwing tomatoes at an Academy Student who will one day be one of my ninjas. No matter how many times he is pranked in retaliation for his assault on one of my future ninjas, he still hasn't learned how to reign in his emotions and stop being an idiot. And every one of you who has been targeted for a prank bears a similar culpability."

Hiruzen stopped talking for a moment to flare a bit of KI to keep them off balance and frightened. It was unethical of a ninja of Konoha to attack one of their civilians. But using a bit of KI to keep them off balance and better able to follow the directions of a ninja that would save their lives was acceptable.

"And now, here you are, in my office, threatening me with economic punishment to the trade of Konoha in order to try to force me to punish an Academy student, one of my future ninja, who has only been retaliating in kind for the actions you yourselves have started. You threaten to raise the prices of goods that my ninja pay for, making their lives that much harder. Those same ninja who are keeping you safe and fat and happy here in Konoha. And all because you can't learn this simple lesson: stop targeting Naruko Uzumaki and you'll no longer be a victim of a prank."

Hiruzen paused for a moment to enjoy the looks of dismay on their faces. It felt quite good. So often he had to force himself to be diplomatic and polite, even when someone infuriated him. But there was nothing stopping him from putting these idiots in their place, and it felt good.

"Petition denied." Hiruzen flatly stated while glaring at the group of five. "And as punishment for your failed attempt at strong arm persuasion, I will withdraw my protection from your group. I know that you've only been as dominant in the Konoha market as you have because you have had the backing of the Hokage office, which made other economic associations wary of stepping on your toes. This was set up in thanks for the help you have provided to Konoha in the past during times of war."

The group's faces paled in fear at the Hokage's announcement. If they weren't especially, their enemies would be able to band together and completely hurt their bottom line, their profit.

"But I see that you've grown beyond a need to have the Hokage's office protecting you and your interests, if you feel comfortable enough to come to me and make unreasonable demands like you have been. From here on out, you will have to sink or swim on your own. Good luck."

Hiruzen then turned away from the group of five who looked quite devastated at the news.

"No, Lord Hokage! Please reconsider your decision! Please! We have families and workers that rely on us! We need the stable income from Konoha to provide for them! Please!" Mohei fell to his knees, followed by the other four representatives as they all bowed in supplication and begged for the Hokage to reverse his decision.

Hiruzen knew they had been arrogant for some time, and had been making unnecessary enemies for themselves by their actions. It was their own fault that they took the favor of the Hokage's office for past actions as carte blanche to act in an arrogant way, making enemies left and right for themselves.

"I'm afraid it's too late, Mohei. You had plenty of opportunity to come to your senses. Why do you think so many of the pranks succeeded in the first place? It's because you needed a lesson to temper your arrogance. It's too late to regret now. Don't worry, just because I've withdrawn my support doesn't mean I'll help your enemies. You'll just have to sink or swim on your own. ANBU! Remove these men from my office." Hiruzen ordered.

A few minutes later, Hiruzen's office was empty once more. He had his pipe in hand again and was relighting it as he stared out the window.

'Now that my interrupted break has resumed, what was I thinking about?' Hiruzen mused as he looked out the window. He saw the face of the fourth Hokage on the mountain. 'Ah, Minato. You and Kushina would be so proud of your daughter. She's a ball of sunshine and happiness that brings joy to this old man's heart. If only you could see the pranks she's pulled, you in particular, Kushina, would be so proud.'

Hiruzen continued to puff on his pipe as he enjoyed his few minutes of peace before he had to go back to war with his nemesis, Paperwork.

* * *

The weeks passed by, and in Konoha many things were changing. Not so much on the surface, but the underneath the underneath was experiencing a great deal of upheaval and change.

The first big change was the operations of ROOT. When Carl and his people in the Flight had been reviewing the actions of Danzo and his illegal organization, they had come to the conclusion that they couldn't just shut everything down at once.

Despite Danzo's horrible job of making enemies wherever he went, he had brought a sort of stability to the balance of power in Konoha and the surrounding Ninja villages.

'But now that I think of it, Danzo is like the anti-Naruto.' Carl thought one day shortly after having subdued and enslaved Danzo. 'Naruto would make friends everywhere he goes, but Danzo does the opposite!'

If Carl had Danzo pull all the ROOT ninja at once from the field, there would be a vacuum. They would also likely leave behind evidence that would point towards Konoha. So he would have to slowly alter the way the organization operated and begin pulling them out a bit at a time. A gradual enough transition would allow them to withdraw without pointing their enemies straight at them.

But at the same time, Carl didn't want to trust in the slippery and sneaky Danzo to be his link to the organization. So, he had Danzo bring the ROOT members in a bit at a time so that the movement of so many wouldn't alarm anyone.

Carl then replaced their little exploding seal on their tongues with magically bound contracts and seals to ensure their loyalty to him, even above Danzo, and they then began implementing the withdrawal of their operations and forces from the surrounding nations and back to Konoha.

Even with the withdrawal of ROOT forces, Carl's intel gathering was top notch, due to his technology and invisible probes that kept track of everything. So Konoha's intelligence gathering organization that got intel from ROOT didn't even notice a difference.

And as the ROOT agents were pulled from the field as they could, they completed the deprogramming treatment in one of two ways. Those who could handle their new lives and learn to live with their past were immediately assigned new duties. Otherwise, if they were too broken inside from Danzo's "training", then they were de-aged and sent to New Uzushio to grow up again.

Carl had a number of different places he needed personnel working for him. In Konoha, under the direction of Goram and Mortic, they started economic warfare. The goal was to drive the merchants to sell their businesses to the Silver Flight Consortium, who would then turn around and hire those they bought the businesses from.

He figured that by the time he was ready to exit from this world, he should have most all of Konoha beholden to him in one way or another. Before his exit, he would formally make all his properties a subsidiary of his Ninja Clan, the Hyuga. That way he could, hopefully, take all of Konoha and its people with him in the jump.

It was very ambitious, since a lot of the ninja clans of Konoha would no doubt fight him if they knew his end goal right now. Having one of the clans attempt to make all the other clans subservient to him would offend their pride and dignity.

Carl was sure he could offer enough benefits to each clan that, when the time was right, would entice them to at least make temporary concessions. And once they were labeled by the jump chain as his followers, no matter how temporary, it would ensure that his loyalty perks kicked in and they would be less likely to jump ship, especially if they began following him from world to world.

He was quite pleased with the reports that Goram sent him on the state of the business empire they were building for him. It wasn't something that he could have done easily before he enslaved Danzo. That crazy, paranoid, evil aligned man would have taken one look at his Consortium buying up properties and business in Konoha and immediately attacked. At the very least Danzo would have tried to assassinate Carl's people and replace them in order to take control of the Consortium. Damned control freaks were never happy when they weren't in charge of everything they could get their hands on.

And while all this underground warfare and shaking up of ROOT forces was happening, Carl and his friends were finishing up their first year of Academy training.

They had all been disappointed a bit in how easy the curriculum was. They had to find sneaky ways to continue training themselves so they actually improved, since the easy curriculum designed to allow weak civilians to shine wouldn't help them get any stronger.

The gravity and resistance belts that Carl gifted his friends with made a huge difference in their ability to get a good workout, even though a lot of their time was wasted in the classroom.

At the end of the year, Carl submitted a report of how the Academy was being run into the ground by the civilian concerns to the Hokage in his role as an ANBU member. While he wasn't too concerned about his close friends being screwed over by the curriculum, since he had found ways to counter it, he was very concerned about the future of the ninja Academy program in general.

If the curriculum wasn't changed now, then more and more graduates wouldn't last long as genin, if they could even pass a jonin's final test for their genin team.

Carl's report also detailed the declining mental health of Sasuke Uchiha. He urged the Hokage to force the boy to get some serious psychological help. Over the course of the year, Carl had watched as Sasuke had refused all offers of help training from him and his friends in the attempt to get him folded into their teams. He had continued to focus his mind on growing his hate, rage, and arrogance.

At the rate he was going, Carl wasn't even sure if the Uchiha brat wouldn't kill his own teammates in some crazy bid for power at some point in the future. He certainly wasn't stable enough for work on a genin team, that was for sure.

While Carl could do a great deal more to shape everything to his design, he decided to leave well enough alone, for now. He had time to finish arranging everything before leaving the world.

The matter of the academy curriculum was important, but not life threatening for now since his friends were all training up very well. He would be interested to see if Hiruzen actually did something about the academy when it was brought to his attention.

And the matter of Sasuke was concerning, but he didn't care enough for the boy to do anything drastic to "save" him. He would have to basically rewrite Sasuke's whole personality and memories to change him. He had seen what resulted of indulging Sasuke and chasing after him when Naruto, in the original story, kept trying to "save" his friend. Sasuke went off the deep end and tried killing everyone who showed concern for him, or were weak, or whatever. If Sasuke went that route, he would just let him die or kill him personally when he proved to be a traitor.

With the closing ceremony of the year finished, Carl threw his various concerns aside and focused on enjoying the family celebration they had that evening. His friends had agreed to get together the next day to have a party all together to celebrate. Then they would continue to regularly train during the break before the next academy year started.

* * *

Carl was sitting cross legged in a cave with his eyes closed, an enormous white snake watching over him with narrowed eyes. He was following the directions the White Snake Sage had given him, and was utilizing the Snake clan method of gathering natural energy and mixing it with his chakra.

He found that it was actually very easy for him because he had plenty of experience in using nature energy from the Great Way of the Buddha technique. It was just a little bit different because he mixed the nature energy with his chakra instead of using it to fortify and strengthen his body.

A moment later a dark purple colored horizontal band appeared on his face, circling his head at his eye level. Opening his eyes when he felt the success of the technique indicating that he entered Sage Mode showed that his eyes had changed color to an amber yellow color, and his dark pupils had changed shape to a vertical slit, similar to a snake's eyes.

He immediately noticed that he could still see the 359 degrees, so his Byakugan wasn't compromised by Snake Sage mode. The combined chakra and nature energy that flowed through him was senjutsu energy, which was much more potent than chakra alone. Using senjutsu energy and being in Sage Mode greatly enhanced his physical strength, speed, and endurance, as long as he had enough nature energy stored to remain in the Sage Mode.

Most people could only spend a few minutes in Sage Mode until their stored up nature energy ran out. And since most people had to remain perfectly still while gathering nature energy, they could only fight in Sage Mode for a very limited time.

In the show, Naruto overcame that limitation of Sage Mode by having several clones sit around and gather nature energy, then pop when he needed them to, sending their stored nature energy to him. Jiraiya had used the two elder toads, Fukasaku and Shima, having them sit on his shoulders while channeling nature energy to him.

Carl had found that he could store up plenty of nature energy in his inner world, along with all the other types of energy he could store. That allowed him to remain in Sage Mode for as long as he wanted, really. His reserve of Nature energy was enormous, and he could use shadow clones to constantly refill the energy so he never had to stop using Sage Mode, if he didn't want to.

"Now that you've entered Sage Mode, try applying the energy to your Tenseigan." The White Snake Sage hissed at him. Carl nodded in acknowledgment.

He had already flipped the switch to transform his eyes from the normal Byakugan to the Tenseigan. Now he carefully sent the senjutsu energy to his eyes. He could feel the Tenseigan Chakra Mode activate. His body filled up and radiated Silver-Blue energy. 14 black Truth Seeking Balls appeared behind him, hovering in air, waiting for him to use them.

A smile appeared on his face, difficult to see beyond the glowing energy. He felt like the Tenseigan Chakra Mode, when activated with senjutsu energy as opposed to just normal chakra, was an order of magnitude stronger. He had to clamp down on the desire to start using his abilities on his surroundings just because he could. It was a _natural_ high, excuse the pun.

"Amazing…" The White Snake Sage hissed in satisfaction to see Carl's power.

"I feel…giddy. And I wanted to immediately start testing my power and abilities on my surrounding, even though I knew it would wreck your home." Carl commented.

"Yes, such a sudden influx of power that one wasn't used to would be likely to affect one's emotions like that. It's good that you mastered those impulses, I would hate to have to move once more." The snake laughed in amusement concerning the first time he had gone into Sage Mode and played around, destroying part of a nearby cliff face.

"I apologized for that already and rebuilt the cliff with Earth manipulation, when are you going to let it go?" Carl groaned.

"When it stops bothering you that I mention it." The snake shot back.

"Is it safe to come and look?" Dakir called from outside the cave.

"Yes. It's a success, child. Come and look at what your partner is capable of." The white snake hissed back.

Dakir entered the cave and saw Carl glowing with power, her eyes grew wide in excitement at seeing him succeed so quickly, and not destroying anything.

"Congratulations, Carl." Dakir slithered closer, tasting the air around him and the power he radiated.

"Thanks, Dakir." Carl replied with a smile.

Over the past several months he had been spending a lot of time with the young snake, doing the equivalent of D-rank missions with her around the Snake clan so he could get to know the clan, show them his dedication and hard work, and also get in plenty of training time in the Snake style martial arts. The Snake style depended on a flexible body, sharp and fast strikes, quick recoil for defense against strikes, and plenty of grappling in a very flexible style.

It hadn't taken him long to learn the basics of the style due to his learning perks, and he spent plenty of time training with Dakir to help her get better and stronger. The idea behind their partnership was that he would be her lifelong partner so that the two of them could help each other grow stronger all their life. When Dakir matured she would be a very strong member of the Snake clan that would improve their standing among the other summons clans.

And now that he had proven he had mastered Sage Mode, it was time for him to move on and find the next summons clan who were vassals to the Divine Dragon clan. His people back in the regular world had found him the Chameleon summoning contract hidden in a cave in the Land of Bells, which was located nearly on the other side of the world, across the Wani Ocean. He would soon return from the land of summons so he could sign the contract and start training with the Chameleons.

But for today…

"Come on outside, Carl! Your farewell party can't start without you!" Dakir called out as she coiled around him.

Releasing the Tenseigan Chakra Mode, and then Sage Mode, he stood up and snickered at his friend's excitement for a party. He kept his Tenseigan eyes active, rather than letting them revert to the regular Byakugan, just because he could.

"Well, then. Let's go have a party!" Carl raced Dakir outside the cave while the White Snake Sage looked on in satisfaction.

"Definitely a much better decision to train him than that Orochimaru brat. And a year of 'missions' has allowed us to get to know him much better. I'll have to make that part of the clan's laws for how we interact with our future summoners." The White Snake Sage manipulated the mouthpiece of her huka to float to her mouth. She took in a deep lungful of smoke and held it for a moment before exhaling.


	97. Naruto 11

The moonlight shone down on the desert village's empty streets. It was surprisingly chilly at night, considering how hot the day was.

There weren't a whole lot of people who moved about in the middle of the night in the ninja village of Suna, only those on official business were out and about after curfew. But those individuals stayed far away from one building in particular. They often looked at it in fear as they ran past, eager to get away and perform their duties elsewhere.

_Anywhere_ else.

In one of the windows of that very tall building that instilled so much fear, a young redheaded child sat on the window ledge staring out at the moon high in the sky with a very blank expression.

He had been mostly alone as long as he could remember. Even his older brother and sister were prohibited by their father from getting too close to him. Whenever someone got close, his sand killed them.

Ever since he could remember, he could control the sand around him. He could make it hover, form into shapes, and have the shapes dance around in the air to keep him entertained. It was his favorite toy.

But when someone tried to get close to him, especially when they were _nice_, his sand reacted angrily and tried to kill them. He couldn't control it when that happened, so he was always alone, despite how nice his sand was the rest of the time.

He didn't like the smell when that happened, or the yelling that followed. But he was starting to get used to it, despite still hating it.

He didn't understand what was happening when he was much younger. But now he did. And he was still helpless to change anything, even though he understood what was happening.

He couldn't stop his sand from killing. He couldn't stop the fearful eyes from looking at him like they did.

He didn't like being all alone because of his sand, but there was nothing he could do about it. At least he still had his sand to accompany him. It was the only thing that never left him.

"You don't have that vibe that says you're afraid of me, or want to hurt me. Who are you?" Gaara suddenly asked, turning around so Carl could see his pale green eyes. Gaara's eyes were surrounding by a circle of black, caused by his extreme insomnia. Because whenever Gaara slept, the one tail demon sand raccoon, Shukaku, was able to take control of his body and rampage around.

Shukaku was also the reason that Gaara's sand went out of control and tried to kill anyone close to him. The seal that acted as the prison for the one tailed beast wasn't very good, allowing the sand raccoon to act through Gaara, to a limited extent, and based on circumstances.

"I'm actually here to help you. My name is Carl." Carl stepped out of the shadows. He was in his nine year old Hyuga form, about the same age as the redhead. Carl smiled warmly at the redheaded kid in front of him, the red tattoo of the symbol for 'love' on his forehead. "And I wouldn't mind being your friend, either."

Gaara flinched a bit at Carl's declaration before glaring at him a bit while inspecting him intensely.

Gaara was a few inches shorter than Carl and dressed in loose desert clothes. Carl himself was wearing a dark green kimono style shirt and black trousers along with the black sandals. He stood casually, with his hands stretched behind his head.

"How could you possibly help me? I have to be alone, it's the only way. Getting close to a monster means you die. I am a monster." Gaara almost seemed to be talking to himself at that point, looking down at the floor with a face of despair.

Carl tsked to himself inside, seeing that Gaara had already been royally messed up. He felt a bit guilty that he hadn't come earlier to help this kid who, in the original story, would have been saved by Naruto and become one of his staunchest friends.

"…and I can only find the meaning of my existence in killing." Gaara clutched his head in pain as he spoke in a monotone, the anguish clear in his voice despite the dead tone he was speaking in.

He didn't sound like he really believed, so that was something. He was evidently repeating a mix of what he heard people say about him, and what Shukaku whispered in his mind. Carl was more determined than ever to fix this boy now, instead of a few years later.

'Looks like Gaara has already gone through some of the bullshit his father forced on him to try to turn him into a weapon.' Carl sighed as he saw the sand around Gaara reacting to his troubled emotions, rising up to attack. Seal script written in black ink radiated from Carl's feet and surrounded Gaara. The sand suddenly fell inert, leaving Gaara standing there with a blank look on his face, stunned at the sudden end of the mental pain and yelling from the one tail.

"Sleep, Gaara. Everything will be better when you wake." Carl said in a kindly voice. Gaara fell unconscious, but Carl caught him before he hit the floor with his telekinesis. His seal had not only put Gaara to sleep, but the Shukaku inside him as well, so that it wouldn't take over and run rampant while Carl was trying to help Gaara.

He stripped off the young boy's shirt and channeled some chakra through his hands and into Gaara's body so that the seal that Suna had used to imprison the one tail inside him would be revealed. Carl spent a few moments inspecting the seal. A frown tugged the corners of his mouth downward at the sight of the absolutely shoddy work they had done.

'There really are no Seal Masters in this world.' Carl sighed in realization. Naruko's seal had been created by the Shinigami in exchange for her father's soul. Which meant it was a master class work of art in compared to this…bullshit, on Gaara. 'Well, time to fix this.'

Carl had already set up an SEP field and protective wards around where Gaara was, so he opened up his Warehouse portal before carrying Gaara through to a large enough workspace inside the cave home he made in his dinosaur continent. He pulled out an ink pot and brush and finished drawing the already prepared seals on the floor around Gaara's form. Many of the seals he could use in combat were easy enough to make without ink and brush. But the more complex ones for doing big things required the more traditional methods.

Or at least they were easier to do the traditional way, rather than spending the mental energy to keep the incredibly complex seals in mind while tracing the chakra energy in the world around him, all while keeping from making a single mistake. It was easier to ink everything in, and double check, before activating the seal and hoping for the best.

In order to fix Gaara's seal without releasing the one tail, Carl had to create a sort of program in seals that would act on modifying and fortifying Gaara's seal to make a buffer that would hold the One Tail while it was being transferred between seals.

Afterwards Gaara would still have access to his amazing sand controlling abilities that being Shukaku's container afforded him, but he would be the one in charge. Shukaku would no longer be able to whisper his words of madness in Gaara's mind, and he wouldn't be able to take control when Gaara slept, either.

Carl had also added the modifications to the seal that Shukaku's demon chakra would slowly seep into Gaara's chakra coils in a way that would help build Gaara's physique and chakra reserves, while the regeneration seals that he added to Gaara's seal would keep him healthy and healing from the regular influx of corrosive demon chakra. A similar schema was present in Naruko's seal.

A few moments later, Carl had double and triple checked that his seal based program written out on the floor in a large circle around where Gaara lay was correct. With an application of chakra, the seals activated. All the seal script that Carl had written glowed with the influx of chakra, then the writing began shrinking and crawling across the floor towards Gaara's form, infusing into the prison seal on Gaara's stomach.

Several minutes later, the modification was complete. The One Tail had been transferred from the old seal to the new. Carl spent some time inspecting the seal, making sure the job was done right. He was finally satisfied with his work, and put Gaara's shirt back on him before carrying him back out to his room.

Looking around at Gaara's room that didn't have a bed, since Suna didn't want to encourage him to sleep, Carl shook his head in disappointment. There wasn't even any decorations, either.

That was no way to live. Carl spent some time remodeling a bit, adding a bed and several other things that young ninja boys might like. He then warded Gaara's room to make it a bit more secure for him to rest in without being disturbed by anyone.

He left a letter for Gaara to explain to him what he'd done to his seal so that he would know he could live normally now, instead of like a monster. He assumed that Gaara would need some time to come to terms with his new reality.

Carl made sure to let Gaara know that he would come back regularly to check in on his new friend. That they were friends, and that life would only get better for Gaara from here on out.

He spent a moment looking down at the kid before departing. He really liked the friendship that developed between Naruto and Gaara in the show. He'd have to introduce Gaara and his siblings to his friends some time.

Definitely before the chuunin exam. In the meantime, he would come back regularly to help out on sot that Gaara could change from a psychopathic killer in training into a regular ninja boy.

Sure, they both trained to kill. But one was well adjusted and could have a decent life with friends and family. The other would always be suffering alone. And that sometimes made all the difference.

Carl teleported away to his next destination.

* * *

The city he was looking at was full of amusing distractions for a festival. Slam a mallet down hard enough to ring a bell would win a prize. Throwing enough rings around a vertical pole, throwing darts to pop a balloon, skeeball, raffles, goldfish scooping, and many more games were available.

He had played some of those kinds of games at carnivals in his original life, and he always lost. But here and now, with the kinds of skills ninja had, he was surprised the vendors could make any money. Maybe they relied on the hope that ninja and samurai had better things to do than cleaning out a vendor of all their stuffed toys?

Just out of amusement, Carl paid for a game of goldfish scooping and won a nice big fat goldfish. He didn't even cheat by infusing his chakra into the paper scoop. Honest!

Carl lifted up the gold and white splotched fish in a clear bag to his eye level. The thing had what looked like bubbles of skin obscuring his face, and he had a fat body and hunched back. The dumb thing just hovered in front of him, looking stupid.

"What's wrong with your face? You're kind of an ugly thing, aren't you?" Carl muttered at the fish, who simply stared blankly back, mouth opening and closing rhythmically; before the fish turned away and pooped, indicating his opinion of Carl's words. "Hey, you're the ugly one who has to swim in his own feces. Idiot."

Carl put the bag of poopy goldfish in his sleeve temporarily so it was out of sight before having the Yamato beam it away. He figured he would take pity on the fish and give the ugly little Ranchu goldfish a home somewhere.

Walking around the festival, Carl idly bought himself some roasted nuts and wasabi peas to snack on as he made his way to his destination. He had to occasionally dodge some little kids that weren't paying attention to where they were running with their parents in chase.

In front of him stood a two story, average looking building that was his destination. He made his way inside, easily casting a spell to get the bouncers to ignore a nine year old entering their den of gambling. In between the many adults standing around the room, he saw several tables with card games and other gambling games in progress. The groups of adults seated at the tables were concentrating fiercely on the hands they were dealt. The rest of the crowd stood around, cheerfully chatting, drinking, or waiting for a seat to open up so they could play some hands.

The people who were just there to enjoy a good show gossiped with each other, commenting on the chances of the various gamblers to actually win or lose.

There was one lady seated at a gambling table to his right that his attention was drawn to. Her blonde hair was tied up into two ponytails that fell over her green coat. One hand elegantly held her cards that she was intently staring at, while the other held a sake saucer, absentmindedly bringing it up to her lips to sip. Her signature green coat was draped over her grey kimono shirt, and she was sporting Capri pants and high heels.

Just behind her stood a worried looking black haired lady in a black kimono with white trim; just a hint of the mesh armor shirt she was wearing peeked out from the overlapping folds of her kimono. The cute little pig she carried while she was exhorting her blonde companion to ease up on the gambling and drinking was wearing a pearl necklace and a red coat that set the little miss piglet off from the rest of the herd, so to speak.

Carl spent a moment considering Tsunade, the blonde woman, and Shizune, the black haired woman, before deciding how best to approach the two. Tsunade was a legendary medical ninja and Shizune was her apprentice.

Years ago Tsunade had been teammates with Jiraiya and Orochimaru. After their fight with Hanzo the Salamander, who was a legendary ninja and leader of the hidden village of rain, Ame, Tsunade and her teammates earned the title of Sannin, indicating that their great skill and strength stood out from among the common ninja.

She had been through some tough times in her life. Her little brother, her last family member, was killed on a mission. Her fiancé bled to death in her arms during the war, despite her legendary medical skills. And now she suffered from hemophobia and was wandering the country gambling, drinking, and generally just wallowing in her misery.

In the original story, after the chuunin exams where Orochimaru orchestrated the invasion of Konoha and killed the third Hokage, who was her Jonin sensei; Naruto and Jiraiya, but mostly Naruto, was able to convince Tsunade to reevaluate her life and have hope for the future again. Tsunade then returned to the village and became the fifth Hokage.

That was just one example of Naruto's ability to do what many people called the Talk no Jutsu, which could turn enemies into friends and give hope to the hopeless.

But since Carl was in some undefined fanfiction version of the Naruto universe, he had no idea if Naruko would even get the same chance to interact with the blonde medic, or if she would have the same ability to change Tsunade's life around in three years like Naruto did. So he was here to try to liven up the life of a character he liked.

Carl gently pushed his way through the crowd of adults until he was standing next to Shizune. He smiled up at the black haired medic ninja, and was pleased to see her smile back. Her pig, Tonton, oinked at him inquiringly.

"Well, hello there, little miss." Carl greeted Tonton. "My name is Carl. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Tonton oinked, which translated as, "What do you want, kid?"

"A perceptive little miss, aren't you? But you haven't introduced yourself yet, I don't know what to call you while we talk." Carl felt it was much better to act like he didn't already know her name. For all he knew, in this alternate universe, he really didn't know her name. He was amused to see Shizune roll her eyes at Carl, thinking he really didn't understand the pig. Ah, if she only knew the power of Jump Chain perks.

Tonton oinked again, which translated as, "My name is Tonton, now stop stalling and tell me why you're here and what you want from my friends!"

Carl smiled at the possessive and protective little pig. As far as he knew from the show, this little pig had no ninja skills. But, who knows? Maybe spending so much time with the two medical ninja had taught her some interesting skills. He also noticed that while Tsunade seemed to be completely focused on her gambling and drinking, she was actually quite alert and paying attention to the conversation.

"Well, I came to talk to your friends with an offer to come visit my new village for a bit. I was hoping that they could spend some time teaching some of my people some of their skills, and in return I'd teach them some skills they could learn nowhere else. And to sweeten the deal, I've brought some **Death**." Carl paused and smirked to see all three of them tense before he continued talking. "…by **Chocolate**!" He pulled out three boxes of utterly decadent chocolate cake and held them out temptingly.

The three females, two human and one porcine, almost comically sweat dropped at his about face pronouncement. By this time, Tsunade had spun around on her chair to face him and the card game was paused while the other participants watched eagerly. They were well aware of Tsunade's reputation and standing, and what she usually did to strange ninja that came and bothered her while she was gambling with demands and attempts at bribery or assassination.

"Listen, Hyuga brat." Tsunade started to say before Carl nudged the lids on the boxes to open, causing her eyes to zero in on where the deliciously chocolate smell drifted out from. "Just because you've got some absolutely delicious smelling chocolate is no reason for me to…"

Carl smirked as Tsunade's words drifted off, as she swallowed the drool that was threatening to overrun her mouth.

"Well, why don't you go ahead and run a diagnostic jutsu to make sure I didn't add anything to these three marvels of chocolate engineering, and then give it a taste." Carl suggested in the seductive voice of a tempting devil who wanted to give them free chocolate.

"Lady Tsunade, I'll…take one for the team to make sure this is safe." Shizune offered while she looked hungrily at the cakes.

Tonton oinked her agreement with Shizune.

"**No**! No, as your master, it is my duty to make sure the cake is delicious. I mean! To make sure it's safe for you." Tsunade's hands glowed blue while she waved her hands over the three cakes. No matter how seductive the chocolate, if it was truly not safe, she would react violently.

Even more violently, actually, for being teased with chocolate.

"I respect you greatly, Lady Tsunade. But you will not take my cake from me." Shizune said with a very firm tone of voice, followed by an emphatic oink of agreement from Tonton.

Once Tsunade was satisfied it was safe, she snatched up one of the cakes out of Carl's hands, Shizune grabbed one of the others, and Carl set the last one on the table for Tonton, who jumped out of Shizune's arms to the table. All three lost themselves in the cake for some time, using the fork he had provided to deliver the chocolaty goodness to their mouths.

Even Tonton used her fork, which just showed she was a pig of good breeding and manners.

Carl could see that even the surrounding men were quite interested in the cake. Whether it was to satisfy their own sweet tooth, or at the thought of bringing such a delectable treat home to their significant other who would, ideally, reward them for their good deed.

"The Silver Flight Trading Consortium has just opened up business in Konoha, and is looking to expand soon to a location near you. This cake and many other delectable treats are going to be on sale soon. Please keep us in mind when looking to satisfy your sweet tooth." Carl amusedly offered to the crowd. No use wasting an advertising opportunity like seeing the legendary Sannin Tsunade being overtaken by the delicious cake.

Carl saw that Tsunade had a scowl on her face at the mention of Konoha. He rolled his eyes at the stubborn woman. She was so determined to wallow in her grief and depression, it was a bit sad and frustrating.

"So, brat. You want me to go back to Konoha?" Tsunade had wiped the scowl off her face, but he could see she wasn't happy at being lured back to her home.

"Nope." Carl replied with a cheeky smile. If she was determined to call him a brat, then he would play up to her expectations. It was amusing to act like a kid when he didn't have to. "My new village is called New Uzushio."

Tsunade's eyes widened when he mentioned the name of the town. She obviously knew the history of the village and her ancestors.

"While my primary home as a member of the Hyuga clan is at Konoha, I saw a need for some people to have a new, safer home. Like these two Uzumaki ladies, a mother and daughter, that were being abused in Kusa village. They have the healing chakra of their clan, and they were being bitten to death by those bastard ninja in return for barely any shelter or refuge."

He could see the anger and professional disdain present in Tsunade and Shizune's eyes. They were aware of what overuse of that ability could lead to, and as medics themselves they had nothing but disdain and hate for anyone abusing someone with so much potential for medical ninjutsu.

"So, you want us to go to this village you set up and help them learn healing jutsu?" Tsunade asked for clarification.

"If you're interested." Carl shrugged. While he was hoping to help the two ladies in front of him, and their pig too, they weren't critical to his success in the Scenarios he had to complete for this world. So if they were too much hassle he would let it go. And showing that it wasn't really that critical and important to him would show them that he wasn't at their mercy in negotiations.

"Now what kind of attitude is that to have when you're asking someone a favor, brat?" Tsunade didn't have any problems calling him out on his laid back attitude. She was used to dealing with people being respectful when they begged for her favors, so his "don't care" attitude kind of pissed her off.

"Well, if you've already forgotten, I'm not begging a favor. I'm offering equivalent exchange in techniques and knowledge for your services. If you're not interested in learning things you've never dreamed of, in exchange for teaching some newbie medics, then I'm not going to twist your arm." Carl shot back, amused to see the irritated emotions play out on Tsunade's face while Shizune and Tonton looked on in worry.

Seeing their faces reminded Carl that he didn't want people to gossip just yet, so he activated a memory adjustment spell for the bystanders. After they left, the crowd would forget what exactly they were talking about, except for the Silver Flight Trading Consortium and Death by Chocolate Cake.

"Like you could twist my arm, brat." Tsunade shot back, her pride offended. One of her techniques that she took great pride in was the super strength that she had. As far as Carl knew, it had something to do with the perfect chakra control and medical skills she had. Since it was a personal technique, it wasn't in the Uchiha Jutsu Archive, so he didn't know more than guess work at this point, based on the show.

"Miss Tsunade, I am more than capable of twisting your arm if I wanted." Carl immediately shot back. He was really getting into the spirit of the conversation and having fun pushing Tsunade's buttons. And he wasn't going to let her continue thinking she was above him just because he came to talk to her in his 9 year old form. He was in reality many years older than her, despite his current form.

"Hah! I'd like to see you try, brat!" Tsunade laughed out.

"Lady Tsunade, maybe you shouldn't…" Shizune tried to interrupt, but was ignored by both Carl and Tsunade.

"Shall we take this outside, then?" Carl's amused smirk seemed to tick off Tsunade even more.

"Let's do this, brat. I'll only use one finger, to make it fair." Tsunade bragged as she strode towards the door.

"Well, if you only use one finger, I'm afraid it won't be remotely fair for you. But, if you want to handicap yourself so much that I automatically win, be my guest." Carl shot back as he walked right next to Tsunade with big, exaggerated steps, leaving Shizune and Tonton to bring up the rear, sighing in exasperation at her mentor.

Soon enough Carl and Tsunade were in an open square, facing off against each other. The sounds of the Fair still going on in the distance kept the standoff from being totally silent as Carl stared at Tsunade.

"Are you sure about this, brat? I'll give you one chance to give up before I beat you within an inch of your life." Tsunade bragged.

"Well, since I'm not into S&M, I'll have to pass on that offer." Carl grinned back, amused to see a faint blush grow on Tsunade and Shizune's faces at his innuendo.

Without another word, Tsunade dashed towards him, her right finger held up, ready to smash him. Carl moved at the last minute, dodging the downward thrust of Tsunade's finger to dash several yards away. Behind him, he watched as Tsunade's finger hit the ground where he was standing before and with a huge bang, a crater several feet in radius was smashed into being from Tsunade's finger poke.

Carl's smile grew even bigger at the sight, since he now knew how Tsunade's strength technique worked. Just having that knowledge made him feel a bit smug inside, even though he wasn't going to use her technique against her. He wanted to play with her and become her friend, not become an asshole jutsu thief. He couldn't help seeing through the technique though, thanks to his perks.

A moment later, Tsunade had spotted him and dashed towards him again, finger once more poised. This time Carl didn't dodge. While her finger was aimed right at his chest, he stepped forward, grabbing her wrist, and twisting while stepping to her side, tripping her as he went.

A moment later, Shizune and Tonton were gaping open mouthed in surprise to see Tsunade on her knees with her right arm twisted behind her back; Carl firmly held her arm behind her back, controlling her so she couldn't burst out.

"And that is how I would twist your arm, Tsunade." Carl said as he kept them in place with his strength to make sure she knew it wasn't a fluke that he had won. After a moment of futile struggle, she gave up.

"Fine, you win this round, brat." Carl released her arm and backed away quickly, in case she was the kind to retaliate to salve her pride. He had already made that mistake once in his original life, and got elbowed in the balls by the angry woman for his slow reaction. Not something he wanted to repeat.

Tsunade wasn't one of those kinds of people, thankfully.

"Damn, brat, how did you get so strong, when you're so small?"

"And that wasn't even my final form." Carl giggled, thinking of that cartoon Dragonball in conjunction with his T-Rex and Dragon alternate bodies.

"What do you mean, not your final form?" Shizune asked as she was jogging up to join them before Tsunade could ask the same question.

"Er…inside joke. I'll tell you sometime later." Carl scratched his chin in amusement at the idea of introducing internet memes to the two medics. "So, you up for a trip to New Uzushio to meet my people there?"

"Fine, we'll go see this village you set up." Tsunade allowed after seeing the imploring look that Shizune and Tonton were giving here. "And you definitely owe us more cake." She added threateningly.

"Fine, cake for the addicts." Carl rolled his eyes but agreed. "And maybe after some time I can introduce you to some of my friends in Konoha too." Carl saw that Tsunade was about to say something negative, so he cut her off. "No pressure, Tsunade. I understand that you've got issues with Konoha. Besides, soon enough they will likely be making trips to New Uzushio, so you don't have to go anywhere near Konoha if you don't want. But you will meet them there."

"Fine." Tsunade frowned while staring off in the distance as she dealt with the bad memories that mention of going to Konoha brought to her.

"So, do you need to pack anything?" Carl asked.

"No, we have everything with us." Shizune answered when she saw that Tsunade was still lost in her thoughts.

"Okay. Let's travel the quick way, then." Carl smiled at his three new recruits, though they didn't know it yet. "Yamato, four to beam to New Uzushio."

And before the two ladies and one pig could say a word, they vanished from the small town in a flash of white light.

* * *

Later on that evening, Tsunade and Shizune were sitting on their balcony that had a pretty decent view of New Uzushio. Since it was night time, they saw a view of the various night lights and street lamps shining on the village that started at the ocean docks and stretched up to the hills they were at the foot of. They could hear the ocean breakers, but the moon wasn't out so it was pretty dark. The only thing shining in the night was New Uzushio.

"We're staying, aren't we Lady Tsunade?" Shizune asked from the other side of the table.

Tsunade took another sip of sake from her saucer while looking over the reborn village of her Grandmother's youth. She didn't immediately answer Shizune as she thought over the tour of the place and the technology, skills, and wonders she had seen. The people they had been introduced to amazed her, especially the Silver Dragons. _Dragons!_

Dragons that could shape shift to look like humans. It was unbelievable.

"Yes…Yes, we are." Tsunade finally answered. She looked back into their luxurious suite that had private rooms, baths, studies, kitchens, and all other amenities available in space expansion so that a massive suite only took up a small apartment space. Tonton was asleep on her bed already, it having been a busy and confusing day for a pig. She silently snorted to herself at the thought of Shizune's silly little pet. It had been a busy and confusing day for a human, let alone a pig.

"I still have a hard time fully believing his story, you know? It's just so…strange. And amazing." Shizune softly spoke after she had a sip of sake herself. She didn't usually indulge, Lady Tsunade drank enough for three or four of them, but tonight she felt the need for a bit of a buzz.

"If it's true then the damn brat is older than I am, at least mentally." Tsunade sourly commented, causing Shizune to start giggling.

Tsunade was thinking of how her regeneration jutsu was aging her prematurely, even if it did keep her alive and combat ready whenever she was injured. She now had to constantly keep up an illusion henge to keep her looks young and beautiful. And there was Carl with centuries of memories and looking like a nine year old. Or whatever age he wanted. So unfair.

She didn't know what to think about Carl's "magical contract" for secrecy. The idea of magic wasn't so strange, once it was explained in context of how chakra was made; magic being abilities that used the mental aspects of chakra. But it was so strange to think of a world where people only had access to their mental energies, another world where they only had access to their physical energies, and no one in those worlds had chakra coils. All her medical knowledge and jutsu would be useless in those places with no chakra.

And that was an offense to her competency!

It had been many years since she felt anything as passionately as she had in her youth, but she still had a great passion for the medical profession. So the idea of travelling to different worlds, learning and growing as a medic, a ninja, a wizard, or a cultivator was incredibly enticing.

Leave all the baggage of her past behind and sink herself into a new life.

It was something that she was more than tempted by.

But then the little brat had explained a few different possible methods he could utilize so she could have her brother Nawaki and her lover Dan Kato restored to her. And her first reaction hadn't been to jump on the offer, but to shamefully think about what her brother and lover would think of what she made of her life and whether she wanted to face them again or not.

It had been a shameful awakening, like a barrel full of cold water, waking her up from her daze.

She had been sunk in a drunken stupor of booze and gambling for so many years, trying to deaden the pain and sense of loss; the sense of hopelessness. She had wasted so much of her life, how could she possibly face them again? How could they accept what she had become?

Was it even possible…? Could she…? Would they…?

But if she didn't make the choice to attempt to have them come back, it would make all her grieving, and drinking, and yearning for them absolutely pointless. So, she knew she would ask Carl, that damned cocky little brat, to bring her family back to her. She would even beg him to do it, and she didn't beg **anyone.**

It was just…so difficult. Emotions weren't like ninja missions. You couldn't just punch them into submission. It was so annoying!

Tsunade finally took another long sip of sake and settled down her emotions. She wouldn't delay or keep putting it off. Tomorrow she would ask Carl to bring back her family, and see what developed. Hopefully, she wouldn't be made a fool of for this.

"I'm going to bed." Tsunade announced as she left the rest of her sake on the table.

Shizune froze and stared open mouthed and wide eyed as Lady Tsunade walked back into her room. Lady Tsunade never left her booze behind until she finished it off or was passed out! This was great! Wonderful! Sublime!

Shizune couldn't stop giggling to herself as she cleaned up the table. She was so glad that Carl had showed up and shook up their world. She just hoped the changes in her mentor would turn out to be permanent. That would be so wonderful.

Shizune went to bed with a huge smile on her face.

* * *

"Alright, you stinky brat. I'm in." Tsunade unceremoniously announced to Carl when she joined him at the breakfast table the next morning, eying the stacks of eggs, potatoes, onions, peppers, fried meat, and bread. It was a strange breakfast, in her opinion. "I hope you can back up your words and bring them back. If not…" She left the threat open ended.

"Sounds good." Carl was pleased at the powerful medic's announcement and had a small smile on his face as he buttered his toast. He took a bite and chewed while contemplating Tsunade, Shizune, and Tonton, their expressions, emotions, and state of mind. He didn't use anything too invasive, like mind reading. Just his perk powers of observation.

While the trio ate their breakfast, Carl thought about how this moment was a fork in the road for someone like Tsunade. In the show, Naruto convinced her to come back to Konoha and become the fifth Hokage, despite how disillusioned she was with life. He gave her a hope for the future, one last gamble with her life and emotions.

So Carl was aware that while he wouldn't be the one she emotionally leaned on if he brought her brother and lover back, her ability to enjoy life, to hope, dream, and have love were dependent on his abilities. If he failed at his task, she would likely shut down her heart and emotions and go back to her drinking and gambling until her death. She would never afterwards pull herself out of the mire.

It was a good thing, then, that he had already tested out the process of bringing someone back from the dead with the Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation. Otherwise he might hesitate at his moment.

* * *

Over a week ago Carl found himself standing on the balcony of his home in New Uzushio, fiddling with three vials of DNA samples in his hands. He had just finished his training in the summons realm with the Snake Clan.

Throughout the year he had been there, he had spent a lot of time doing chores, training, and practice missions with his snake partner Dakir. He liked her attitude a lot. She was outgoing and excited at the opportunity to be his partner; and not at all a cold personality, like he would have expected from a reptile and his previous encounter with Manda.

The White Snake Sage had guided their training sessions, having a much smaller snake demonstrate for them how the moves should be done and critiquing his and Dakir's performance of said skills.

It hadn't been very difficult for Carl to pick up the Snake clan's martial arts due to his perks. But working together with Dakir to meld their combat skills together so they could complement each other in combat practice took quite a bit longer. Dakir didn't have his learning perks, so it took her lots of repetition and exercise to get the moves down properly. And the White Snake Sage wasn't about to start teaching him the more advanced moves or Senjutsu skills until he and Dakir could work as a well oiled team in combat together with the more simple moves.

So it had taken a while of daily combat training and practice missions before they had gotten to the point where Carl finished all that they could teach him. But once he finally got his Senjutsu lessons, he picked those up as fast as any other skill he had encountered.

And now, as he was fiddling with the DNA samples in his hands, he was thinking about what he wanted to do in this world besides finish up the scenarios. Even though it was some strange branch world where Naruto was born a girl, most of the people were still the same people, with similar backstories and lives.

He thought back over the past year of the academy and training with his orphan friend Naruko. Even though he had brought her in to his family life and clan, it didn't mean she automatically lost that desire for her parents. If anything, seeing him, Hinata, and Hanabi interacting with their parents intensified her desire to know her own parents.

And that brought him to the DNA samples that he was fiddling with, labeled Minato Namikaze, Kushina Uzumaki, and Hizashi Hyuga. Not only did he want to restore their parents back to them, he was interested in having strong ninja around to join him in the jumps.

Hizashi was Carl's own uncle. If Naruko deserved to have her parents brought back, then naturally his own cousin Neji also deserved it too. Especially since Neji had been so much better in this life and avoided all that fate crap that made him such an emo in the original story. And Hizashi was rumored to have been stronger than his own father in this life, so he was quite skilled. He might be a bit behind because of the years spent dead, but Carl was sure he would catch up soon.

Minato Namikaze was the fourth Hokage, the famed Yellow Flash. He had a jutsu called the Hiraishin which allowed him to teleport to any marked location. He used it in the Third Shinobi World War by throwing a large number of marked kunai into the battle field, then flashing from marker to marker, killing the members of the enemy army. He single handedly routed the army of Iwa, which earned him a "Flee on Sight" designation in the Bingo Book for his dangerous jutsu.

Kushina Uzumaki was the previous Jinchuriki of the nine tailed fox, before Naruko, and earned the nickname the Red Hot-Blooded Habanero for her fiery temperament as a kid. She had great skill in the Sealing Arts, incredibly strong life force and vitality as a member of the Uzumaki clan, and had a special skill in being able to materialize Adamantine Sealing Chains that could bind even the nine tailed fox or create a barrier that even S-class ninja couldn't penetrate.

"Eh, you're over thinking things, Carl." Carl muttered to himself with a smile as he looked over the bustling activity of his new village. "Don't worry too much about the shock resurrecting dead people will give the rest of the world. If people act too negatively, we'll just put a sort of notice-me-not field / fidelius on them that will have people ignore their resurrected identity unless they are given the 'key' to understanding who they are and what happened."

He was only in this world for ten years, so even if he made the elemental nations and the five ninja villages completely chaotic from his actions, it didn't matter. He was strong enough to weather the storm anyway.

With that decision out of the way, he grabbed up the Yamato and immediately entered his Time Pearl. Cloning the bodies for all the ninja he decided to resurrect would go quick in time dilation.

A short time later, in real time, he reappeared on his balcony and made his way to an expanded work room with enough space to do the forbidden jutsu. He wasn't sure what would happen if he tried the jutsu in time compression, so he left the time pearl before using it. He spent some time drawing the necessary seals on the laid out scrolls.

Normally with the Summoning: Impure World Resurrection jutsu, he would require a body of some person, usually a ninja, to be the body sacrifice for the jutsu. After the activation of the Seal and needed Ritual, the person being sacrificed would have their vitality stolen, and their body remade into a sort of zombie with the soul of the one summoned inside them.

Because of the incompatibility between a different person's remade body and the soul, they would have a drop in chakra and abilities, as well as having a hard time being completely there, mentally. The jutsu wasn't a permanent resurrection.

After the Yamato VI got a hold of the details of the summoning ritual, it crunched the numbers on the variables and so Carl made a number of changes to the original ritual. For one thing, supplying a clone of the person being summoned would decrease the incompatibility issue between body and soul to zero. For another thing, creating more anchors for the soul and vitality support to the body through Yin-Yang release would ensure that the person summoned didn't come back as a zombie-like creation, but as a normal, living person.

So with the Yamato set up nearby and instrumentation to make all kinds of recordings of the event, Carl got started with the summoning ritual. He placed the clone of his uncle in front of him, and pulled out one of the many scrolls he had already made for the ritual. Unrolling the large scrolls with script covering it onto the ground, after positioning them properly, he sent his chakra through the seals.

The seal script did its cool crawling on the ground thing to surround his uncle's cloned body in complex patterns. Once in place, the seal script lit up. Chakra visibly flowed out of the ritual seal script and into the clone body. A transparent body of his uncle appeared above where the body was laying, his uncle's soul. It looked around confusedly, before sinking into the clone body.

Eventually, the chakra from the seal script stopped flowing and his uncle took a deep breath, before sitting up in shock. Thankfully the ritual wasn't affected by a presence or lack of clothes, so Carl had made sure his uncle was dressed as he remembered him being, in a white full body kimono with a black belt and black jacket.

'Huh, looks like this will move up my time table for changing the seals that the Hyuga clan use to protect the Byakugan.' Carl thought as he looked at his uncle's clear and unmarked forehead. He had been planning on making the change for his clan when he graduated from the academy. But, now that he thought about it, he was already technically ANBU, so he was already an official ninja of Konoha. It was time to stop dawdling on the issues of his clan and fix it.

"What…Where am I?" Hizashi muttered, before his eyes fell on Carl. Carl saw the recognition bloom in Hizashi's eyes.

"Hello, Uncle Hizashi. And welcome back to the land of the living." Carl was mentally looking over the results of his scans. He was also scanning his uncle with his various abilities and wasn't seeing any problems with his new body. "Looks like everything was a success."

"Carl…?" Hizashi asked, and received a nod of agreement. "How am I alive? The last thing I remember is…" Hizashi cut off, not wanting to mention to his nephew his last memories of knocking out his twin brother, who was Carl's father, and then willfully going to his death.

"Yeah. The Kumo kidnapping affair." Carl agreed. "I've…got a lot to tell you uncle." He moved to help his uncle stand, but Hizashi easily got up on his own. Looks like the body compatibility was working. "But before I get into the story, uncle, I've got a couple more people to retrieve before I go tell the story. I'd rather not have to tell it three different times. Why don't you have a seat over there, eat some snacks, and you can watch proceedings?"

Carl indicated a table that had four chairs and a number of snacks and drinks on it.

"I…" Hizashi looked back and forth from the table to his nephew that had obviously grown older since he had died. It looked like it was about five to six years since he died. "Fine. But I expect you to tell me everything, later." Hizashi finally finished sternly, which Carl rolled his eyes to.

"Of course, uncle." It was kind of funny to Carl that even now his uncle was trying to use some amount of relational authority as the adult. He enjoyed being in a family, but constantly being turned back into a kid sometimes did get old, especially when he was in work mode, like now, and they tried to exert their authority over him when he had things to do. He would humor Uncle Hizashi, though, a bit.

While his uncle sat himself at the table, Carl brought out the next clone body, that of a pale skinned redheaded woman. She was dressed in a green sleeveless dress with a white shirt underneath.

Carl could see by the expression on his face that Hizashi recognized the clone body, which made sense since they were contemporaries. He sent a reassuring look his uncle's way at Hizashi's questioning look.

Once she was in place, Carl pulled out another few scrolls and repeated the performance. The ritual went the same as for his uncle, except that it took a lot more Yang chakra infusion to fortify Kushina's body. Carl figured that was caused because of the immense life force and chakra reserves that the Uzumaki clan had as part of their bloodline.

"Naruko!" Kushina yelled while sitting up abruptly the moment the ritual completed. The next moment she looked down at her body and patted her chest and stomach in disbelief at seeing them undamaged.

If this reality was anything like the canon version, both her and Minato had stepped between the nine tail fox and used their own bodies to prevent the fox's claw from killing Naruko before the ritual to seal the fox inside her was complete.

The parents sacrificing for their children...it was…something.

Carl sometimes thought about what it would be like to have his own children, what he would do for them. What kinds of shenanigans a kid of his blood would get up to, and how he would punish them.

But he couldn't possibly find that out yet. The Jump Chain had a hold of him.

He would wait. He was sure it was worth it.

It also looked like, based on Hizashi and Kushina's immediate responses after the ritual restoring them to a mortal body that they didn't have any memories of where they were in the afterlife, or what they did there. They were waking up as if the moment before they had just died.

"Hey, there, Kushina Uzumaki. Naruko is just fine. You saved her." Carl soothingly said, but kept his distance. Kushina was still a very capable kunoichi, so he didn't want to chance anything wrong happening.

"Where's my baby?" Kushina demanded, jumping up and rushing Carl, grabbing him by the shoulders. Carl knew how desperate she was, and how confused. So he allowed her to grab him. The stronger her sense of belonging in this world, the better she would re-integrate!

When it looked like Hizashi might intervene to prevent Kushina from hurting his nephew, Carl sent the ANBU hand sign to stand down. He didn't think his uncle was in ANBU back in the day, but there were plenty of hand signs in common between the normal ninja forces and ANBU. But he was surprised to immediately see the acknowledgement sign from Hizashi.

"Everything is okay, Naruko's fine." Carl affirmed while patting Kushina's hands reassuringly where they gripped him quite tightly. For anyone else it would probably be painful. "She's not here at the moment, but you can see her soon."

"I want to see her now!" Kushina relaxed a bit at the news that her baby was safe, but was still adamant at seeing her new born baby immediately. Carl began guiding her over to the table to sit with Hizashi.

"I promise I'll tell you all I know about your daughter, but I've got one more ritual to go through before I tell everyone the story, so why don't you relax here for now, next to my uncle, Hizashi Hyuga." Carl soothingly said to the newly resurrected mother bear. Well, it was two rituals. But he could fudge things a bit, under the circumstances.

"Oh, hello Hizashi! I didn't see you there!" Kushina loudly announced, causing Carl to grin and Hizashi to have a faint smile on his face as he greeted her back with a nod. The two old friends began to converse, leaving Carl to do this thing, after he's recovered his energy.

"So, why don't you have a bite to eat, or something to drink for now. I've got one more person to retrieve before we have a conversation." Carl smiled up at the redheaded woman, who looked like she wanted to demand answers immediately, but after looking around, first at Hizashi, and then at the room, and then Carl, she eventually acceded and sat down without a word. She was promised answers, and she would get them, but for now, she decided to observe what was happening.

Seeing that Kushina finally calmed down and would wait for a bit, Carl made his way back to the center of the room. He had saved Minato Namikaze's resurrection for last because his resurrection would be a bit more complicated than the other two.

When Minato died, his soul was taken by the Shinigami and swallowed into his stomach. It had to do with the Dead Demon Seal that Minato used to seal the nine tailed fox into Naruko. The Shinigami did the sealing for Minato, in exchange for his soul, that is.

So Carl wouldn't be able to easily retrieve Minato's soul from the Pure World, where the dead went to, without first releasing him from the Shinigami's stomach.

Carl pulled out a mask from his storage that looked like it was made from white porcelain. It was a nasty looking bugger, called the Shinigami Mask, or Death God Mask. He had retrieved it and the other 26 masks from the Uzumaki clan's Mask Storage Temple on the outskirts of Konoha.

Each of the masks were an interesting relic that connected to the spirit world of this universe. Whoever wore the mask would be possessed by the spirit of whatever it was connected to. In the case of the Death God Mask, he would be possessed by the spirit of the Shinigami.

Carl handled the ugly mask with care. It was colored white for most of it; but the top of it was colored black as if to simulate hair. There were two six inch horns sticking up out of the top of the head of the mask. It had two ears, a nose, and black eyes, except for the pupils which were a pinpoint of white amidst the black. The mouth was wide open in a grotesque grin filled with sharp pointed teeth, the corners of the mouth were raised unnaturally high past what would be the cheek bones on a human, almost reaching the outer corner of its eyes.

Even with all he had been through on the Jump Chain, Carl still felt a bit of a chill shudder through him while holding and looking at the mask. Without any other word, he put the mask on. An icy chill flowed through his body.

Behind his body a nearly 15 foot tall slightly translucent apparition appeared. It was the Shinigami, and it had a face almost exactly like the mask. It was dressed in white robes with the Uchiha symbol of a circular fan with the top half red and the bottom half white on the sleeves. Or rather, it should be said that the Uchiha borrowed the Shinigami's symbol to represent their clan.

The Shinigami's white hair hung down on either side of its grisly smiling face, its robes were opened to show its chest. And it had an unsheathed tanto in its mouth.

Carl ignored the cries of shock that Kushina and Hizashi were giving at the spectacle. He had something to do. Even though the Shinigami's apparition was standing behind Carl, he could clearly see it with his Byakugan.

He reached up with his right hand and the Shinigami's hand followed along in the same path. Gripping his hand next to his face like he was holding a tanto, he watched the Shinigami follow his motions.

He opened his mouth wide and the teeth of the Shinigami let go of the blade in its mouth. Carl then positioned his hand above his stomach so that the Shinigami had the blade in its hand pointed at its own stomach.

Carl pushed his hand towards his body. The Shinigami drove his tanto into its stomach. Carl felt an invisible blade drive into his own stomach. Blood began leaking out and down his robes.

He drew his right hand along his stomach, and ignored the pain of his own gut being cut open as he watched the Shinigami cut its own stomach open. The moment Carl took his hand away from his stomach, he saw the Shinigami pull its tanto out of its stomach. Five blue colored balls with tails streaked out of the cut in the Shinigami's stomach.

He knew that one of those blue colored balls was Minato's soul. Now that he was free from his imprisonment in the Shinigami's stomach, Carl could resurrect him. But, he needed to clean up and heal himself first.

With his left hand he took off the Death God Mask and quickly put it away in his storage space. The figure of the Shinigami disappeared from behind Carl.

Looking down, he saw his guts were sliced pretty good, his intestines were cut in half, hanging slightly out of his stomach, and blood was gushing out. Despite a normal knife not being able to cut him so well, he had been spiritually connected to the Death God, so it bypassed a lot of his defenses. But it didn't negate his regenerative powers, so he could see everything already stitching itself back together.

"Why did you do that!? You foolish boy!"

Carl finally actually heard and listened to the shrieking of the woman as she finally approached him to check his wound, now that the Shinigami was gone.

"Carl, why would you kill yourself like that? A stomach wound is..." Hizashi was right next to Kushina in examining him, anguish in his voice at watching what his nephew had done.

"Uh…I'll be fine." Carl awkwardly stated. Maybe he shouldn't have done that in front of an audience? Next time he'd know better. "See, already healing up."

And it was true, his intestines were already rejoining into a whole, his stomach muscles were knitting together, and his skin was drawing close on its own as he healed back up. It did leave a scar behind, though.

'Guess some things will still leave their mark.' Carl thought as he cleaned up the blood and repaired his clothes.

"What possessed you to do such a stupid, stupid thing!" Kushina almost yelled.

"The Shinigami?" Carl stated with a smile, which disappeared when he saw they either didn't get the joke or didn't think it was funny. "Listen, I'm fine. I knew I would be, what with my natural regeneration." Nothing was natural about it, he worked hard to get those skills!

"Listen, I had to do that to resurrect the next man to join our party." Carl patiently explained. "Otherwise he would be stuck in the Shinigami's stomach for all time. So, please, sit back down and I'll get the last of us to join us and then I'll explain what all is going on, okay?"

Kushina and Hizashi exchanged uneasy glances.

"You're not going to do anything like that again, right Carl?" Hizashi questioned. "You're only going to do what you did to bring Kushina back to life?"

"Yes, promise." Carl lied. He would definitely do something like letting the Shinigami cut his stomach open again if he felt it was necessary. But he wasn't about to tell his uncle that. "I'm just going to be raising a man that needs to join our discussions. You both know him."

And without anymore ceremony, Carl had the Yamato bring out the Minato clone.

"Minato!" Kushina yelled, immediately running to the body that was lying on the ground and shaking its shoulder.

"He's not alive, yet." Carl explained while trying not to roll his eyes as the excitable woman. "I'll need you to step back while I perform the summoning resurrection."

Kushina looked wide eyed at Carl for a moment.

"So, you did something to bring me back to life?" Kushina finally asked.

"Yes." Carl nodded affirmatively.

"And Hizashi?" Kushina asked.

"Yes, Uncle Hizashi was also dead for about six years." Carl said, and winced when he realized he slipped.

"Six years!" Kushina yelled. "How long have I been dead?"

"Nine." Carl sighed as he gave in and answered her desperate question.

"My baby…" Kushina cried some tears at the thought that she had left her baby alone for over nine years.

"It's a hard thing, but you can meet her soon and be a part of her life now." Carl promised as he moved to her side and urged her to stand up so he could move her away from Minato's clone. "Now, I need to raise your husband so he can join us in discussion about what has been happening the past nine years, and what to do about it from now on."

"Fine." Kushina said as she moved back to the table she and Hizashi had been sitting on before. "Come on, what are you waiting for?"

Carl shared an eye roll with his uncle. Unreasonable women…

Without further ado, he pulled out another set of scrolls that he had prepared for the summoning of souls ritual jutsu. He laid it on the ground, and applied his chakra.

No matter how many times he saw it, it was still a magical thing to see the seal script crawl along the ground and do its thing. The amount of time spent pumping in vitality chakra into Minato's body wasn't as long as Kushina's, but longer than Hizashi's.

"Naruko!" Shortly afterwards Minato sat up with a gasp, looking around frantically before looking down at his chest, whole and unpierced by the Kyubi, just as Kushina had done.

"Minato!" Kushina called out as she rushed to his side.

"Kushina?" Minato looked at his wife with love and confusion. "What's going on?"

Carl stepped back and sat at the table as the husband and wife reassured themselves that they were alive and kissed a bit, getting the initial rush out of their system. As long as they didn't try to go further than kissing, it should be fine. Their need for answers would no doubt delay any…deeper displays of affection until later.

"So, Carl." Hizashi eyed him from his seat next to him as Carl sat down. "It looks like you've been keeping a lot of secrets while growing up."

"Well, up until you did your noble sacrifice thing, I really wasn't." Carl grinned back at his uncle, amused to see the Hyuga stoicism back in place to cover up his own awkwardness. "It wasn't until you were gone that I started awakening memories from my past lives and learning oh so much."

"Is that how you could bring us back to life?" Minato interrupted as he and Kushina sat down next to each other at the other two sides of the square table. "Not to mention being able to free me from the Shinigami, which I thought was impossible. Thank you, by the way."

"And don't think you're going to get away from that stupid decision anytime soon, either, Minato." Kushina smacked him on the arm to show her displeasure for his suicidal action that would have kept them separated for eternity in the next life. Carl was quite happy that Minato was there to take the scoldings, so she wouldn't focus on him.

"Yes, well." Minato rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "I was pressed for time and had no time to think up a better plan in the midst of the Kyubi's rampage."

"And that's the only reason I'm even forgiving you, Minato." Kushina firmly stated as she grabbed some of the trail mix that was set out. "This mix with chocolate in it is so good." She moaned as she threw a handful in her mouth.

"If you think those are good, wait until you try the Death by Chocolate cake." Carl chuckled. "Anyway, yes. The reason I was able to bring you three back is because of the memories and abilities that have been awakening in me from the time I was four to when I was eight. I'll fill you in on that later, but first, I would like you all to sign these confidentiality contracts. They ensure you can't go talking about my secrets unless I give permission. Once you sign those, I'll tell you my story and about what's been happening in Konoha since you died. And once we get through that, then we can decide where to go from there."

It didn't take any more persuasion that for Carl to convince the three ninja to sign the secrecy contracts. They felt they owed Carl a great deal for bringing them back, and keeping his secrets was a good start.

"Okay, so my tale starts with…" Once they had signed, Carl began regaling the three ninja with the basics of what he thought was important about him, and then began telling them about Konoha in the past nine years.

It took several hours to get through everything, especially when Kushina and Minato heard about how poorly Naruko had been treated, how the civilian council, Danzo, and the Hokage's advisors had worked to make Naruko's life miserable. They did not take those revelations well.

But when Carl got to the point of his family basically bringing her in to their family when she was six and giving her a home, he couldn't stop Kushina from hugging him and crying on him if he wanted to. Minato patted him on the back, half in commiseration for having a crying female hug him, and half in appreciation for what they did for Naruko.

"That's my girl! Like mother like daughter!" Kushina was sadistically gleeful when he got to the part of his tale where Naruko was getting back at those who were mean to her by pranking them relentlessly.

When he got to the part of the tale where he had enslaved Danzo Shimura, Homura Mitokado, and Koharu Utatane, he saw that he had to back up and tell some more details, since all three adults were horrified that he would do something like that.

"Okay, sorry." Carl grinned sheepishly at them. "I forgot to give more details than just what I've done. It's some required parts of the story in order so you would know just why I would do that to those three "distinguished elders"." Carl added in the air quotes.

And then he told them about how the entire Uchiha clan had been massacred at Danzo's instigation and how he tried to steal all the eyes from the corpses so he could implant them into his right arm that had been genetically modified by Orochimaru to have a the wood release DNA of the first Hokage, Hashirama Senju.

He told them how he had discovered that the Uchiha were subtly assassinating and destroying the other clans that made up Konoha so that they could be the only clan left and be in charge. He told them how his friend Yakumo Kurama's clan had been poisoned, and a demon had been called forth to possess her.

He told them of the various ways that Danzo, Homura, Koharu, and the civilian council had grabbed power in the aftermath of the Kyubi attack. How after the Uchiha massacre, the civilian council got control of the Academy and ruined the curriculum in order to allow their rabid fan girls to stalk Sasuke and try to entice him to marry so they could move up in the world.

He told them how Danzo had kept ROOT going, despite being ordered to disband, how he trained and killed so many young kids. How Danzo had been conspiring with Orochimaru, the traitor and missing nin. How many enemies and horrors they had been perpetrating.

Once he was done with the tale, the three could only sit in shock at all that had happened in the wake of their deaths.

And once he saw the fire in Minato's and Kushina's eyes, Carl knew that unless he used force or mind altering spells, he was going to have a hard time convincing them to sneak back into Konoha and lay low for a few years while he dealt with some of the threats out there like Madara or Black Zetsu.

Nope, those were the burning eyes of parents who were going to get revenge for the injustice their kid suffered, and the burning eyes of a Hokage who was determined to set things right.

Carl internally shrugged and adjusted his plans accordingly. At the very least, the next several years were bound to be entertaining while Minato and Kushina went on a rampage.


End file.
